Doc Rivers not worried about Joel Embiid’s slow start to Sixers season: ‘He just didn’t play well’

Joel Embiid is coming off one of his worst halves in recent memory, going 0-for-7 in 17 scoreless minutes following intermission in Thursday’s 90-88 loss to the Milwaukee Bucks.

Coach Doc Rivers, though, called himself the “least-worried” person about the early struggles of the 76ers’ star center.

“He’s playing with the right intention. He just didn’t play well,” Rivers said Friday following the Sixers’ film session. “… The only thing I told our guys is, ‘OK, that happened. You’ve still got to win the game.’ … We can’t ever let the misses affect how we play through the other part of our games.”

Rivers said after evaluation, Embiid and the Sixers still would take 16 out of his 21 field-goal attempts against the Bucks “all night. They just didn’t go in.”

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The Sixers, though, rallied from a double-digit fourth-quarter deficit with Embiid on the bench in favor of a small-ball lineup with P.J. Tucker at center. Instead, James Harden was the Sixers’ offensive engine, scoring 22 of his 31 points in the second half and also finishing with nine assists and eight rebounds.

Embiid’s performance Thursday followed an opening-night loss to the Celtics in Boston, during which he totaled 26 points, 15 rebounds, and five assists but still did not look like his dominant self. Embiid declined to speak to the media following Thursday’s loss.

A two-game sample size is minuscule during the course of an 82-game regular season. It’s also relevant to note that Embiid started last season slowly, partially because of a knee injury he played through and a significant bout with COVID-19 that kept him sidelined for nine games in November.

In his first 12 games in 2021-22, capped by a 3-for-17 stinker Dec. 1 in Boston, Embiid averaged 22 points per game on 40.7% shooting. After that, he averaged 32.4 points on 51.5% shooting while playing in 56 of 60 possible regular-season games, becoming the NBA’s leading scorer and the MVP runner-up for the second consecutive season.

Health currently could be at play as well. Rivers revealed Friday that Embiid dealt with minor plantar fasciitis during the summer, which temporarily got him off his conditioning program before training camp began. As a result, Rivers said he has been cognizant of Embiid’s early playing time, which is impacting the Sixers’ substitution pattern but is designed to “keep him so he’s running at a higher speed.” Down the stretch of Thursday’s game, however, Embiid showed signs of fatigue.

Embiid also still is managing the aftereffects of a surgically repaired thumb ligament, which Rivers remembers feeling — “especially if it gets hit” — long after he sustained the same injury as a player. Embiid said during training camp that he does not know if his thumb “will ever be the same, but you work with it. You get used to it.”

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“Those are still raw nerves,” Rivers said. “So if you can imagine how that feels if anyone touches it or hits it. My guess [is], as a big, I’m assuming it gets hit every game. … You’re not injured. It’s just painful.”

The Sixers’ offensive struggles do not solely fall on Embiid’s shoulders. Rivers said his team did not run Thursday’s sets with enough “vigor” and “power,” which could have generated more three-point attempts. The spacing around Embiid also occasionally was off, including two sequences when a new teammate was on the wrong side of the court and in Embiid’s way as he isolated on the elbow, forcing him to “settle” for a shot.

“You get frustrated with that because we’ve only run that play 50 times already,” Rivers said.

The Sixers did not formally practice Friday ahead of Saturday night’s home game against the San Antonio Spurs. But they did hold a group film session, an approach Rivers said he will use more on the days in between games instead of before shootarounds on game days.

“It felt like we just couldn’t progress much [last season] because of the scheduled off days,” Rivers said. “You can’t watch film enough to prepare and get ready [during a shootaround].”

Last season’s scheduled player off days were purposeful. They were because of the long-term effects of two shortened offseasons — and condensed schedules over parts of three seasons dating back to 2019-20 — because of the pandemic.

Tucker was the last player to leave the Sixers’ locker room Thursday after a treatment session.

The postgame work was understandable. Although Harden played a game-high 40 minutes against the Bucks, Tucker was right behind at 39 minutes. That’s because Tucker matched Giannis Antetokounmpo’s rotation and played an additional stretch as the small-ball center without the Greek Freak on the floor.

Rivers praised Tucker’s effort on both ends but hopes that workload does not become a common occurrence for the 37-year-old forward.

“You can do it once or twice,” Rivers said. “But I don’t like P.J. playing that many minutes.”