The Minnesota Timberwolves and 76ers could be without star players on Friday night when the teams meet in Philadelphia for an important late-season clash.<\/p>\n
Philadelphia (42-34) sits in sixth place in the Eastern Conference playoff race, although there isn\u2019t much separation between fifth and 10th place.<\/p>\n
Minnesota (46-30) is sixth in the West, with an eye on climbing higher with the regular season winding down.<\/p>\n
The 76ers likely will be without Joel Embiid (illness) on Friday, while the Timberwolves again could be without Anthony Edwards (illness\/knee).<\/p>\n
Embiid missed Philadelphia\u2019s most recent game \u2014 a 153-131 win over the Washington Wizards on Wednesday. He is averaging 26.9 points and 7.4 rebounds this season but has been limited to 36 games for a variety of reasons.<\/p>\n
Philadelphia\u2019s Paul George has played in just 31 games \u2014 mostly due to a 25-game suspension for taking a banned substance \u2014 but he has returned in impressive fashion. In his fourth game since coming back from the suspension, George scored a season-high 39 points against Washington, going 15-for-22 from the field in a crisp overall performance.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, that time off,\u201d George started. \u201cThat time off was the time I needed for my body. That\u2019s been really what unlocked me to kind of play free and play aggressive.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tyrese Maxey added 28 points, while VJ Edgecombe chipped in with 23 points on 10-of-15 shooting to go with 10 assists. Edgecombe on Thursday was named the Eastern Conference Rookie of the Month for March.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know we can score the ball,\u201d Maxey said. \u201cWe got a lot of guys that can get 20. A lot of guys that get 20. Guys off the bench that can get 20, get 30.\u201d<\/p>\n
Minnesota, meanwhile, is on a three-game road trip that began with a 124-94 win over Dallas on Monday.<\/p>\n
Edwards, who is averaging 29.3 points a game, scored 17 in that contest after missing the previous six games with a knee injury. However, he was deemed unable to play Thursday in Detroit, where the Timberwolves lost to the East-leading Pistons, 113-108.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been playing with good pace. I think we\u2019ve been moving the ball well,\u201d said Minnesota coach Chris Finch, referencing the team\u2019s recent offensive outputs without Edwards, not to mention the absence of Jaden McDaniels (knee injury).<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t have a lot of guys who can punch the gaps and get into the paint \u2014 maybe that\u2019s not their game \u2014 but we\u2019ve missed some really good looks, too,\u201d Finch added.<\/p>\n
Julius Randle led the Timberwolves with 27 points against Detroit, while Naz Reid and Ayo Dosunmu added 19 apiece. Terrence Shannon Jr. notched 10 off the bench \u2014 his highest-scoring game since March 10.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone\u2019s role is going to be situational,\u201d Finch said. \u201cI thought it was more of a game (where we could feature Shannon).\u201d<\/p>\n
In the only other matchup between the teams this season, the Sixers won 135-108 at Minnesota on Feb. 22 as Maxey registered 39 points and eight assists.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just thought (Maxey) was so assertive tonight in the standpoint of he was seeing a lot of similar stuff that he\u2019s been seeing and he was just attacking what they were doing immediately, instead of sometimes,\u201d 76ers coach Nick Nurse said that night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Minnesota Timberwolves and 76ers could be without star players on Friday night when the teams meet in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":695846,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3782],"tags":[7,307,152,3954,6,308],"class_list":{"0":"post-695845","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-minnesota-timberwolves","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-minnesota","10":"tag-minnesota-timberwolves","11":"tag-minnesotatimberwolves","12":"tag-nba","13":"tag-timberwolves"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=695845"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695845\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/695846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=695845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=695845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=695845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}