Doc Rivers declared the NBA MVP race 'over' after Joel Embiid scored half the Sixers' points

It's hard to argue with Rivers after this one.

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Joel Embiid scored more than half his team’s points Tuesday, carrying the Philadelphia 76ers to a narrow victory over the Boston Celtics with 52 points on an incredible 20-for-25 shooting, 13 rebounds, six assists and two blocks.

After the game, 76ers coach Doc Rivers emphatically declared the MVP race over. “The man just scored half our points in an NBA game,” Rivers said. “And I’m biased, but the MVP race is over.”

It’s hard to argue with him.

Embiid’s betting odds to win the award long ago passed Nikola Jokic, around the time the Denver Nuggets were going through a mini-slump at the start of March. Embiid also jumped Jokic on my last MVP ladder.

In the two weeks since, nothing has happened to knock him out the top spot.

In fact, Tuesday’s game was Embiid’s second in that span with at least 45 points. His efficiency tailed off in the games in between, but it was back in a big way for a marquee win over the Celtics.

Jokic, on the other hand, has missed time. And in his first game back Tuesday, Denver inexplicably lost by 21 points to the Houston Rockets — a result that prompted head coach Mike Malone to call the Nuggets “soft.”

The only other player in the running for MVP is Giannis Antetokounmpo, but I would argue he hasn’t been as consistently important to his team’s success as Embiid this season. So that leads me to agree with Rivers.

Barring something incredible over these last couple days of the regular season, the MVP race is indeed over, and it should be Embiid winning the award for the first time.

Nat “Sweetwater” Clifton became the first Black player to sign a contract with an NBA team in 1950, breaking the young league’s color barrier when he left the Harlem Globetrotters for the New York Knicks.

His story isn’t often told or even remembered because of how young the NBA was, and how little of a foothold it hand on society at the time.

Writer and director Martin Guigui started a journey 28 years ago to bring Clifton’s story to the silver screen, and the time has finally arrived when Sweetwater hits theaters on April 14. I had a chance to chat with Guigui about the film, and what drew him to Sweetwater.

“The culture that I grew up with, where I come from, my DNA, there was this global understanding that sport and music brings us together,” the 9/11 writer and director said. “Sweetwater Clifton exemplified a lot of what I believe in, what I jump out of bed to experience in life everyday.”

Check out the full story on his challenging journey to get this movie out.

One to Watch

(All odds via BetMGM)

Kings (+6.5, +200) at Mavericks (-250), O/U 241.5, 8:40 PM ET

Playing on the second night of a road back-to-back, I’m not so sure the Kings are going to win this game — especially after just locking up the Pacific Division. However, I do think the spread is a little large for a top-three seed in the conference playing a team on the outside of the play-in picture looking in. Give me Sacramento for the cover.

Shootaround

— An ovation in Andrew Wiggins’ return to the Warriors brought him a heartwarming smile

— LeBron’s teammates drowned out his postgame interview with goat sounds

— The Pistons apologized to their fans for tanking exactly as planned

— An NBA bettor won $10,000 on a $25 future bet on the Kings