Embiid Injury

I will believe it when I see it. Somehow, I just do not trust Rivers and his whining. We will see. The one thing the Celtics must be aware of is that this team can still beat them without him, if they let them. Let's win these two games in Boston, hold home court, and get this team out of the way as fast as they can. Miami and New York are going to beat up on each other big time. We should be weary of either one of them

All I can say is we've seen this movie before in the first round when one of your opponents top scorers is out and playing down to the competition on the floor. Bit us in the ass. It wasn't enough to serve it up on a platter, but we were toying with it. We may get a second chance to show what we've learned starting tonight. If we haven't learned our lesson, and can't beat a desperate PHI team at home tonight sans Embiid, it's going to get messy very quickly. We are currently on the tail end of showing championship mettle (MIA, DEN, PHI, GSW, LAL probably in that order) to date in these playoffs. But the first round is over. Time to change the narrative

It comes down to whose situation is more dire? Our desire to get back to the Finals to right a wrong or PHI's impending doom of not getting out of the 2nd round for the last 3 years. Right now on paper, PHI looks like they have that edge of who's more desperate. And if we don't shut down either Embiid or Harden, we're in trouble. Harden may shut down himself and give us a helping hand. While this is expected given his career performance in these situations, we can't count on that. So we will also need to lock down a Maxey or Harris as well and keep all the chickens in the cage.

It's time to show who's going to the Finals.

db

my biggest issue is watching Embid going to the line for 20 times a game

Yeah, tonight has all the makings of a PHI win, so I'm going to go ahead and call it.  PHI wins G1.

Why you might ask?

1.  Our lack of showing up in G5 last round via playing down to our competition and not applying the lesson learned
2.  The whole Embiid mystery.  We're going to fall for this somehow
3.  PHI's desperation vs. our will to win
4.  Inconsistent JT so far.  We need a Jimmy Butler-like Playoff JT
5.  Our dominance for the regular season (3-1) not translating to the playoffs
6.   Harden's disappearance when it matters all these years now all the sudden showing up
7.  The Heavens recently opening up for us and returning the gift.

That's a good start.  

db

P.S. dboss just saw your initial response post while I was typing above. You know me and the ledge/edge!!