With the Los Angeles Lakers already down double-digit at the end of the first quarter Wednesday, LeBron James lowered his head and drove to the cup, looking to save some momentum toward the break quarter.
Joel Embiid, one of the Philadelphia 76ers, was waiting for him on the edge, who left behind what appeared to be an easy 2 for James, causing a transition opportunity that former Lakers goalie Danny Green completed with a 3 from the top of the key to put Philly up to 16.
It was the kind of sequence that could make those watching talk to themselves believe the Sixers were legitimate competitors this season.
There was the 7-foot, 280-pound MVP candidate at Embiid, anchoring to the defense of the top five in Philadelphia and filling one of the best-ranked in the history of the game to James, making his own MVP campaign, leading to a break 3 of a three-time champion. All as the 76ers ’new coach with his own championship credentials, Doc Rivers oversaw the action from the band.
That doesn’t mean the rest of the night was so dominant for the Sixers, of course. LA used a 13-0 run at the end of the fourth quarter to advance 11.2 seconds to leave a good plate from James to Anthony Davis, and it looked like the Lakers could keep their perfect start to the season by 10- 0. anant. Philly responded, however, with Tobias Harris connecting with a jump pulling on Alex Caruso with three seconds left to win it, 107-106.
“They know what they’re looking for,” Marc Gasol, the Lakers ’senior man, told reporters in a video conference after the game, congratulating the Sixers leadership. “I think all the players accepted their roles and they want to excel in them. They know what they want to live offensively and what they want to live defensively.”
Gasol, who entered the contest with a bit of a reputation as an Embiid cap: the big man of the Sixers had only 3-5 in his career against Gasol before Wednesday, averaging 10.6 points at 30% of shooting in these games. This time you will not interrupt “The Process”.
Embiid finished with 28 points, six rebounds, four assists and two blocks. Meanwhile, Gasol proved ineffective, giving up 15 of those points while keeping Embiid as he went 5 for 9 from the field and 4 for 5 from the foul line in possessions where he was tasked with the Lakers ’newly acquired home center. defending him.
“They played through him and played a lot through him and will continue to feed him,” Gasol said. “It’s not like they’re leaving and feeding someone else. They know who they’re going to play for and how they’re going to play, and they feel comfortable with that.
“So we’ll look at it and improve.”
A win in January does not change the power balance of the entire league. The Sixers will have to prove they are better than the new big three of the Brooklyn Nets, the cohesive core of the Boston Celtics and the Milwaukee Bucks with double vice president Giannis Antetokounmpo, just to get out of the Eastern Conference.
But a rematch of the 2001 NBA Finals between Los Angeles and Philadelphia is certainly a possibility 20 years later.
Wednesday’s win gave the Sixers a 10-1 record at home this season (they are now 41-5 at the Wells Fargo Center since the start of last season) and improved their overall record to 13-6, the best of the East season. They have Embiid playing the best basketball of his career. They have Ben Simmons, a resilient defender sized to harass James. Green and Harris and Seth Curry, who didn’t even play Wednesday, are constantly hitting from outside.
A lot of things would still have to happen between now and then, but it’s not unreasonable.
“I think it’s a really good team that they’ve put together,” James said of the 76ers. “Give a lot of credit to [general manager] Elton Brand and the things they do here. Viously, obviously, Doc has always won almost where he has been. We’ll see as the season progresses; there will be many teams in the Eastern Conference who will play in the basketball championship along the stretch. I know they think they are one of those teams. “
The Lakers, by virtue of being the defending champions, are already a proven candidate. However, last year’s team that proved it could handle Jusuf Nurkic and Nikola Jokic and Bam Adebayo en route to the title was one of the biggest teams in the league.
The Lakers changed in the offseason: they changed JaVale McGee to the Cleveland Cavaliers and let Dwight Howard sign on as an embiid backup, replacing them with Gasol and Montrezl Harrell.
“We’re different,” Lakers coach Frank Vogel said about the change at center. “And different doesn’t have to mean either better or worse. I’d like to think that this year we’re trying to be a better basketball team than even what we did last year when we won the championship.”
It remains to be seen if these Lakers are better than the 2019-2020 Lakers. Despite Wednesday’s result, they already believe they are better than the 2020-21 Sixers.
“I think our lineup and our group that we have are very capable of beating this team in a series of seven games,” Davis said.