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Tim BontempsESPN
Before the Philadelphia 76ers settled with the Brooklyn Nets on Wednesday night to see who would finish at the top of the Eastern Conference at the end of the night, Doc Rivers’ coach, Doc Rivers, was asked if he was the leading team in the East. made priority for him. team this season.
“We really did not talk much about it,” Rivers said. “We’re just talking about winning games.”
Then the truth came out.
“It will clearly be fun to have,” he said.
The significance of Philadelphia’s 123-117 victory over the fast-shooting Nets on Wednesday night is wrong – one that put the Sixers firmly in the driver’s seat to secure first place in the Eastern Conference.
Philadelphia made it much harder than it should have been to win, with a 22-point lead with another eight minutes to win before they could win on Brooklyn’s reserves, but in the end the Sixers won – one which moved them to a game ahead of the Nets with 17 games left for both teams. It also clinched the season series for Philadelphia, giving the one-game lead a two-game advantage.
“We made a lot of mistakes,” said Joel Embiid, who scored his last dominant performance of the season with 39 points, 13 rebounds and two rebounds in 33 minutes. “We turned the ball around defensively. We didn’t have the focus all night. That can not happen if we are a team that wants to compete for a championship.”
Frustrations about the end aside, the Sixers got what they wanted. And, along with the nets dealing with a variety of injuries and also a much more difficult remaining schedule (fourth most difficult) than the Sixers (seventh easiest), the way is now officially clear for Philadelphia to face its fate in the East. control. .
“[It’s] very important, “said Ben Simmons.” We want that one seed. “
The main reason is because of the much simpler path it takes to escape the East – something the Sixers hope to do for the first time in 20 years. With three elite teams in the East – Philadelphia, Brooklyn and the Milwaukee Bucks – retaining the top spot means they only need to beat one of the teams to reach the NBA Finals.
And if they are confronted in front of them, it would also mean that you have a home field advantage in the Eastern Conference final. Conversely, final or second place probably means you have to take down two of the top teams to reach the final, with one or both series without a home field advantage.
But, specifically for this Philadelphia team, there is an extra meaning to retaining that home field advantage: the Sixers play better at home than any team in the league.
Since Embiid and Simmons started playing in the 2017-18 season, the Sixers have won 111-28 – a 79% percentage point – in games at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia.
The league’s second-best team over that period, the Denver Nuggets, won just over 75% of their home games – and had the advantage of playing the games at a higher altitude.
“If you play in Philly, [the fans are] going to push you, “Embiid said. They will come at you. They will boo you. You have to give 110 percent and just play really hard and give everything you have. I feel like since I was here in Philly, I’ve played a big part in how dominant we were at home. ‘
And while Philadelphia’s greedy fans undoubtedly played a part in the success – and especially Embiid, who has always fueled their energy – clearly fueled – the Sixers were still a leading 23-5 team at home this season, even even though the fans are largely kept away from the building.
“I think we’re comfortable at home,” Rivers said. “I think it’s amazing this year without the fans. I can understand it with the fans, but without the fans we’ve had a lot of success.”
The success continued Wednesday night – though it’s hard to take much away from a match in which Kevin Durant, James Harden, LaMarcus Aldridge and Blake Griffin were all dressed for street in Brooklyn. Kyrie Irving (37 points on 13-for-21 shooting, plus 9 assistants) was brilliant, and DeAndre Jordan played as well as could be expected against Embiid.
Embiid was dominant and continued his season-long parade to the dirty line by going 10-for-11 from the charity line. It was a reminder of both how dominant Embiid was against everyone when he was on the field this season, and how perfectly suited he was to attack the soft underbelly of Brooklyn defensively.
But just as good as he was, Embiid is not the only thing driving Philadelphia’s success – and he was not the only person to drive Wednesday night. Tobias Harris once again had an extremely effective game (26 points on 11-for-17 shooting), both of which were constant of him in what was easily his best NBA season. Simmons remains one of the league’s elite defenders, and Seth Curry and Danny Green provided everything Philadelphia had hoped for by exchanging Josh Richardson and Al Horford for them in the off-season.
As a result, the five-man unit is now 20-4 this season after Wednesday’s victory, outscoring its opponents by 14 points per 100 possessions in nearly 500 minutes on the field. Meanwhile, George Hill – the key deadline for the team’s deadline – has yet to play due to a broken leg in his hand suffered before the deal was made.
All of this gives Philadelphia the confidence that it can finally break through and return to the league’s championship round. It took an important step towards the goal on Wednesday night.
“We just have to deal with our operating night-and-night-out,” Harris said. “We have to be ready for the challenge every night.”