It took just 13 seconds for the Sixers to learn how tough things would be in Atlanta.
Dario Saric attempted to break up a lob pass to the rim on the game’s first possession when Hawks big man John Collins caught him in the face with an elbow. Saric suffered a lacerated upper lip and a chipped front left tooth and did not return (see video).
Stay in the game with the latest updates on your beloved Philadelphia sports teams! Sign up here for our All Access Daily newsletter.
No one said history would come easy.
The Sixers still managed to claw their way to a 121-113 victory Tuesday over the Hawks for the team’s 15th straight win, a single-season franchise record (see observations). The victory means the Sixers (51-30) can lock up the Eastern Conference’s third seed with a win over Milwaukee in Wednesday’s season finale or a Cleveland loss to New York.
“We have momentum. We broke a club record tonight with our 15th win in a row, and it’s not like we’re a young club,” head coach Brett Brown said to reporters. “We’re an old club with a tremendous amount of culture and a tremendous amount of history. Taking that type of momentum into the playoffs is important. It doesn’t guarantee anything, but it certainly lets you feel like you’ve been doing the right things. The team has been fantastic.
“We’ve got one more game that we understand the opportunity that we have going back tomorrow to play at home against the Milwaukee Bucks. I think the momentum is nothing but a benefit, but certainly not anything that we feel like is going to continue to steer us. We have to continue to fight for stuff and make stuff happen.”
NBA
Atlanta definitely made them fight for everything on Tuesday night. The Hawks, playing in their season finale, were extremely physical. After watching Saric go down, the Sixers also lost T.J. McConnell for a brief time after he went to the bench following a crunching screen from big man Dewayne Dedmon.
Even the typically stoic Ben Simmons got caught up in the emotions of the game. Following what he thought were a pair of missed calls, Simmons clearly pushed off on a third-quarter move to the basket. When whistled for an offensive foul, the rookie voiced his displeasure and was assessed a technical foul. Simmons was subbed out and forced to walk away from the bench to cool down (see video).
No matter how things looked on the court, Simmons was just glad the Sixers’ streak lived to see another day.
“We’re consistent with what we run and how we play,” said Simmons, who fouled out for the first time in his career. “We push the ball and get the best shot we can. Defensively, we’re pretty good. We had some lapses tonight where we didn’t play that well, but we held it together.”
The rook can thank his veteran counterparts for securing the latest victory. The Sixers got major contributions from JJ Redick (28 points, five assists, four rebounds), Ersan Ilyasova (26 points, eight rebounds) and Marco Belinelli (20 points, four rebounds). Amir Johnson even got in on the act with his best game as a Sixer (15 points, eight rebounds, five assists).
“We needed all of that. We were in a fight,” Brown said. “We knew that Atlanta, especially with their last two wins, they weren’t going to go away easily. It was their last game and it happened to be here at home.
“I thought that our veterans, to your point, just found a way to make some baskets, get stops. I think that we executed a few things down the stretch like we had hoped to, but that veteran presence led by Marco and Ersan, I thought both of those guys had big games.”