PHILADELPHIA -- Joel Embiid said he was disappointed with the Sixers crowd in Game 4. Well, good news. The fans who stayed home are easy to identify. They’re the ones currently skipping around town whistling guitar riffs from ‘80s hard rock anthems while holding their StubHub account balances high above their heads.

It doesn’t matter how they spent their Sunday afternoon. Maybe they cut a half-acre of grass with a push mower. Maybe they went shopping for curtains. Maybe they spent 2½ hours at the farmers’ market debating the finer points of this year’s South American soy bean harvest. Doesn’t matter, whatever they chose to do. They crushed their most important decision of the weekend: not to watch the Sixers.

They didn’t watch the Sixers get outrebounded 15-9 on the offensive glass.

They didn’t watch them get outscored in the paint, 44-32, by an opponent whose starting center spent the second half in foul trouble and whose backup was out with an injury.

They didn’t watch them get bullied to the brink of another early offseason by a Knicks team that Embiid claimed was inferior.

There were no winners at the Wells Fargo Center on Sunday. There were only losers. Half in the literal sense, half in the sense of being from New York.

“Disappointed,” Embiid said of the boisterously pro-Knicks crowd that turned out to watch him score one point in the fourth quarter of the Sixers’ 97-92 loss in Game 4. “I love our fans. I think it’s unfortunate. I’m not calling them out, but it is disappointing. Obviously, you have a lot of Knicks fans, and they are down the road. I’ve never seen it and I’ve been here for 10 years. It kind of pisses me off, especially because Philly is considered a sports town. They’ve always shown up. I don’t think that should happen. It’s not OK.”

I’m going to go out of my way to be fair to Embiid, so bear with me. He did not bring up the crowd on his own. A reporter broached the topic. All Embiid did was answer. He did so in the midst of a number of other questions that offered him plenty of opportunity for self-flagellation.

Should he have entertained the interlude? Maybe not. The Sixers had just allowed Jalen Brunson to score 47 points, Donte DiVincenzo to hit a couple of killer threes, the entire Knicks team to will themselves to every consequential loose ball in the fourth quarter. Embiid didn’t hit a single shot in that final period, his only point a lone free throw. He was clearly gassed, logging 44 minutes with Bell’s palsy and a surgically repaired knee. He did it because the Sixers had nobody else, and he was one of only two in the bunch to finish with a positive plus-minus. But he has said himself that he only cares about winning. Yet again, he presided over a loss.

Could he have answered the question in a way that kept the focus where it belonged? No doubt. Consider the way Nick Nurse responded when asked about the hostile nature of the crowd.

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