Sixers

20 Thoughts as the Sixers Finish 51-31, Host Toronto in First Round of Playoffs

By Kevin Kinkead

Published: Apr 11th, 2022 · 10:13 AM EDT

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The Sixers sat Joel Embiid and James Harden on Sunday night and watched the backups take care of the Detroit Pistons in the fourth quarter. Career high for BBall Paul, who finally got some decent run, only for Doc Rivers to snipe at Derek Bodner when asked why Reed didn’t play more in the regular season.

If that lede sounds Negadelphia, then good, because that was the point. We should get behind this team in the postseason, but the Paul Reed thing is the perfect microcosm of annoyance, a young guy sitting on the bench while the Sixers trotted out DeAndre Jordan and Paul Millsap for the last two months of the season without really truly getting a feel for what they have behind Joel Embiid in the aftermath of the Andre Drummond trade. You hope Doc Rivers has an idea of what he wants to do with the bench going into the playoffs this time around, because last year he didn’t have a clue and rolled 10 guys in the second round.

That said, here are 20 thoughts as we head into the postseason:

1. There’s always going to be a Wikipedia asterisk on the 4 seed because the Sixers finished in a three-way tie for second place. Tiebreakers were the difference here. Ideally, you probably wanted that 3/6 series with Chicago to open the playoffs, but if you get by Toronto you’re likely playing Miami in the second round, which might be preferable to Boston and Milwaukee. Keyword “might.”
2. It feels like there’s very little juice for this team right now. The response after last week’s Toronto loss was significant. Fans are really wary of the playoffs, especially after the way things ended last season. You sense the uneasiness, with James Harden struggling down the stretch and the Matisse Thybulle COVID situation casting a dumb cloud over the series.
3. The Sixers went 1-3 against Toronto this season. Bunch of close games, and most played without Fred VanVleet and OG Anunoby. Nick Nurse is a great coach and the Raptors are long and defend well. It’s not going to be an easy series.
4. Danny Green really needs to turn back the clock and have himself a series. I think people forget he was injured last year and didn’t even play beyond the first quarter of Game 3 in the Hawks series. Without Thybulle in Canada, he’s next man up.
5. Joel Embiid winning the scoring title is awesome. First Sixer to do it since Iverson. First center to do it since Shaq, which was more than 20 years ago. A foreign-born player winning the scoring title does a ton for the game overseas, especially in his native Cameroon and the entirety of Africa.
6. Embiid deserves immense credit for carrying this team, not just during the fuckin’ fugazi Ben Simmons hold out, but through March and into April as well. And the best part of all is that he’s healthy. It wasn’t long ago that Brett Brown was trying to “land that plane,” so to speak, and just deliver a healthy Embiid to the postseason. It always seemed like a monumental task.
7. Hopefully Harden is just coasting and/or managing his hammy, because he’s looked beyond cooked the last five games or so.
8. Any confidence in Doc Rivers going into the postseason? I don’t have much. We’re looking at a situation where if he can get by Nurse, then Erik Spoelstra might be up next. Advantage Toronto and Miami.
9. I’ll try to give Doc credit in an effort to be fair and balanced. He and the coaching staff deserve a ton of credit for turning Tyrese Maxey into the player he is. Yeah, Tyrese is a great kid and hard worker and wanted it as much as anybody, but group effort here to turn the corner and make him a legit stud.
10. Really worried about the Sixers in transition in the playoffs. I know games tend to slow down in the postseason, but they’re 17th in fast break points per game and 29th in fast break points allowed (15 per game). They are a slow and plodding team and the hope here is they can negate this weakness with strong half court/late game possessions, which is what it comes down to in the fourth quarter. At least with Harden in the fold they have a legitimate director and floor general, even if they’re just running basic iso/PNR type of looks and hunting mismatches.
11. They finished third in the NBA with 23.8 free throws per game and will need all of that and more in the postseason. They are the #1 FT team in the league, at 82.1%.
12. The Embiid vs. Jokic argument makes me wanna stick needles in my eyeballs. Both guys are amazing. Whoever wins it will deserve it. I give the edge to Embiid because his team finished higher and he carried them without Simmons for most of the season. Nuance matters more than VORP or DBPM+/-TUVWXYZ or whatever Nuggets fans are using to craft their takes. I do think it’s funny that two bigs are battling for MVP again in a guard-dominated modern NBA.
13. I think Phoenix rolls right into the Western Conference finals with little trouble and they beat Golden State in six. I love this Memphis team but they just don’t have the necessary playoff experience.
14. For what it’s worth, former Brett Brown assistants are coaching the #1 seed in the west and #3 seed in the east. (although Monty was a head coach before joining Brett in Philly)
15. Totally forgot about Tobias Harris, but they have to move off his salary this summer.
16. Having Kate Scott and Alaa Abdelnaby travel in the second half of the season made a big difference in broadcast quality. Nobody should ever have to call a game off a monitor.
17. Minor gripe here, but was Alaa doing a lot more talking about the officiating this season? Maybe it was just Embiid+Harden and a lot of foul drawing creating more situations where disputed calls became something he had to analyze on the broadcast. In his defense, it’s probably annoying to have to talk about that all the time.
18. Can’t complain about Daryl Morey this year. He went out and did the Harden trade and kept the young guys, which fans universally agreed was a good move at the time. Can’t waste a prime Embiid season, and he knew it. I think the only glaring thing is not getting a legit backup big at the deadline or in the buyout market, so let’s hope it doesn’t bite them in the ass.
19. The fans were great. I only went to one game this year as media because I was home with my newborn through my wife’s maternity leave, but during the mask mandate and after the place was mostly rocking the vibes were good. You could really tell on TV.
20. I can’t think of a 20th takeaway, but leaving the post at 19 would have been really weird, so let’s just call it 20 and hit the “publish” button.

That’s about it for now. Go Sixers! Rah rah!