Rhetorical question:

If you’re on the second night of a back-to-back, and you blow a 19-point lead in a game you weren’t supposed to win, then do you feel bad about losing in overtime?

That was the situation on Wednesday night, with the Sixers looking more like the 1996 Chicago Bulls in a first half where they limited the Milwaukee Bucks to 31 points on 5% three-point shooting. It looked like they were going to blow them out of the water and cost bettors a lot of money in the process.

But in the second half it was the Sixers who couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn, scoring just 19 points in a fourth quarter that began with 2-15 shooting as they started to look sluggish on both ends of the floor. Only a series of clutch three pointers got them into overtime, where they ultimately just couldn’t keep up with Giannis Antetokounmpo as Ben Simmons played with five fouls.

“I can’t wait to watch the game film, but my eyes tell me that we just missed a lot of open shots,” Doc Rivers said. “Great shots. Tobias (Harris) had great shots. Furk (Furkan Korkmaz) had great shots. I thought the effect of (Tuesday night’s) game played a role and I thought their defense was good. It was another back-to-back game of 1989 basketball, which is physical and tough. I was surprised we only went to the foul line eight times in the game, and I thought in the first half we were driving every bit as much as them. One of those trips (to the line) was three free throws from Furk, and the other was a tech for Seth. Other than that, we had four free throws. That either tells me we’re not driving enough, and I don’t think we got to the paint enough, but I thought we should have gone to the line a little bit more.”

That was a big story, and it’s always going to be a big story without Joel Embiid, because when he’s in the lineup the Sixers are the NBA’s #1 team at getting to the foul line. And when he’s not out there, you miss out on those cheap and easy points that double as methods of slowing the game down and junking it up and breaking the other team’s rhythm. That would have really helped in the second half, and if Simmons was able to do more around the rim, maybe he would have gotten to the line, but he shot zero free throws.

To me, it was the same story as the Knicks game, but opposite results. Whereas they executed smartly down the stretch on Tuesday night, they just looked tired on Wednesday, and you could see it as they tried to close the game, missing shots and coughing up possession.

Among the things they screwed up late in the fourth quarter:

  • a moving screen for an offensive foul
  • a turnover coming out of a timeout
  • gave up an easy bucket at rim
  • didn’t close out Milwaukee three point shooters
  • burned too much clock before fouling at the end

They needed a trio of late three pointers to force overtime, and benefited from Khris Middleton throwing a goofy lob that resulted in a turnover. Both teams had some wacky possessions that just made it feel like this game was drunk, like a large group of assholes walking down Spring Garden Street during the Erin Express.

And then in the overtime period, some things I noticed:

  • that early Simmons turnover
  • the sequence where they had chance to go in front with three-straight threes, created from offensive rebounds, but missed all of them
  • settling for a Dwight Howard midrange jumper, down five points

We just didn’t see a lot of Harris down the stretch, which was odd, considering how heavily he featured in clutch time against New York. There were a couple of Howard jump shots, which Rivers said he didn’t like, while noting that Korkmaz and Harris and other shooters were front-rimming a lot of their looks.

He did say that the final play of regulation gave the option of going to either player, and here it is again:

Good call. Brett Brown did something very similar to this when Korkmaz hit the three-pointer to win in Portland last year. Furkan is option one on that hard corner run, and then if it’s not open, Simmons goes to screen for Harris instead, to peel him over from the weak side.

“He’s always been a big shot,” Rivers said. “I know he made a couple last year. He made one in Portland. The option was for Furk or Tobias on that, and we got it.”

“I feel weird because that was an important shot, but at the end of the day we lost the game,” Korkmaz added. “We couldn’t really celebrate it. There was nothing to celebrate at the end of the game. That’s the worst part about it overall. Coming off a back-to-back, the small mistakes that we made caused us to lose the game.”

Guarding Giannis

I know everybody is frustrated with Simmons’ offensive game, but when he was guarding Giannis last night, the Sixers did well. Giannis really did not take off until the second half and overtime, and then did a couple of corny things, like sitting down on the Sixers’ logo and then having somebody bring him a cheesesteak during the post game presser.

“Listen, the times Ben was on him, we couldn’t have guarded that any better,” Rivers said. “I thought they did a pretty good job of getting Ben to switch off of Giannis, and I thought some of that was fatigue on Ben’s part. Some of (the possessions) he didn’t have to switch and we didn’t want him to. But you could see the toll of the previous night’s game in that fourth quarter.”

“I don’t leave this game discouraged. Let me put it that way.”

The matchup data checks out. Ben did really well on Giannis, limiting him to 2-8 shooting while guarding him:

Four turnovers, also.

It’s just hard for me to look at that defensive work and have any issues with what Ben did offensively. Do we expect more out of him there? Yes. But when he’s guarding an MVP and doing an admirable job with it, I can’t be disappointed with anything from his overall performance. Can’t do it.

Other notes

  • Simmons hit another three pointer at the final buzzer. The stroke looked smooth and automatic. It’s just puzzling why we don’t see more of it.
  • Curry had to leave the game with a sprained ankle, but Doc Rivers didn’t think it was severe.
  • Good offensive game for Villanova’s Donte DiVincenzo, but there were a couple of defensive sequences where I was wondering what the hell he was doing.
  • Not sure how Milwaukee only committed 11 personal fouls last night. Number seems low.
  • After my Matisse Thybulle column from Monday, he went 0-3 in this game. The curse of the commentator, sort of.
  • With a healthy Embiid, Sixers fans shouldn’t be super worried about the Bucks, but they’re adding P.J. Tucker and Rodions Kurucs and could pull ahead in the standings while Joel is out. Losing home court to them might be rough.