Joel Embiid wants the James Harden of old to show up as the Philadelphia 76ers hope to thwart a potentially historic comeback by the Toronto Raptors.
"I mean, I've been saying all season since he got here, he needs to be aggressive and he needs to be himself," the star center said after his team's Game 5 loss Monday, courtesy of Kyle Neubeck of PhillyVoice.
"That's not really my job, that's probably on coach to talk to him and tell him to take more shots. Especially if they're going to guard me the way they've been guarding. But that's really not my job."
Harden scored just 15 points in Game 5, dropping his average to 18.4 points in the series. He shot just 4-of-11 in Monday's defeat, with two of those makes coming from outside the arc.
The 32-year-old's numbers against Toronto have been well below his career norms in the playoffs. In 137 postseason appearances prior to this year, Harden registered 23.3 points per game while attempting 16.3 field goals per contest.
With Harden taking a more passive approach, the Raptors held Embiid to a relatively modest 20 points on 7-of-15 shooting on the 76ers' court.
Embiid, who's also playing with a torn ligament in his right thumb that requires surgery, called on the 76ers as a whole to be more direct on offense.
"We all need to be better offensively," he said. "We missed a bunch of wide-open shots ... When I was getting doubled, we were not aggressive attacking the ball. We just kept moving the ball around the perimeter, and that gave them time to recover, and that's why we were not able to get anything out of it.
"So if that's what they want to keep doing, we've got to take advantage of it."
Game 6 goes Thursday in Toronto, where the Raptors will attempt to become just the fourth team ever to tie a series after going down 3-0. All three teams lost Game 7 on the road.
