In a battle of teams missing their best players, the 76ers’ “supporting cast” got the job done.

I put “supporting cast” in quotation marks because that group is comprised of All-Star Ben Simmons, four-time All-Star Jimmy Butler, and a future All-Star in Tobias Harris.

Nice win in Oklahoma City, and only deserving of a half-asterisk, in my mind. Sure, Paul George wasn’t available, but the Sixers played on the road without Joel Embiid and Boban Marjanovic and found a way to beat the Thunder for the first time since November of 2008. Furthermore, it was their first road win against OKC since they were actually the Seattle Supersonics. Philly had never won a game in Oklahoma City, ever.

You can thank Harris for that, because he was phenomenal on the night, his best performance in a Sixers uniform. Tobias finished with 32 points on 11-19 shooting while dropping in 5 of 7 three point attempts and going 5-5 from the foul line. He added 5 rebounds and 3 assists, plus a steal and a block while turning the ball over just once and committing only two personal fouls.

His biggest contribution was a borderline insane 4th quarter sequence where he made four consecutive clutch plays, and that’s where I’d like to pick it up, with 5:06 on the clock and OKC having clawed back to tie the game at 93. I want to start here because as we near the playoffs, the most important topic is going to be the end of the fourth quarter and how Brett Brown and his players execute in tight half-court offense situations.

Four Harris sequences more or less won the Sixers the game:

  1. a spot up corner three (Sixers 96/OKC 93)
  2. a brilliant rotation and block on Steven Adams, resulting in offensive basket interference (Sixers 96/OKC 93)
  3. a difficult bully ball floater over Dennis Schroder (Sixers 98/OKC 93)
  4. a pull-up three pointer (Sixers 101/OKC 93)

It was incredibly fun to watch in real time, an 8-0 Tobias Harris run that took us from 5:06 on the clock to 2:56 and gave the Sixers an eight point lead.

Take your pick of clips from those four plays. I’ll go with this one:

Hell of a feed from Ben right there.

But it got sloppy after that, really sloppy, and we’ll talk about it after the jump:

On the following possession, Steven Adams was able to back down Mike Scott to earn a foul, but missed both free throws. At this point, Brett Brown wanted to go small and opted for Scott over Jonah Bolden, who started the game and played 20 minutes.

Oklahoma City came down the floor missed another three, then the Sixers got a dunk on the other end to extend the lead to 10 at the 1:52 mark.

Game over, right?

Nope. It got pretty hairy.

After a Jerami Grant three, Brett Brown called a Butler/Redick pick and roll, leading to missed turnaround shot in the paint and bad foul from Ben Simmons on the rebound attempt, killing the clock at 1:27. Russell Westbrook hit both foul shots to cut the lead to five.

On the next possession, another 32 pick and roll with Butler and Redick, this time with Jimmy leaving his feet and turning the ball over when trying to kick the ball out to the perimeter. Scrambling to close out, Harris couldn’t contain Terrence Ferguson, who went right by him for the easy bucket. Three-point game, timeout Sixers.

Next trip up the floor – 35 pick and roll? Nope. Mike Scott would actually slip the screen and find himself wide-open on the perimeter for the biggest shot he’s hit since becoming a Sixer.

Look at Westbrook’s face as this shot goes up. He sees the blown perimeter switch:

Massive three-pointer to push the lead back to six.

But another couple of brain farts made the game interesting.

First, the Sixers had another defensive breakdown, with another closeout that resulted in Markieff Morris going right around his defender, but no help at the rim.

That resulted in this response from defensive assistant Billy Lange on the Sixers bench:

I’ve seen a lot of that from Lange in recent weeks, a lot of demonstrative bench action as the Sixers continue to have late-game break downs.

The ensuing trip down the floor was one of the more talked about plays of the night, and it was the turnover where Ben Simmons tried to find JJ Redick, but coughed it up instead.

I think a lot of people felt like he had no interest in being fouled and taking the free throws at this point, but the Sixers actually were not in the bonus, so OKC had a foul to give. Instead, he gave the ball away, Jerami Grant got on the loose ball, and the Thunder called a timeout to regain possession.

OKC then got what I thought was sort of a cheap foul on their next trip down the floor, with Westbrook, totally out of control, just running right at Harris and forcing contact. I thought Westbrook kind of chopped at him with his left elbow, but Tobias does have his right arm down low here, which I guess was enough for the ref to blow the whistle –

I kind of scoffed at that live, because I’m not really sure what you can do when Westbrook is just coming at you full steam, not totally in control of his body.

Anyway, Westbrook hit both free throws to cut the lead to two. The Sixers went right back to the Butler/Redick pick and roll, which resulted in the missed jumper and humongous offensive rebound from Simmons, which was then knocked out his hands with 3.3 seconds on the clock:

Huge play. Massive.

On the first inbound, Mike Scott took the extra OKC foul to put the Sixers in the bonus. Then, on the second, Simmons got the ball to Redick, who was fouled, hit both free throws, and iced the game.

But holy cow was there a lot going on down the stretch.

Just to recap, after the 8-0 Tobias Harris run, this happened:

  • two blown defensive sequences
  • two turnovers
  • a Mike Scott clutch three-pointer
  • Butler unable to hit on any shots coming off that pick and roll
  • Simmons redeeming himself with a huge offensive board

I think most of those are individual concerns. Jimmy couldn’t hit anything off his late game pick and rolls both last night and Tuesday night in New Orleans. The pair of turnovers were killers. The defensive whiffs let OKC back into the game way too easily. If we’re being honest, it was the two new guys, Harris and Scott, that dragged the Sixers to the finish line.

It’s a bit ironic, because a lot of people were calling for more pick and roll from Brett Brown, and he’s doing just that, but the results are not great with Butler handling the ball in the late fourth quarter. He went multiple times to Jimmy in the past two games, at least five pick and rolls I counted that resulted in three missed shots, a turnover, and a blocked shot.

If you want to gripe about Brett regarding the last minutes, I think the one legitimate criticism is this – why not just put Harris in those pick and rolls? Stay with the hot hand. He was your best player on the floor last night, and I’d keep feeding him until he misses. That’s a pretty common theme throughout sport in general. It’s not just a basketball thing. If somebody is feeling it, keep giving it to them. In hindsight, I would have put the ball in Tobias’ hands. That was my only head-scratcher with Brett last night, talking specifically about the final five minutes.

Otherwise, nice win, great performance from Harris. Jimmy almost had a triple-double before those final five minutes hit. Ben went for 11, 13, and 11, and they got enough quality minutes from Bolden while Amir Johnson was less of a liability than he was last Saturday.

There’s work to do moving forward, but they’re 3-1 out of the All-Star break without Joel Embiiid, and I think anybody in their right mind has to be happy with that.