On a night where Joel Embiid scored 42 points, the 76ers still fall to a 13-win Cavaliers team at home. The guards for Cleveland proved to be too much for the Sixers’ defense as they were unable to corral Collin Sexton and Darius Garland, those two combining for 53 points. Tobias Harris was sorely missed in tonight’s loss, and the bench unit still struggled once again.

Joel Embiid

The seemingly unequivocal MVP had another fantastic scoring night, putting in 42 points, and was impressive all over the floor adding 13 rebounds and six assists along the way as well. Unfortunately, Joel missed a potential game-winning shot at the end of regulation, which led to the overtime period that the Sixers inevitably would lose in. It’s becoming less and less surprising when Embiid scores at such a high level and his case for MVP is getting stronger by the day.

Ben Simmons

Simmons has been playing the best basketball of his career over the last month or so, and that didn’t change tonight, scoring 24 points, eight assists, and seven rebounds. The duo of Embiid and Simmons collaborated for the majority of the Sixers offense and totaled 68 of the team’s 109. Some costly turnovers and late crucial missed free throws will cloud this game for Ben, but another solid performance for him, and he capped off the night with a deep three-pointer which made the loss sting a bit less.

Bench and Free Throws

The Sixers had issues scoring the basketball without Ben or Joel on the floor, and it was accentuated by the poor free-throw shooting (65%) by the team as a whole. The Sixers bench was led by Shake Milton who scored 11 points but didn’t have much else that seemed noteworthy considering they only tallied 22 points as a group. 

The Sixers move on to play Indiana on Monday, as they look to get back on track and maintain their status as the first-place team in the Eastern Conference.