Sixers head coach Doc Rivers didn’t struggle Friday distilling the keys to his team’s first-round playoff series against the Raptors.
“Just being us, playing our game,” Rivers said. “Being relentless in what we’re doing; not allowing anything to take us out of what we want to do. And then defensively, we’ve got to rebound. That’s what they do well, that’s our weakness. We’ve got to get back — that’s what they do well, that’s our weakness. So those are the two things defensively. We cannot allow transition buckets, we can’t allow second shots.”
Those team flaws indeed stand out as especially worrisome. The Sixers were ninth in defensive rebounding percentage after James Harden’s debut, per Cleaning the Glass, but they’ve drawn an elite offensive rebounding team that’s the NBA’s best at creating turnovers and relishes making its opponents perpetually uncomfortable.
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Is Rivers right to emphasize sticking to the plan? On a fundamental level, of course. The Sixers shouldn’t abandon Joel Embiid post-ups if he commits a few turnovers early in Game 1 or bench James Harden if the 32-year-old is initially unimpressive against larger defenders on switches.
Flexibility never hurts, though. And while the Sixers have extolled the benefits of their mini-training camp, the team has just 21 games with Harden in the lineup. We don’t imagine Rivers and his staff will simply shrug and ask their stars to be better in the event that Plan A is crumbling. Still, it’s nice to have experience together searching for (and finding) answers. The Sixers don’t possess much of that.
So, the most probable path to a series loss includes harmful turnovers from the Sixers’ stars that propel Toronto in transition; bothersome limbs everywhere Embiid looks; Harden failing to flip a scoring switch; diminished defensive firepower on the road with Matisse Thybulle ineligible to play in Canada; big individual games from Pascal Siakam, Fred VanVleet and Gary Trent Jr.
We think it’s also fair to put “blown leads” under that same umbrella. In Rivers’ first postseason on the job, the Sixers fell to the Hawks in Round 2 by squandering a 2-1 series advantage, an 18-point lead in Game 4, and a 26-point lead in Game 5.
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The Raptors knocked off an early 17-2 deficit in their win last Thursday over the Sixers. Even if everything’s going great, the Sixers shouldn’t feel safe.
When hefty leads dwindle, it will be essential for the Sixers to maintain composure and precision — continue to move the ball, play focused defense, trust that catastrophe isn’t inevitable, and steer clear of haunting miscues.
“Discipline,” Thybulle said Friday when asked about his takeaways from last year’s playoffs. “Just how disciplined you need to be throughout the course of a game, the course of a series. And how little mistakes show up big in the end.”
When the team is teetering, 21-year-old Tyrese Maxey has shown he’s someone you want on your side. Whether or not he wins MVP, Embiid should be the series’ best player.
We’ve outlined several of the many reasons Toronto might win this series. But, in trying to project how the Sixers will respond when things turn shaky — because of poor shooting by Harden, rebounding woes, or some unexpected challenge — Embiid’s greatness and Maxey’s fearlessness feel important. We'll say those known quantities are decisive factors.
Our prediction: Sixers in seven.
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