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About eight minutes into the end of the third quarter on Wednesday night, Philadelphia 76ers goaltender Josh Richardson attempted to throw an entry pass to teammate Joel Embiid, who had established a post position in the middle of the lane.
The pass was horrible. Richardson jumped in to throw it, and it was curly and wide to the right. Embiid desperately waved the ball as Boston Celtics center Daniel Theis easily stole it. About five seconds later, Embiid waved again, this time to Marcus Smart as the Celtics guard got a basket and a foul.
From that point on, the 76ers pretty much put the white flag on Game 2 of this series – and possibly their season, too – falling 128-101 to Boston. Their energy level, especially Embiid’s, crashed as the Celtics galloped across the ground. At the time of this turnover, it was a 10 point game. By the end of the third, it was up to 23 points.
Maybe there are more token moments to use to define this 76ers campaign, but this one is just as good as any. The table was set, there were good intentions, there were good people involved, and it was still a failure.
They are an expensive team with a bold strategy from an aggressive front office and a group of players who thought they were on the verge of going superstard. Embiid, for example, said at the start of the season that he plans to win the title of best player and defensive player of the year.
Now they’re a 6-seeded 0-2 with a payroll of $ 150 million for next season, and everyone involved knows there will likely be changes upstream and downstream. Maybe they get a win or even pull out two wins against the Celtics – although that’s unlikely if Jayson Tatum continues to play as a past MVP candidate – but that almost certainly won’t change the reality.
It’s obvious to see on the 76ers’ faces and in their body language. Like many teams before them over the decades and probably many to come, they are going through the moves of the end of the dreaded season of disappointment.
This was prolonged by the pandemic and gave an injection of hope when the delay allowed the Sixers to (briefly) restore Ben Simmons to good health. But it also took away their greatest strength, their 29-2 home record, which they won’t have at the end of Game 3.
They had hope for Game 2 because they believed unforced errors had cost them Game 1, and Boston had lost Gordon Hayward for the series. Philadelphia had Embiid, the perfect weapon against the undersized Boston who had “facing the playoffs,” according to coach Brett Brown. By the end of Game 2, it was a look from a thousand yards. Embiid had 34 points and 10 rebounds, which sounds awesome outside of the context of how Game 2 actually played out.
Just another disappointment in a season full of them. Brown has tried everything in his coach bag with this group. It just doesn’t work. And obviously, it’s not because he’s not a good coach or because the players have serious issues with each other; it’s because that team’s player collection right now just isn’t working.
Simmons clocked a famous 3-point in a 47-point victory over the Cleveland Cavaliers on Dec. 7, the second of his career. After the game, a jovial brunette tried to capture the moment.
“That’s what I want, and you can pass it on to his agent, family and friends. I want a 3-point-per-game minimum shot,” Brown said of Simmons. “I’m okay with everything that’s open. But I’m interested in the 3-point shot.”
Simmons has played 36 more games for the 76ers this season and has tried three more 3-point games. Does that make Simmons petulant or brittle brown? No. It’s just a circumstance that doesn’t fit, like so many others on this team.
As the end approaches, Brown always tries to relay the right messages and cajole his players to be the best they can be.
“You make sure the group understands that there is enough character and talent in the room to come together,” he said after Game 2. “If the planet was normal, you would go back to Philadelphia. “
This is not normal.
The Celtics were in a similar position a year ago, as they limped through a humiliating second-round playoff loss to the Milwaukee Bucks in a similar fashion. It was clear that Kyrie Irving, once believed to be the bounty addition that would lift Boston to the title contention, was out of it. It turned out that Al Horford would soon be leaving Boston too. Now in Philadelphia, the centerpiece of last summer’s bet to play huge in an increasingly smaller league, Horford has to wonder if there is some sort of dark cloud following him.
The 2012-13 Los Angeles Lakers, who traded for Dwight Howard and Steve Nash to add to Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol, ended with a 45-game winning season and a first-round outing. Each season has a team or two with this designation, the only difference usually being the profile of disappointment.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the bubble, Jimmy Butler makes the Miami Heat believe that they not only have a chance to steal the Eastern Conference this year, but that they have huge acquisition plans for the rest of the contract. four years of Butler. Pat Riley and Erik Spoelstra love Butler’s mindset and the way he led the Heat to become a group of overachievers.
In Miami, they say Butler is like the son of Udonis Haslem and Dwyane Wade, the combination of the two most definitive players in team history. In Philly, Butler increasingly feels like the one who escaped.
The late David Stern used to regularly remind owners, players, the media and anyone who listened that the NBA is a zero-sum game. For each team that goes up, you have to fall. For every team that succeeds too much, there is one that does not. And the cycle goes.
History will likely be written that the 2019-20 76ers were a case where the whole was less than the sum of its parts. It’s a sad list, but it’s not just one.
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