The Sixers lost to the Raptors on Thursday night and remain in fourth place with two games remaining. If they do finish in fourth place they will host…. the Raptors in the first round of the playoffs.

Keep in mind Toronto, an already-athletic and talented team, played without OG Anunoby and Fred VanVleet last night, while the Sixers didn’t have the services of Matisse Thybulle, who is ineligible to play in Canada because of COVID rules. You put all of it together you get a cocktail of concern, with a lot of discernible Sixers trepidation on social media.

Say what you will about Doc Rivers, or the bench, but James Harden has looked totally cooked over the past few games. “Cooked” sounds a little harsh because we never know what guys are dealing with injury wise, and we don’t know if they’re just coasting until the playoffs, but what we can say definitively is that if this Harden shows up in the postseason, they’re going out in the first round.

This is what he’s done over the past five games:

28 of his points over the last five games have come at the foul line, which has always been his thing, but he needs to shoot better than 4-15, 4-10, 3-12, etc. He’s still finding amazing passing lanes and setting up his teammates, but there’s gonna have to be a scoring contribution as well.


More than anything, it just seems like he can’t get by defenders anymore, which you see on some of his recent turnovers:

That turnover was the moment last night where you knew they weren’t going to win. It’s kind of a funky play, because Joel Embiid is standing in the dunker spot and Pascal Siakam easily comes over to help, but if you watch Precious Achiuwa, he’s with Harden the entire way. Harden made a living off of finding and beating 1v1 mismatches, but he’s really struggling to just simply get around guys that he used to smoke on a nightly basis.

Is James Harden declining, playing through injury, or is it both? It’s probably both. We knew he was going to be a facilitator when he came here, and he’s absolutely delivered on that, but they need at least something in the scoring department to be competitive. He doesn’t have to go for 25 a night, but if Tobias Harris is gonna be a max contract bystander, then you need more than 13 from Harden. You need more than 12. Shit, if Danny Green wasn’t unconscious from three in this game, they would have lost by double digits.

I think it was Neubeck who went on Twitter last night and said he would not want to be the person deciding whether or not to extend Harden. Agree! Holy shit. Could you imagine having to make that decision? The Sixers went for it by bringing Harden in, which was the right move and is always going to be the right move, because you can’t waste Embiid prime years, but now they have to circle back and make a difficult choice here.

Best case scenario, Harden wakes up in the playoffs and they go on a run. He shows that he was just coasting, managing the hamstring, and shows up big in round one. Worst case scenario, they are bounced early and the future ends up looking really murky. Not to go overt Negadelphia, but the vibes around this team are so bad right now. You can feel it. It’s not just the media making stuff up.

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