What the Hell Was That? - Observations from Nets 129, Sixers 100
Well, that was a disgrace.
The goal of Thursday night was to boo the ever-living shit out of Ben Simmons, and then watch a competitive, high-level basketball game with the guys actually available to play on the floor. Instead, the Sixers got their pants pulled down on national television while Simmons, dressed like a Boston Bruin and sitting on the bench, got the last laugh. He still finished with 0 points, 0 rebounds, and 0 assists, but the raucous crowd that was supposed to jeer him into oblivion went tame and walked out of the building with eight minutes remaining in the fourth quarter.
Pitiful. Abysmal. Pathetic!
What a turd of a performance that was. They got punched in the face and never recovered. The offense was stagnant, the defense was Swiss cheese-like, James Harden couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn from two feet away, and the Nets were locked the fuck in. They wanted it. Kevin Durant is a stone cold killer and weirdo Kyrie was on his game.
Also, Doc Rivers got cooked by his son-in-law while failing to exploit him on the other side of the ball. The moment looked too big for Tyrese Maxey, and Tobias Harris once again looked like a $15 million player on a max contract.
Other than that, great performance!
“Just missed shots,” Harden said after the shitty loss. “I think I just missed shots. There’s no excuses. I’ve gotta be better individually. Some turnovers were just careless. Individually, I’ve gotta be better. As a team, we watch film to see where can we be better. And we just try to continue to improve. This is only our sixth game together as a unit. I’m still trying to figure things out. But, tonight was good for us, we got our ass kicked. Since I’ve been here, everything has been sweet, and we’ve been winning games. Tonight was good for us, and we get an opportunity to come down to reality, watch film and just continue to get better. Make sure we hit our right strides.”
Brooklyn did a really nice job defending Harden, getting up in his grill with double teams without fouling. They really just played him physically on the perimeter while staying disciplined, and the result was a 3-17 Harden night with four turnovers and a -30, if you care about +/- stats. Harden wasn’t getting foul calls and wasn’t getting by anybody either, so he was completely ineffective. The funny thing is that Brooklyn has a lot of subpar individual defenders, and the Sixers couldn’t even work a 1v1 mismatch against any of those guys throughout the entire night.
“They doubled, they trapped, but teams have been doing that,” Rivers said. “They just did it. I’m telling you, they were so much more physical. That was the only thing. I thought we succumbed to their physicality. When you see guys running through dribble handoffs, that’s a problem. That should never happen. And, I’m gonna say nine times that happened tonight. So, it’s something that we’ll look at the film and we’ll fix.”
Harden couldn’t hit anything last night. Couldn’t hit open threes, couldn’t get to the rim, etc:
— Kevin Kinkead (@Kevin_Kinkead) March 11, 2022
“He relies a lot on the free-throw line, so getting to the rim and getting to the free-throw line puts him in rhythm and we didn’t (allow) that,” Durant said. “Two free throws tonight for him, 3-17, trying to get to the rim, but I think we were all there swarming and he had a few threes, open threes, but when he gets to the rim, gets downhill, gets to the free-throw line that’s when he’s tough to stop. And we eliminated a lot of that stuff, 3-17, 11 points, you know, that’s a great formula for us to win.”
On the other end, the Sixers were totally lost defensively, just scattered and scrambling, leaving their feet, blitzing Durant 29 feet from the basket, ball watching, and all of that.
“I thought we were slow on everything,” Rivers added. “I thought our traps were awful, honestly. Like, you’re gonna trap (and) I didn’t think that had any physicality either. I thought they were more physical offensively with the ball versus any trap we had than we were defensively. I just thought they were the superior, physical team tonight, and it’s one night.”
You saw a lot of tweets like these last night from the fake news national media:
James Harden has done jackshit so far — this really does feel like a playoff game!
— Bill Simmons (@BillSimmons) March 11, 2022
We’ll worry about the playoffs when the time comes, though it’s not like any Sixers fan should trust Doc Rivers with that. National media can’t wait to put the cart in front of the horse, and we won’t go overboard with one regular season loss, but you could tell that KD and Kyrie REALLY wanted this one, and Harden looked like he was going through the motions out there. You need to rise to the occasion for a big game like this. Although as Coggin and others will point out, the Sixers always seem to play like shit in these big moments, or when there’s a big bell ringer like Triple H, or whatever. In hindsight, Nets moneyline was free cash last night. The Sixers came up very small in the moment and yes, it did feel like the Atlanta playoff series. It had Hawks loss vibes to it. The air was stale and the feeling was tense, even on television.
“I just think we’ve gotta figure out just our offensive balance of getting out and playing and being free out there,” Tobias Harris admitted. “I think, obviously, we’ve had better defensive nights, which has allowed us to get out in transition and kind of not have the defense set up. And, just kind of have an open court and make passes and play free out there. Tonight, that was a little tough for us. We’ve just got to figure out that balance and figure out ways that, when you’re in the half-court, when they’re loading up and double teaming, that we can create easier shots and more shots in the flow of the course of the game to allow us to have a rhythm and a flow out there.”
Take this game and put it in the bagster. What a disgrace. How deflating. You let Ben Simmons come back to Philly and then played so poorly that the crowd was dead in the third quarter. Shameful. I hope Anthony “The Cuz” Gargano lets the Sixers have it today. They deserve it.