The agony of defeat was evident on Joel Embiid’s face the moment the Philadelphia 76ers lost their playoff series against the Toronto Raptors on Sunday.
Kawhi Leonard hit a spectacular winning shot at the buzzer to beat Philly 92-90 and advance to the conference finals. His shot barely went over Embiid and bounced on the rim four times before going through.
Immediately after the shot dropped through, Embiid began crying on the court, absolutely devastated by the loss. TNT even showed him crying as he walked through the tunnel to the team’s locker room.
Joel Embiid was emotional following the Game 7 loss in Toronto. pic.twitter.com/N5bPgKyhHz
— ESPN (@espn) May 13, 2019
Embiid only shot 6-for-18 in the game and was not at his best, making the defeat even harder, especially since he knows what kind of criticism he’ll be receiving. But this sort of emotion is what you want to see out of a player. Someone who cares this much about his team and about losing will be motivated to play hard and come back next season doing even better so he doesn’t feel the pain again. He and the Sixers will be back.
