Joel Embiid was bombarded with “Fk Embiid” chants, but the 76ers say everyone messed up.
Philadelphia lost 104-101 in Game 2 of the first round at the Garden, and was furious with the referees.
The 76ers plan to file a formal complaint with the league regarding the officiating of the first two games of this first-round series.
The news was first reported by ESPN and confirmed by The Post on Monday night.
Philadelphia had a lot of problems.
The Sixers were concerned about what they believed to be erroneous foul calls, but the most obvious complaint was Tyrese Maxey’s attempt to take a timeout with seconds left after the inbound, right before committing a game-changing turnover. It took multiple attempts.
“Well, first of all we…they scored, so we’ll focus on scoring it quickly. We gotta get in quick. I call a timeout. The referee looked right at me and ignored me. ” said a frustrated Nick Nurse. “I’m going to look for Tyreese and call another timeout. Then the scuffle starts. So I guess I need to jump out on the floor or something to make sure I get his attention. But , I needed a timeout there to get it going and I wish I could have gotten it, but I didn’t.”
The 76ers led by five points with 28 seconds left, and Jalen Brunson hit a 3-pointer that bounced.
They were then unable to call a timeout, even though the video clearly showed the nurse yelling for one.
“Everyone on the floor was trying to take a timeout, including me, Nico [Batum], sideline coach. But that wasn’t given to us,” Embiid said.
Embiid said he didn’t feel the need to cheer up Maxey after his tough finish and blamed his teammates. The NBA MVP said the mistake was on the league’s side.
“He did his job. It’s a league problem, it’s an NBA problem, it’s a freak officiating problem,” Embiid said.
Embiid added: “I don’t want to put the game on them, but there will definitely be a report on the (last) two minutes and we’ll see what happened.” “Like I said, that’s unacceptable. It’s not his fault. It’s none of us. We fought for 47 minutes, 20 seconds. For that to happen, four Points up, that’s not OK.”
The nurse said she received no explanation.
“Well, we didn’t have time to talk about it. You can ask him if you want. You saw I called a timeout,” the nurse said. “I just watched the film to confirm. Obviously he calls timeout. I didn’t know if he saw me in the film, but he saw me calling timeout twice. was clearly visible.”
The 76ers watched as Maxey handed the ball to Josh Hart.
Donte DiVincenzo missed a 3-pointer, but the Sixers had Isaiah Hartenstein grab the offensive rebound. DiVincenzo hit his second chance 3 for a 102-101 lead, then Maxey’s drive was blocked by Hartenstein.
“We just have to rebound. We can’t turn the ball over. We can’t turn the ball over, we can’t lose the ball, and we have to get rebounds,” Maxey said.
“It was a good look. I think he blocked a little bit and grabbed some of it. … It sucked. We’ve got to put it behind us. We’ve got 48 hours to think and develop a plan to win at home.” time was given.”
