The Sixers’ jumpers deserted them at an especially inopportune time.
Following a 95-86 Game 6 loss to the Celtics on Thursday night at Wells Fargo Center, the team’s season hinges on a single game.
James Harden had a simple explanation for the defeat.
“We’ll watch film, we can get better, but this was a close game the entire game, especially in the second half,” Harden said. “They made a couple of threes, we didn’t make the shots. If we make the shots, we can win the game. It’s nothing more than that.”
Though “make-or-miss league” never captures everything that led to a loss, the Sixers did shoot well below their norm with a chance to break through to the Eastern Conference Finals. Harden was 4 for 16 from the floor and 0 for 6 from three-point range. Tobias Harris scored a mere two points — his lowest mark ever in a playoff game — on 1-for-7 shooting. The Sixers’ top six players combined to go 5 for 29 (17.2 percent) from long distance. The team’s 36.1 field goal percentage was its lowest mark in a game all season.
Perhaps more tellingly, a fair number of those shots were legitimately high-quality looks. On “wide-open” threes — defined by NBA.com as the closest defender being six or more feet away — the Sixers were only 6 for 25 (24 percent). They’d made 41.1 percent of such shots during the regular season and outside shooting was a major team strength overall. In fact, the Sixers led the league with a 38.7 three-point percentage
Shooting aside, the Sixers were certainly worse than they’d been in a great Game 5 performance. Head coach Doc Rivers was displeased with his team’s transition defense after Boston racked up 16 fast-break points in the first half.
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“I thought we took some tough shots, which means you don’t have floor balance,” Rivers said. “And when you take those shots and they get out running, you’re in trouble. … Right now, the transition game in this series is the difference in all the games, and they had it tonight.”
Rivers also cited lack of trust in the Sixers’ offensive process as a core reason for the loss.
“I thought tonight, the ball didn’t move a lot,” he said. “We’ve got to move the ball. We’ve got to trust it. We’ve got to run our stuff, we’ve got to execute our stuff. I thought tonight was similar to Game 2, to me. We just didn’t trust our stuff.”
Joel Embiid thought Rivers’ assessment was fair on that front. Though Embiid scored 26 points, grabbed 10 rebounds, and played exceptional interior defense, the Sixers failed to get the MVP late-game touches.
After Embiid hit a mid-range jumper with 6:13 left in the fourth quarter to tie the contest at 81-all, the Sixers made just one field goal the remainder of the game. That was a garbage-time Jaden Springer jumper. Embiid’s last attempt was a missed 19-footer with a little under four minutes to go.
“We didn’t move the ball,” Embiid said. “The offense stalled. We’re pretty good when we move the ball. We play with each other and the ball moves side to side. We get into our sets.
“I’ve got to be more demanding, but we kind of went away from what was working at the beginning of that fourth quarter. As a big, it’s hard to go get the ball and just create for yourself. But I’ve just got to go get it.”
Both Embiid and Harden had gripes with the officiating, too.
Embiid highlighted what he described as a “stupid-ass goaltending” call against him late in the first quarter. Harden took zero first-half free throws and didn’t feel that was justified.
“Tonight, it was frustrating because I’m No. 1 as far as fouls that don’t get called,” he said. “Like, it’s a foul. So it’s frustrating as a player when the officials tell you at halftime, ‘Hey, we missed a couple of fouls.’
“Missed shots and fouls just give a rhythm and transition points to them. A couple of them were (late) shot clock; I’m not going to look at my shooting percentage. I did a lot of really good things offensively. And defensively, we did a really good job. … They packed the paint, so they forced us to make shots. It’s not a hard game. I’m not going out there and forcing it. Obviously, I score the basketball, but I’m a playmaker as well. So I don’t look too much at scoring.”
Game 7 is set for Sunday at TD Garden. If the Lakers win Game 6 of their second-round series against the Warriors, it will tip off at 3:30 p.m. ET. If Golden State wins, it will be at 8 p.m. ET.
Though the Sixers have already won twice this series in Boston, no one expects Game 7 to be remotely easy.
“We’ve got to go out here and we’ve got to fight,” Tyrese Maxey said. “It’s going to be a war. One thing I will say is that if I have to go to war, Game 7 in Boston, I would want to go with this group.
“I know we’ve got some fighters. I know we’ve got some resilient guys. I’m ready to get it on.”