In the game featuring two of the top teams in each conference, LeBron James and Joel Embiid‘s flagrant fouls took centre stage.
Embiid, drove down the baseline for an attempted right-handed dunk when James pushed him in flight. Embiid crashed hard on his tailbone, immediately grabbed his back and writhed on the court in pain as James simply looked down and walked past him.
After a short video review, James was hit with a flagrant 1 — “unnecessary contact committed by a player against an opponent” — and Embiid sank both free throws.
Embiid was quickly hit with his own flagrant when his elbow connected with Davis’ face on a drive to the bucket. Embiid said James’ foul should have been a flagrant 2 — an automatic ejection.
“Well, first of all, I mean you look at it, that’s a very dangerous play,” Embiid said after the game. “I guarantee you that if it was me, I would have probably been ejected from the game, which has happened in the past with me getting flagrant fouls really for nothing.”
Embiid has a history of back issues and sat out Monday’s loss at Detroit with back tightness. He sat alone on a cool-down seat behind the basket for nearly the first 5 minutes of the fourth quarter. Embiid returned and threw his hands in the air in celebration when he buried a shot that gave the Sixers a 10-point lead.
Philadelphia coach Doc Rivers didn’t think either play should have been called flagrant fouls.
“First of all, LeBron’s not a dirty player,” Rivers said. “It was just a physical play and they had to call the flagrant, I guess.
“You know, all of the flagrants tonight … you can get a flagrant easy these days. But that fall was hard, and there was some concern there for sure. The fact that Joel kept going, clearly he wasn’t the same after that as far as his movement. And we kinda knew that and we used him a lot in pick and rolls because of that.”
The 76ers went on to win the game 107-106 victory over the defending champions Wednesday night and lead the East at 13-6 while the Lakers are 14-5 in the West.
