Embiid Shines with Physical Play and Clutch Performance

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00:00I thought, for the first time in the whole tournament, I thought Embiid played well.

00:09Not only did he do well, he was very physical, almost violently physical in the game.

00:18I thought, Mike, literally, they were calling nothing away from the ball.

00:22The FIBA refs were calling nothing.

00:24It was literally tackle football out there.

00:26They were mauling each other, and no calls were being made at all.

00:30But I thought, Embiid said, all right, if we're going to play this way, I invite it.

00:34So let's go.

00:35You want to play dirty?

00:36Let's go.

00:37You want to foul and tackle and step on people?

00:39I'll run over somebody and see how you like it.

00:42But I thought he played well, and it's the first time I thought he played well.

00:45I think he had 19 hit, 8 of 11 shots, hit two threes, had a block shot, and I saw actual

00:52enthusiasm out of him, like he was having fun and he was into it.

00:57And it's the first emotion I've seen, because he's been booed the whole time he's been in

01:01Paris, and everyone hates him.

01:03Well, I think that what you saw, finally, was him taking the responsibility for playing

01:12the game in the first half.

01:14You're right.

01:15He was fantastic in the second half, and he was for the entirety of the game up to the

01:19physical challenge that Nikola Jogic presented.

01:23So give him credit for that.

01:24But he didn't want to do anything else defensively.

01:26On any switch, any opportunity, when Drew Holiday got picked off, or Steph Curry got

01:31picked off, and you had to step in the pocket and at least offer some challenge, Embiid

01:35just hung back and said, if he's going to make it, he's going to make it.

01:38Well, in this game, the answer was always, he's going to make it.

01:42Whoever it was, Bogdanovich, whoever, Misic, whoever it was, they were making that shot,

01:47and Embiid in the first half had no interest in making it a challenge.

01:51He showed in the second half that when those things happen, he could step out.

01:55He could step out and cause some traffic and make it difficult to shoot.

02:01He finally did it.

02:03In this game, once they started making threes, you needed to step forward and make it difficult.

02:09And until the second half happened, really the fourth quarter, that didn't happen.

02:13So I'll give Embiid a lot of credit for that fourth quarter and enough credit that he had

02:17a huge part in winning the game.

02:20He also had a huge part in them being in a big deficit.