Sixers Take The 3rd Seed
The Pacers, as we all know, are without their star player, Victor Oladipo, but have been playing very well.
The Sixers were coming off a two game losing streak which included a dominant loss to the Rockets and a last second loss to the Bulls. Thankfully, the Sixers got a MUCH needed win 106-89.
The Sixers had very much been missing their star, Joel Embiid, and he most certainly showed up ready to play in his return. Joel posted 33 points, 12 rebounds and shot 52% in just 28 minutes! Keep in mind Embiid hasn’t played in a game in almost a month, to come back and put on a performance like that is just insane. On a team full of star players, Joel continues to show us this is HIS team.
The rest of the starters played alright, but not great. Tobias posted 16 points and 8 boards, would’ve liked to see some more scoring from Harris, but it was by no means a bad game for him. Ben Simmons posted 15 points, 6 assists, 4 rebounds and shot 60% from the field. Average game from Ben, again would’ve liked to see him step up a little more in a game this important, but it was not a bad performance for him. JJ Reddick had a pretty underwhelming performance with 9 points on 37% shooting. Now, he was 50% from three, but JJ has been struggling to consistently get open in recent games, he will need to fix this as the team hopes to make a playoff run. Lastly, Jimmy Butler was not impressive, posting 12 points, 4 rebounds and 4 assists on 37% shooting. Jimmy needs to be more aggressive than he has been recently, it seems like he has taken a back seat and that cannot be the case he is too good to take a step back. I’m gonna sound crazy because it is just one game and we won, but I am disappointed in our starters, I believe they all, besides Joel, could have stepped up in a game this important with the 3rd seed on the line.
My biggest problem with this game, and team in general, was the Sixers bench. Our bench scored 21 points, 8 by Mike Scott, 8 by James Ennis, 3 by Justin Patton and 2 by TJ. The only other player that got any real time off the bench was Amir Johnson who had 0 points in 17 minutes. I would really love to know why Brett continues to give Amir significant time backing up Joel over Jonah Bolden and Justin Patton, both of who played 1 minute. Brett has to make that change and stop giving Amir time over those two.
The Sixers ultimately walked away with the W, but at halftime they were not looking too hot. At half we were down 59-51 and that score doesn’t reflect the fact that we got dominated for the first two quarters. To me, the Sixers should never have been getting dominated by the Pacers. Yes, they are playing very well, but the Sixers have a starting five of all-star caliber players and the Pacers are without their only star player. Indiana should not be a challenge, we are too talented.
Our talent prevailed in the end and we got the win by a good margin, but we cannot let ourselves get dominated for two quarters by teams like the Bucks, Raptors or Celtics because we might not be able to get back in the game the way we did yesterday. We have to make sure we come out the gate strong against the other elite Eastern Conference teams.
The rest of our schedule is pretty good for us, but I am heavily looking forward to two games; March 20th against Boston at home and April 4th against Milwaukee at home. The Sixers have played really poorly against the Celtics, Bucks and Raptors this year and.
I look forward to seeing how we will play against two of those teams as we gear up for a playoff run. Now that the Sixers have taken the third seed it is time for them to keep it for themselves and get hot going into the playoffs.
Featured Image: @Sixers Twitter
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