BOSTON — Leading into their season opener Tuesday night against the Celtics, the Sixers downplayed any rivalry-related drama.
It wasn’t exactly Larry Bird and Julius Erving grabbing at each other’s throats, but the officials needed to break things up 24 minutes and 19 seconds into the year’s first game, a 126-117 Boston win.
Of course, Joel Embiid, Marcus Smart and Jaylen Brown all had different perspectives on the incident.
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Officials reviewed the play as the TD Garden crowd chanted, “F--- Embiid.’ Smart was the one player to receive a technical foul.
“Honestly, I don’t know,” Embiid said. “They had called a foul on him. I walked away and next thing I know, my foot is getting caught up and slipped. And next thing, Jaylen is on top of me. It’s basketball. Emotions … rivalry, Boston-Philly, a lot of intensity. So it’s all good.”
Smart didn’t appear to be on the same page (or even reading the same book). His animus toward Embiid over the years is well-documented.
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“I went for a rebound — basketball play,” Smart told reporters. “Went for the steal — basketball play. Referee blows his whistle, calls a foul. I stop play. My arm’s still stuck in there and he tries to break it. And then I’m the only one who gets a tech. Everybody saw it. I don’t have to keep talking about it. If I did that, I’d probably be ejected, suspended three games, four games, fines. But the fact that I was the only one that got something out of that is kind of beyond me.
“Especially the defending DPOY, and that’s how he gets treated? It’s tough. But like I said, it’s maturity. I could’ve cracked his head open, but I didn’t, and that’s the maturity we had. We move on from it. It is what it is, and control what we can control.”
Smart has previously expressed displeasure with how many free throws Embiid draws and the way he does so. There was no disparity between the teams in that area Tuesday; the Sixers made 24 of their 28 foul shots, the Celtics 22 of 28.
Embiid took nine free throws, 2.8 below his league-leading average last season. The MVP runner-up also had to work around early foul trouble when Smart drew the second on him less than five minutes into the game.
To Brown, those numbers didn’t reflect how the night unfolded.
“I’ve seen the play and I thought the duration of the game, Embiid was getting away with a lot of unnecessary pushing and shoving,” Brown said to reporters. “Just being a big guy, that’s what he does, but he was throwing his weight around a little bit. And I had said something before that moment, but they kind of let it go, brushed it off.
“In that play, it seemed like he was trying to hurt Smart in a sense. Instincts just came right over. It ended up being nothing, ended up being a play on. Nobody got hurt. We just ended up finishing the game, playing some good basketball. But we’ve got each other’s backs out there and we’re not taking no mess this year.”
While Embiid ended up recording 26 points, 15 rebounds and five assists, he thought the Sixers were “not good” both offensively and defensively. Personally, he was critical of his game-high six turnovers, which aided Boston’s success in transition.
“Honestly, all of them just came from me,” Embiid said. “I was just careless with the ball. I don’t think I was really in the game. Some of the passes and turnovers were just bad. It’s on me. I’ll be better.”