Andre Drummond was ejected — and then he wasn’t — Joel Embiid WAS ejected, but Tyrese Maxey scored 32 points and came up clutch down the stretch to lead the Sixers to a wild win over the Spurs.
If there’s a trend with this Sixers season through 27 games, it’s apparently that nothing lasts for long.
Joel Embiid alone has suffered a sinus fracture, been sidelined by left knee swelling and gotten suspended for shoving a columnist in the Sixers’ locker room. He was ejected Monday night in an especially surreal win over the Spurs.
The Sixers began the evening down two players in Jared McCain (left lateral meniscus surgery) and Eric Gordon (oral surgery).
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By the fourth quarter, five Sixers were out, since Embiid was tossed and Andre Drummond (left big toe contusion) and KJ Martin (left foot soreness) had their nights end early. Drummond first got ejected in the second quarter by umpire Jenna Schroeder in a circus-like officiating sequence, then was called back from the tunnel to the court.
There was drama everywhere you looked Monday and deep detail may not even be worthwhile. As Sixers head coach Nick Nurse said when asked about themes to the series before his team’s Game 6 playoff loss last year to the Knicks, “I’ve decided nothing matters.”
Nihilistic or not, Nurse knows permanence and normalcy have tended to be absent for the Sixers.
“It seems like the strangeness of the season keeps working its way into things,” he said after beating San Antonio and improving to 10-17 this year.
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“Over the last 10 or 12 games, we’ve played pretty well in most of them. Whatever happens, we just kind of keep on going. We ended up losing three guys in the end. Joel, Drum and KJ were all out of the game late, so we were obviously really small playing there. … We matched (Guerschon Yabusele) with (Victor Wembanyama’s) minutes in the second half. That was kind of the only big man left. We almost went to (rookie center Adem Bona) a couple times, but they just went so small that we decided to stay small.”
Yabusele scored 17 points and rose to the occasion defensively against his 7-foot-3 teammate on France’s silver medal Olympics team.
“I would say me playing against him for a month and a half this summer for sure helps,” he said. “I kind of know what he likes to do on the court and what he doesn’t like also. I was just trying to be physical and bother him as much as possible.”
The Sixers’ best player vs. the Spurs spoke at the postgame press conference podium with a froggy voice.
Playing through an illness, Tyrese Maxey logged 41 minutes and wasn’t far from recording his second career triple-double in a month. He was stellar on both ends in the final minutes and finished with 32 points, 10 rebounds, eight assists and three steals.
“I came to shootaround and I just told KJ, ‘Dude, I feel horrible, but you know I’m here for shootaround, I’m here for film.’ And he was like, ‘Dude, you’ve got to go home. You’ve got to relax and come back later on.’ … I don’t really like taking medicine, but I just laid down, took a nap and relaxed a little bit,” Maxey said. “And I came back and we won a game. That was the biggest emphasis for tonight.”
Caleb Martin also played an important role in the second half Monday and made three long-distance shots for only the second time this season.
Amid all the other news, it remains notable that Martin said last week he’d been frustrated by right shoulder pain and limited range of motion. The Sixers would love for the versatile forward’s health to keep trending up.
“Again, he hasn’t been feeling great,” Nurse said. “I think this (recent) rest has him a little bouncier; he also had a dunk in transition. He was fighting like heck, too. … I think that was probably his best game of the year.
“He really looked good at both ends, kind of figured out how to fit in and where to go. It was excellent to see. He’s been working really hard on his shooting mechanics … so it was good to see it pay off.”
Whatever matters — and maybe it’s nothing, since everything’s fleeting and destined to change — the Sixers have gone 7-3 over their last 10 games after a horrific start.
“I think every win has been building up to this,” Maxey said. “No matter who we play, winning is the main focus. I think we’ve gotten better every single night. Guys have gotten used to each other. You can tell that the camaraderie is getting there. It’s difficult, man. We’ve had a lot of different players, a lot of different combinations. … I think we’re slowly but surely figuring it out, and we’re going out there and competing a lot harder as well.
“It means something to everybody. Of course we don’t like losing, but you’ve got a lot of competitive guys out there who are like, ‘All right, we’ve got to figure it out.’ And I think we’re slowly but surely figuring it out.”
