It’s a dreary day in the city of Philadelphia. Today is a Monday morning, with full cloud cover and of course the Sixers lost Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Semifinals last night. The worst part is, we should have seen this coming all along. The signs were there and we chose to ignore them.
I was as shocked as anyone! The Sixers were the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference. They had the MVP runner-up on the team in Joel Embiid. They had the Defensive Player of the Year runner-up in Ben Simmons. And how can you forget that Matisse Thybulle joined Simmons and Embiid in securing three of the 10 All-NBA Defensive team roster spots this year. This team was built to win an NBA Championship.
Except they weren’t. All the accolades and the top seed blinded us from the fact that this team was not going to win it all. The criticisms coming out of last night were principally Ben Simmons won’t/can’t shoot, Doc Rivers won’t/can’t make adjustments, and Kevin freaking Huerter lit up the second best defense in the NBA. The signs were there all along. These criticisms were happening all year.
A number of the Sixers’ flaws were magnified on the biggest stage in Game 7. Flaws that should have been more evident from the start.
Simmons not shooting the ball has been a critique since he was drafted by the 76ers in 2016. It became more of a problem in these playoffs when his historically poor free throw shooting caused him to stop attacking the basket altogether. His biggest offensive strength was his fast break speed and aggressiveness, but that was completely eliminated. However, this problem is not new. What was new was the coaches enabling him. Doc refused to acknowledge that Simmons needed to shoot more or be more offensively aggressive and this allowed him to continue not improving.
That leads me to my second point: Doc Rivers. I can give you the stats about how he has blown three 3-1 playoff series leads and no other NBA coach in history has blown more than one. Or that he has blow six series after leading 3-2, another coaching record that he should not be proud of. Or even worse that he has blown four games with 15+ point leads in just the last two seasons! If you want to take a second to reread those stats so they hurt more, please do. However, Doc’s biggest flaw, which is present in him being on the wrong side of all those comebacks, is that he refuses to make adjustments.
The key adjustment that needed to be made was shortening the bench and extending the starters’ minutes in the postseason. Everyone talked about the dumb all bench rotations all year, I even wrote an article about it a week before the playoffs. We couldn’t fathom that Doc would play more than eight or nine guys or that he would have all the starters on the bench at the same time in the NBA Playoffs. This isn’t Summer League. Did any other team do this? No. In fact Brooklyn had Kevin Durant play the entire game. Why? Because he is the best player on the team and their backs were against the wall. Yet, Doc chose to stick to his not-so-tried-and-true strategy that again we saw all year and for some reason expected to change in the playoffs.
Lastly, I want to touch on Kevin Huerter. Usually a bench player for the Hawks, Huerter was thrust into the starting lineup after De’Andre Hunter had season ending knee surgery and Solomon Hill underperformed. How could a bench player who averages 11 points per game in his young career go off for 27 in a Game 7 against the second-best defensive team in the league. Answer — Seth Curry. This shouldn’t have been a surprise again, Curry was a defensive liability all year and frequently got torched by opposing guards. Combine that with Huerter’s five-inch height advantage, and this was going to happen. When Curry came in with six minutes left in the fourth quarter and immediately knocked down a 3, I said aloud “Why was Curry on the bench for the first six minutes?” Then Huerter came the other way and scored on back to back possessions against Curry and my question was answered.
Look, I’m not here to say I saw this all along or blame any fan who actually thought this team could win the NBA Championship, because I genuinely thought they could. When the playoffs started I was the most excited I have ever been watching the Sixers; this was the most potential they’ve had in my life. What I am here to say is we all should have seen this coming. This team was not the one to bring the long awaited the Larry O’Brien trophy back to Philly. Simmons’ shooting woes, Doc’s lack of adjustments and Curry’s lack of defensive skill have been around all season, and honestly even longer than that.
This Philadelphia 76ers team was like the girlfriend that showed some red flags early on in the relationship yet you choose to ignore them because she was so perfect. The issues have been there all along and we actively chose to ignore them. And just like that relationship when it ends, this Sixers playoff elimination will hurt for awhile. The post mortem though should be made just a little easier knowing she wasn’t the one and this team wasn’t the one. As we go into the offseason the future is full of possibilities so don’t ruminate over something that was never the real thing.