The Post named Joel Embiid “New York’s most hated man.” The crowd at Electric Garden called him worse.
But Embiid and his 76ers had the last laugh and emerged victorious. We’re going to get our season back, at least for a little while.
Philadelphia came from behind to beat the Knicks 112-106 in overtime in Game 5 of this first-round series on Tuesday night.
The Sixers avoided elimination and did it with the help of their star center. Even though he was far from healthy.
Embiid started the game despite questionable health due to left knee pain and a migraine, holed up at the team hotel and missed the morning shootaround. And the sold-out crowd of 19,812 greeted him with profanity, vitriol and all manner of slurs.
He didn’t mind it one bit.
Embiid had a triple-double with 19 points, 16 rebounds, 11 assists and five blocks.
Granted, he’s only about half of those gaudy averages (35.0 for this series, 34.7 for the season), shooting just 7-of-19, with nine turnovers, and a near quadruple double. I couldn’t reach it one step. But his marathon efforts were victorious.
“[He handles it] Pretty well. Considering that, I think he played really, really well in this series. I thought he played really, really well,” Sixers coach Nick Nurse said beforehand. “I don’t know what’s feeding him to do that. I think he loves to compete. He wants to win. I think he played well.”
The Garden crowd showered him with chants of “Fa, Embiid!” Cheap shots to Jalen Brunson’s face and Mitchell Robinson’s legs in Philadelphia put him in Reggie Miller or Dennis Potvin territory as far as garden hate goes.
But the way he keeps waving to the crowd doesn’t seem to bother him. In fact, he added another Flagrant-1 on Tuesday after reviewing his swipe in Brunson’s face during an overtime drive.
“I think everyone is having fun because it’s competitive. It’s fun,” Buddy Hield told the Post before the game. “He wants to compete in an environment like this. And I feel like going into that moment, it doesn’t affect you. You look [Game 2], several calls didn’t work. I don’t think the audience really cares about him. ”
In Philadelphia’s Game 4 loss, Embiid scored just one of his 27 points in the fourth quarter on 0-of-5 shooting. And he made that attack his own. The Sixers missed their final 11 shots in the loss, including four by Embiid, including a layup.
But desperate situations called for desperate measures, and it was necessary to extend the time. Nurse played every second of Embiid in the third quarter and all but 1:12 of the fourth. He looked gassed, scoring just two points on 1-of-4 shooting with four turnovers.
But in overtime, he scored four points and grabbed two boards.
Down 102-100 in overtime, the player, who shoots 88 percent from free throws, only made one of two free throws from the foul line. But then he blocked Josh Hart’s layup attempt, leading to Kelly Oubre Jr.’s go-ahead dunk.
He then stole the ball from Brunson and made his own 3-point play with 1:40 left for a 106-102 lead.
