The Sixers’ bench went from zero to hero on Tuesday night.

They were outscored 32-0 in the first half, then cranked the amps up to 11, like Spinal Tap, en route to Shake Milton morphing into Michael Jordan and leading the team to victory.

At practice on Thursday afternoon, George Hill spoke about the second unit, and noted that Doc Rivers basically put his foot up their rear ends at halftime:

“That’s what good coaches do. They come in and sometimes you have to rip the guy’s ass to play well, and I think he ripped all our behinds at half. It wasn’t pretty, but sometimes hearing the truth is what you need. I think sometimes it hurts to hear the truth, but you need it, and I think our second unit responded well to that.”

Yeah, pretty much, and now the issue for Doc becomes figuring out the bench minutes in Game 3.

He used an all-bench lineup in Game 1, with poor results, then got away from that in Game 2, instead staggering Tobias Harris into the second unit for the second quarter and mixing and matching with starters. They did not run any group that did not have at least one of the starting five on the floor.

But with Shake Milton’s re-emergence, the question becomes one of shrinking the rotation or expanding it, since Doc was using 10-11 guys throughout the playoffs already. Do they cut it down to eight or nine, or continue to roll double digits?

“I don’t think a lot of coaches shorten it unless they have a team that they don’t trust,” said Rivers on Thursday. “There are coaches who do stay with their deeper rotations. Phoenix, I watched them (Wednesday) night, they went deep and they’ve done it every night, because they have enough guys they feel comfortable playing. I’ve had that before and I’ve also had eight-man and seven-man rotations, as well. We have a lot of guys on this team that can play. We have a plethora of guards who can play. They all can’t play every night, and so what we want do is keep them in rhythm with the push/pull principle, meaning if you play well, you keep playing. If not, there’s a guy pushing you, which will pull you along, as well. I think it’s been good for us.”

The thing about the Sixers is that the starting unit is going to boss anybody. If you go through five-man lineups this postseason, that have played at least 25 minutes on the floor together, the Sixers’ starting lineup is #1 in the league with a 38.8 net rating:

The Sixers are going to win their Embiid/Simmons/Harris/Curry/Green minutes. And that’s the rub, because Doc’s lineup decisions have as much to do with keeping an elite lineup together as it does with figuring out who comes off the bench. You have to stagger in the playoffs but you also want to squeeze the most juice out of the starting five, as constructed.

As long as they break even with the bench, or keep it close, they’ll be competitive in every single game.

Game 3 tonight. Let’s go.