At wrong time, Sixers dealt nightmarish defeat
PHILADELPHIA >> Dressed in a gray 76ers sweat suit, wearing a look of acceptance, Brett Brown left the Wells Fargo Center early Saturday night expecting the usual overnight jolt.
“For me,” he said, “my pain is always at 3 in the morning.”
That’s the way it is in his profession, where wakeup calls of any kind can be rough. Games are played and shots are made and sometimes, even in what otherwise could have been the good times, all they do is haunt.
The Sixers lost Saturday, 117-115, to the Oklahoma City Thunder when Paul George’s late shot dropped and Jimmy Butler’s counter attempt clanked. They lost despite playing about as well as they could, with Joel Embiid going for
31 points, Ben Simmons producing 20 and
15 rebounds, J.J. Redick shooting well and Butler making big plays late in the game. They scored 36 points in the final quarter, had the lead with 6.9 seconds left, and kept
20,646 fans entertained by as excellent an NBA game that is likely to unfold before the spring.
In many ways, it was to be the Sixers’ moment. All season, one that Brown christened with a goal to compete in the NBA Finals, the Sixers had been waiting for two things: To be essentially whole, and to test themselves against the league’s royalty. Royalty. That’s Brown’s word, the one he uses often to describe teams thick in recent accomplishment and mesmerizing talent. Oklahoma City, with Russell Westbrook and George, is one of those teams.
For that, there was a rare postseason atmosphere Saturday, with deep-thought coaching from Brown and Billy Donovan, day-long exchanges of glares from Westbrook and Embiid,
48 minutes of defensive intensity not always evident in January pro basketball,
On the schedule
perfectly timed passes, smooth threepoint swishes, anger, sweat and pride.
“I felt that it was a playoff physicality,” Brown said. “You look at that team, and they are one of the top two defensive teams in the NBA. You felt that. You felt all that. They are long and they are physical.”
The Sixers were all of that, too, particularly in the final 12 minutes, when they continued a recent trend of excellent play. The week began last Sunday when, with their core four clicking, they jumped to a 26-8 lead and won in New York. Then they scored 83 first-half points in a 149-107 victory over Minnesota. That was followed by a victory in Indianapolis, and that was followed by a conclusion: Their good times were at hand.
“I use the phrase ‘share and care,’” Brown said Saturday, before the game. “I see fist-bumps. I see great passes. I see coexisting teammates. And that matters. And the young players see, ‘This is the way it should be. This is a team.’ That’s all that matters to me, growing a team. I see daylight. I feel daylight.
“And navigating this part of the season, we’re good to go. We feel like we are getting on track to putting our own thumb print onto who we are, how we play, how we interact.”
There are no seasondamaging losses in January. There are barely any in the postseason, where lengthy playoff series provide plenty of sources for consolation. But the Sixers wanted that game Saturday. Given everything, they almost needed it. Monday, they will entertain the Houston Rockets. They will play the Spurs and Nuggets before the end of the week. Then there will be road games against the Lakers and Warriors. Royalty, as the man said.
Though the Sixers hardly are the developing project that defined Brown’s early NBA headcoaching career, they are close enough to it for the potential to be fragile. More, Elton Brand left Brown one major contributor short after swapping Dario Saric and Robert Covington for Butler, meaning the Sixers still must give more minutes to inexperienced players than typically makes sense for championship contenders. That should change by the Feb. 7 trade deadline. But by then, where will they be in the standings?
“It’s rough to lose, but we learn,” Simmons said. “We’ve got to get better. At the end of the day, we want to be winning when it comes to playoffs. This is not everything. This game isn’t everything. We are going to learn from it. We’re going to go back and watch film as a team and stay strong.”
He’s right. One particular game does not define a program. But at some point, the learning must stop and the success must flow.
The Sixers could have won Saturday. When they trapped Dennis Schroder in the backcourt with seconds left and Butler stole a pass and drove for a go-ahead layup, they seemed set for a signature victory. But after an advance-the-ball timeout, George buried a triple, Butler didn’t respond, and for the 19th consecutive time, they had lost to Oklahoma City.
“You wake up and you realize what happened,” Brown said. “And that’s when it hurts the most. And you move on. I’m proud of the way we are playing. I am really proud of our cohesion. There is a spirit amongst our group that at times previously we didn’t have.
“As long as we hold onto that, we can do wonderful things.”
That’s what he was going to tell himself through a long, long night.