Doc Rivers Acknowledges Joel Embiid's Struggles vs. Bucks

On Thursday night, the Philadelphia 76ers faced another Eastern Conference contender in their opening week slate. On Tuesday, the Sixers faced the defending Eastern Conference Champions, the Boston Celtics.

Two nights later, they went toe-to-toe with last year’s Eastern Conference title holders, the Milwaukee Bucks. All eyes were on the star bigs coming into the Thursday night battle. For Milwaukee, Giannis Antetokounmpo drew all of the attention of the Sixers.

Meanwhile, the Bucks had to crack down on guarding 76ers center Joel Embiid, as he’s been the league’s MVP runner-up for the last two years and led the NBA in scoring last season.

Milwaukee found success against the Sixers’ big man on Thursday night. Typically, Embiid averages nearly 30 points against the Bucks, but on Thursday, he struggled to exceed 20 points. Playing in the entire first quarter, Embiid was active early. He shot 4-9 from the field and 2-3 from the charity stripe for 11 of his team’s 24 first-quarter points.

It was clear the Sixers were trying to feed Embiid and allow him to establish a rhythm early on in the matchup. Unfortunately, he began to struggle beyond the opening minutes.

In his next seven minutes on the court, Embiid went 2-5 from the field for four points. He wrapped up the first half with 15 points as the Sixers trailed by two. Often last season, Embiid’s slower first-half performances would reverse directions, and he would find more success in the second half.

Thursday night against the Bucks was not one of those occasions.

For the next 11 minutes coming out of the half, Embiid managed to get up five shots from the floor. None of which were successful. The Sixers started to fall behind but managed to shift the momentum as James Harden began to lead a comeback.

The 76ers hoped the momentum shift would help Embiid get it going in his five minutes on the floor during the fourth quarter, but the big man simply didn’t have it. With two shots from the field, Embiid missed both attempts. He wrapped up the second half by missing all seven of his shots and contributing zero points in 17 minutes.

After the matchup, Embiid didn’t have much to say. With a second-straight unusual performance from the superstar, he wasn’t open to discussing his performance against the Bucks.

Joel Embiid declined to speak to reporters after tonight’s game.
— Tim Bontemps (@TimBontemps) October 21, 2022

As for Doc Rivers, he simply summed it up as a bad offensive game for the big man.

“He just didn’t have a great game,” said Rivers. “He’s human. He didn’t have one of his better games. He did a lot of other things for us tonight. I thought defensively, he was pretty good tonight. We got him 21 shots. I didn’t like where some of them where he got it. We’re still a work in progress offensively. We gotta get a better rhythm.”

A 90-88 loss drops the Sixers to 0-2 to start the year. They’ll return to the court on Saturday night to face the San Antonio Spurs for the first time this season.

Justin Grasso covers the Philadelphia 76ers for All76ers, a Sports Illustrated channel. You can follow him for live updates on Twitter: @JGrasso_.