Joel Embiid wasn’t in Philadelphia on Thursday night for the Sixers’ 109-98 win over the Celtics. He was in New York, where he’ll get surgery Friday for a torn radial collateral ligament of the fourth metacarpal on his left hand (see story). He was, however, in the Sixers’ locker room for the ceremonial ringing of a miniature Liberty Bell they do after every win — in a way.
“We just did our postgame bell ringing ceremony and I look over one of the player’s shoulders and I can see Elton [Brand] is holding Joel on FaceTime,” Brett Brown said. “We were able from New York to include him, which is always a good thing. When you’re missing Joel, you better have some people do what Norvel [Pelle] did, and Ben [Simmons] in his limited minutes, and Al Horford was huge all over the place. … It was a next man up. We had to find something to fill that massive void that Joel left.”
Josh Richardson had a game-high 29 points and rang the bell Thursday night.
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It sounded like Embiid joined in at the end of the video above, yelling “Chip!”
“It was cool to be able to celebrate our win and wave at him and say what’s up to him,” Richardson said after the game. “Praying for a successful whatever he has to do, you know.”
Tobias Harris, sitting alongside Richardson, looked at him sideways and said the word Richardson had omitted, for whatever reason — “Surgery.”
NBA
“A successful surgery,” Richardson said. “Surgery, yes. Just in case you didn’t already know.”
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