The 76ers Showed No Fight With Their Season On The Line

After losing the first two games of the Eastern Conference semifinals to the Miami Heat, the Philadelphia 76ers looked doomed.

They dropped both contests by double-digits, Joel Embiid was out with an orbital bone fracture and concussion and James Harden was continuing to look like a shell of his old self.

But with Embiid back for Game 3, the 76ers got on the board, then they took Game 4 to tie the series and give themselves a real shot of winning.

However, with control of the series at stake in Game 5, Philly came out meek and uninspired, losing by 35 points.

That lack of championship stuff continued in Game 6, as the Sixers fell behind by as many as 20 points and ended up losing by nine.

The 76ers may have the talent on paper to contend for the NBA title, but they haven’t shown any of the other qualities a team needs to do so.

Where Was The Fight?

The city of Philadelphia is a place that prides itself on being fighters.

It’s the city of Rocky Balboa from the Rocky movie series, as well as the town that has been associated with Allen Iverson, Julius Erving, and Moses Malone.

Even though Iverson, in some ways, didn’t have the qualities of a champion, he was beloved in Eastern PA because of his immense heart and fight.

His 2001 Sixers team was short on talent, but against a far-superior Los Angeles Lakers team in the NBA Finals, they fought to the death until they had nothing left.

This Sixers team is more like France in World War II than that Sixers team, let alone the 1983 Sixers who won it all after losing just one game in the playoffs.

In the post-mortems, one has to look first in the direction of Philly’s best player and MVP candidate.

Embiid had a remarkable regular season, leading the league in scoring and providing strong rim protection, and much credit should be given to him for taking better care of his body and going from a merely great player to a dominant one.

But when his team needed him most, he was essentially M.I.A.

Is it possible that he was distracted or even pouting because he wasn’t named league MVP, as one prominent NBA analyst and former Sixers superstar has claimed?