James Harden, Tobias Harris Talk Embiid’s Big Night vs. Hornets

Joel Embiid's teammates react to the big man's dominant showing against the Hornets.

Playing with Philadelphia 76ers center Joel Embiid since 2019, the veteran forward Tobias Harris has seen many spectacular performances put on by his All-Star teammate, Joel Embiid.

Sunday night’s matchup against the Charlotte Hornets was just another time Harris witnessed Embiid take matters into his own hands and dominated on the floor to help his team pick up the victory.

“Dominant,” Harris said of Embiid’s performance. “Big fella does that. His presence out there, he was able to just get any matchup that he wanted to exploit. 50-point games like that, I’ve seen it all. It’s spectacular, but I’m used to it, you know what I mean? The way he does it. The efficiency, a dominant performance as well, he’s so humble about it as well, and he just wants to win.”

Embiid was well on his way to another 30-point performance on Sunday night in the first half. In 18 minutes, Embiid drained ten of his 18 shots from the field and went 7-7 from the free throw line to produce 28 points.

Going into the fourth quarter, it was clear Embiid would garner another 40-point outing, as he had 39 points going into the final 12 minutes. 

“He literally scored in every way that you can possibly score a basketball tonight,” said Sixers coach Doc Rivers. “Even the last play was a slot drive, and we do that drill every day, but we do it for the guards, and I don’t think we’ve ever done it for bigs. Maybe we have to add that now because that was terrific.”

Embiid mentioned that he simply established himself as the hot hand in the first half. Once his teammates realized this, they continued feeding the big man, which was a recipe for success against a struggling Hornets team.

“He was in attack mode for the entire game,” said James Harden. “He made scoring look easy tonight, you know what I mean? He was just in attack mode, getting to the basket, his jumper was falling, he had an aggressive night tonight.”

After a near-perfect fourth quarter, Embiid added 14 points to his total in five minutes. The star center wrapped up the game with 53 points in 34 minutes. With that, Embiid became the first player to exceed 50 points in multiple games this year.

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