NEW YORK \u2014 The Philadelphia 76ers will try to even the series with the New York Knicks on Wednesday night without Joel Embiid.<\/p>\n
The center was ruled out Wednesday afternoon with right hip soreness and a right ankle sprain. He had been on the injury list as probable with a right ankle sprain. The right hip soreness is a carryover from the Boston series and was the designation with which he was ruled probable and played in Game 1 on Monday.<\/p>\n
Embiid was present with the team at shootaround, which was closed to the media. He was ruled out shortly thereafter, with the change coming on the 1 p.m. injury report.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe woke up with a bunch of soreness,\u201d coach Nick Nurse said. \u201cWe treated him during shootaround and after shootaround knew he\u2019d be out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nurse said he\u2019s treating this injury as a day-to-day situation.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s really disappointed,\u201d Nurse said. \u201cHe really wants to be out there. Coming back from that appendectomy so quick was not easy for him to do. He\u2019s worked extremely hard to get back and he continues to want to play, badly. And I feel really bad for him because he really wants to be out there and we want him out there.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Embiid\u2019s place, the 76ers started Andre Drummond. Adem Bona had started in the play-in game against Orlando and the first three games against Bona.<\/p>\n
Embiid played 25 minutes with 14 points on 3-for-11 shooting in a 137-98 loss in Game 1, his minutes reduced by a 30-point margin by the third quarter.<\/p>\n
Embiid was limited to 38 games this year due to a variety of ailments.<\/p>\n
He underwent an appendectomy April 9 and missed the final three games of the regular season and the first three of the Boston series. His return in Game 4 was instrumental in the Sixers overturning a 3-1 series deficit. He averaged 28 points and 9.0 rebounds per game against Boston.<\/p>\n
Drummond had taken the backup minutes against Boston, Bona playing just five minutes in the last 4 games against Boston.<\/p>\n
Knicks coach Mike Brown said his team has done its prep work on all three of the Sixers\u2019 very different bigs. He sounded wary of the danger of an Embiid-less side.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose guys probably see it as an opportunity for more touches for themselves,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen you have a guy like Embiid out, those guys are all more capable of taking their game to another level.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2022 \u2022 \u2022<\/p>\n
Better play in the post was a locus for Game 2 adjustments with or without Embiid.<\/p>\n
The Knicks held a 39-28 rebounding edge. Karl-Anthony Towns shot 7-for-11 for 17 points, six assists and six rebounds in 20 minutes. Third center Ariel Hukporti had five points and nine rebounds in 17 minutes.<\/p>\n
Knicks backup Mitchell Robinson was in foul trouble in Game 1 and was a late add to the injury report with an illness, but still was available.<\/p>\n
\u201cBlocking out. I think it\u2019s as simple as that,\u201d Drummond said at shootaround. \u201cTeams are sending guys in the corners, and if we don\u2019t block them out, it\u2019s usually when you get those rebounds. Teams are shooting a lot of 3s now. So if we don\u2019t block guys out, then the only outcome is going to be second-chance points for them. We just have to do a better job of that. We\u2019ve done it already, something that we already know. It\u2019s just turning turn their water off.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 76ers did a good job of adjusting in the Boston series. That\u2019s a muscle that will be tested again by the Knicks.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re a resilient group,\u201d Drummond said. \u201cThey did what they\u2019re supposed to do: They\u2019re at home. They had three days off. They played great. We can\u2019t beat teams that are shooting 60% for the field. So they did what they\u2019re supposed to do in Game 1, we\u2019ll make the adjustments and come out tonight and play the game we\u2019re supposed to play.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2022 \u2022 \u2022<\/p>\n
Nurse was away from the team Tuesday to attend the funeral of his brother, Steve.<\/p>\n
Steve Nurse died expectedly on April 29 in Carroll, Iowa. He was one of Nick Nurse\u2019s eight siblings. His obituary describes him and his family as \u201cavid NBA fans, most recently of the Philadelphia 76ers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nick Nurse expressed gratitude for the condolences that have come his way, including from Brown during his press conference on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of people have reached out,\u201d Nick Nurse said. \u201cObviously it means a lot to my family. I appreciate Coach Brown and what he said yesterday at his press conference and all the other people, as well. The film and practice and the game and all that kind of stuff takes care of some time, right? But I\u2019m here to coach, and my brother would expect me to be.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was a huge fan, and we\u2019ll keep it (there). He wants us to go play. He wants us to play hard. So that\u2019s what we\u2019re going to try to do tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK \u2014 The Philadelphia 76ers will try to even the series with the New York Knicks on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":727599,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3768],"tags":[7,304,6,1136,191,3810,3806,207,66,7464],"class_list":["post-727598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-knicks","tag-basketball","tag-knicks","tag-nba","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-knicks","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkknicks","tag-philadelphia-76ers","tag-sports","tag-top-stories-tmc"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116530391509243162","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/727598","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=727598"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/727598\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/727599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=727598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=727598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=727598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}