At one point last night it looked like we might have to get somebody in the crowd to suit up for the Houston Rockets. They only had seven players to begin with, then lost one through injury, leaving them with a grand total of six to finish out the game.

Then they went on to lose by 20 points.

It’s been that kind of year in the National Basketball Association, with myriad players missing, injured, or in the COVID protocol. Half the teams are now tanking as we mercifully approach the summer.

But if you’re the 76ers, you can only play who is in front of you, even if that team puts up the resistance of a wet paper bag stuck in an Oregon Avenue storm drain. And in this case, Doc Rivers’ team took care of business, bumping their magic number to four as they seek the #1 seed in the Eastern Conference for the first time in 20 years. They are one step closer, but not to the edge, as Linkin Park once sang. They are one step closer to home court in the playoffs.

If they do go ahead and claim the #1 seed, you can point to their performances in games like these, where they go on the road, face a lesser team, but go out and handle their business without slipping up.

“Yeah it’s important,” said Doc Rivers. “If you want one of the top seeds, you really have to do this. I can think of some games we dropped as well. But I also look at some games that maybe we shouldn’t have won, but came back and won, so it probably all washes out at the end of the day. I’ve found that the end of the season, with COVID involved, to be pretty difficult for everybody.”

I think I have to disagree with Doc about the “wash” thing. If you look through their schedule, they are 20-14 on the road, and I only found five road losses that I would personally consider “bad” road losses, which are:

  • Cleveland
  • Memphis
  • Detroit
  • Toronto
  • New Orleans

Otherwise, they were losing on the road to teams like Milwaukee (2x), LA Clippers, Denver, Phoenix, and Utah. They had pretty much taken care of business otherwise.

These are the portions of the schedule where I think they stepped it up and created this separation from Brooklyn and Milwaukee were:

  1. the three-game road sweep of Minnesota, Indy, and Charlotte
  2. knocking off Washington and Chicago in a road back-to-back
  3. beating San Antonio and Chicago in another road back-to-back (and then Houston last night to make it three in a row)
  4. winning four games on that six-game road trip
  5. winning three of four on the mid-April road trip

If you add in home losses, maybe it does turn out to be a wash, but I think Doc is downplaying the success this team had on the road this year. They are one of just four teams with 20 road wins and the only team in the East to reach that mark.

Anyway, just a couple nuggets on a game that isn’t worth diving into.

Doc on the Sixers playing “against themselves” and trying to round into form heading into the playoffs:

“We did okay. We shot 53% with 135 points. I didn’t think defensively we were that great. But they had so many small lineups and we decided to just stay traditional more for the work on it. Overall I’ll take the win. Last year we were dying for road wins and we just won three in a row, so we’ll take ’em.”

It’s interesting to hear Doc talk about last season, considering he wasn’t here. But I think that speaks to his understanding of getting to know his squad and fixing problems that he inherited.

Rivers:

“I’m part of the team now, so that was one of the things we talked about, was that we have to win on the road. We’re doing it and we gotta keep doing it.”

A couple of quotes from Joel Embiid, first on only playing 25 minutes:

“I think it’s good and it’s not, because I want to play as much as I can just to make sure I’m ready to handle a playoff load. When we get there I’m going to have to play 36-38 minutes per game, so I just want to make sure I’m ready. When we have games like this, or the last few, where I haven’t played (full minutes), I gotta get back and do my own conditioning. But like I said, it’s great and it’s also something that’s not good.”

On whether he feels more fresh going into the playoffs this year:

“It’s good and bad. You don’t get the full conditioning you need for the playoff run. I’m not going to be playing 25 minutes. Hopefully we can get a couple of blowouts, but that’s hard to do in the playoffs. But you want to go into the playoffs, I think, kind of upping your load. You have to play more minutes. That’s the way I see it, just to make sure you’re used to it before you get there. But I’m glad we’re winning and taking care of business. It’s up to me, on our off days, to get on the court and play basketball and do whatever is necessary (to be ready).”

It’s a great problem to have. Three years ago, Joel was going into his first playoff series, two games late, with a mask and a broken orbital bone. And two years ago, he had to shoulder a monster load, with only Greg Monroe able to spell him off the bench. The situation is 10,000 times more tenable this season, and they’ve thus far been managing it about as well as they can.

The magic number is four. Four wins and they lock up the #1 seed.