Posts for @sixers

The Toronto Raptors are who we thought they were. They’re a great team but they’re very beatable. That’s why the Sixers took the damn floor!

Now, if you wanna crown ’em, then crown their asses! But the Sixers let ’em off the hook. And now we’re headed to Toronto for game five.

Kinda hard to win when three of your five starters don’t have good offensive games, yeah? Ben Simmons, Tobias Harris, and Joel Embiid finished a combined 14-40 from the floor (35%) while Harris alone was 2-13 from three (15.4%). They just could not find any consistent offense outside of Jimmy Butler and JJ Redick, who led the Sixers with 29 and 19 points, respectively.

The offensive struggles were exemplified by a fourth quarter in which the Sixers went about seven minutes without a basket, compounded especially by the ailing Joel Embiid’s poor individual play. It was a “grind it out” affair, as Nick Nurse said post game, and the Raptors simply grinded out more meaningful possessions on both ends of the floor to even the series at 2-2.

That’s the most simple explanation; Toronto just made more plays on a night where the Sixers had a great opportunity to go up 3-1 in this series. Instead, Brett Brown’s team shot 40.2% from the floor, 31.6% from three, and 72% from the foul line while losing in almost every auxiliary category, from second chance points (15-13) to fast break points (17-10) and points in the paint (38-34).

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That was impressive.

I mean, holy mackerel. When Joel Embiid hit that windmill dunk in the 4th quarter I thought the roof was gonna fly off the Wells Fargo Center and land next to the Italian restaurant in the Navy Yard. I think that dunk reverberated throughout the building with such force that even the rat living in the ceiling heard it and scurried to a new location.

What a night for your team, your town, your 76ers, who pulled their starters around the five minute mark of the 4th quarter after staving off a Toronto run and building an insurmountable 20-point lead. They passed the ball well, they shot the ball well, they limited their turnovers, and they cranked the defense all the way up to 11, like a Spinal Tap guitar amplifier.

They won in pretty much every phase of this game, which Toronto head coach Nick Nurse admitted to the gathered scribes afterward:

“I think we got outplayed in just about every area we could get outplayed. In overall physicality, energy, cutting, rebounding, passing, all that kind of stuff. We got thoroughly outplayed and it’s been a while, it’s been a while since you’ve seen this team play this way.”

Yep. The Sixers made the Raptors look rather pedestrian on Thursday night, and outside of a 3rd quarter where Kawhi Leonard looked like Michael Jordan reincarnate, it was a rather comfortable ride from start to finish.

Namely, Brett Brown’s team performed extremely well in the following areas:

• 52 points in the paint (+14 from game two)
• 13 turnovers resulting in only 12 Toronto points (down from 20 and 24 respectively in game two)
• 13 fast break points
• 9 offensive rebounds leading to 15 second chance points
• 20-23 free throw mark (87%)
• 29 assists on 43 made shots
• 10-23 from three (43.5%)
• 43-84 from the floor (51.2%)

They were superb across the board and looked like a juggernaut on both ends of the floor.

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Alright, I’m back. Spent the week getting adjusted to life with a newborn, and as such, I’m writing this at five in the morning on a Sunday as my daughter poops in her diaper.

That’s what the Sixers put in last night – a poopy performance, but not something that can’t be fixed. You can change the diaper, wash your hands, get some sleep, then come back on Monday night and give it another shot.

In a way, that game felt similar to game one against Brooklyn, with the Philly offense struggling to create good looks while the opponent seemed to be hitting every single shot they took. Toronto runs were often book-ended with a bad Sixers turnover or poor mental decision, and while Brett Brown’s team did string together some nice possessions themselves, it just felt like they had to work infinitely harder for everything they got.

That’s really the game in a nutshell. Toronto’s starting unit outplayed the Sixers’ starting unit. Tobias Harris, Jimmy Butler, and Joel Embiid combined to shoot 15-47 from the floor (31.9%) while Kawhi Leonard and Pascal Siakam went 28-38 (73.6%).

I guess the natural thing is to sit here and say, “surely those two can’t play like that again… right?” 

Probably.

Kawhi hit 16 of 23 shots last night (69.6%) and put up these shooting marks in the Orlando series:

• game one: 56% (10-18)
• game two: 68% (15-22)
• game three: 26% (5-19)
• game four: 60% (12-20)
• game five: 72% (8-11)

His round one average was 57%, so he’ll drop off from super elite status to just really damn good… I think.

Siakam shot 53% in round one and I highly doubt he shoots 80% again in this series, but everything for those two guys was going down last night. Look at this combined Kawhi/Siakam shooting chart on the left, compared to Joel, Tobias, and Jimmy:

That pretty much tells the story.

I could end the article right there, but then it wouldn’t be much of an article would it?

More after the jump:

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