Sixers Survive to Defeat Celtics in Final Home Game

By Sean Kennedy

Philadelphia 113, Boston 108

Box Score

We’ve seen plenty of organizational moves this season by the Sixers that were blatantly made with the ‘tanking’ destination in mind. Fortunately, that bottoming out mentality never seemed to reach the court, where the team always appeared to give everything they had to try and win ball games. Sure, the limited talent level on the roster wasn’t even close to enough on plenty of occasions, but you still appreciated the effort.

Certainly, the Sixers never showed anything close to the on-court intentional losing that Rajon Rondo pulled off last night for the Celtics. There have been murmurs around the league that Rondo was in on the Celtics bottoming out this season for a high draft pick, that’s why he agreed to not play on back-to-backs despite looking perfectly healthy when he did play. The final possession last night basically confirmed his tanking involvement. With the Sixers up 3 and 15 seconds left in the game, Rondo had the ball and aimlessly dribbled the ball away for the majority of the remaining time. Finally with one second left, he desperately shoveled a pass over to Chris Johnson, who somehow made the shot but had his back foot out-of-bounds. Game over, Sixers earn the victory and the season-series win. The Celtics move down to the potential 5th spot in the lottery from 6th, and still leave the opportunity to slide another spot.

However, don’t let the final possession overshadow the fact that the Sixers absolutely earned this victory. They jumped out to a huge lead in the second quarter, out-scoring the Celtics by 17 points in the frame by getting out on the break and finishing at the rim time and time again. Boston had zero shot-blocking presence on the court with Kelly Olynyk at center. Although Olynyk scored a career-high 28 points on the night, he was a human turnstile defensively, as the Sixers outscored the Celtics 46-18 on points in the paint and shot 60% from the field in the first half. It was a complete team effort early on, with even deep bench guys like Brandon Davies and Casper Ware hitting shots and finishing in transition.

In the second half though, the outside shots started falling for Celtics like Olynyk and Jeff Green (27 points). With the Sixers’ lead evaporating, it was their star rookie who stepped up in the biggest of moments. Philly was up just two with under 2 minutes left, but Michael Carter-Williams beat his defender to get to the rim and earn a trip to the charity stripe. Although he split the pair, on the ensuing possession, he swiped a pass from Olynyk and fed Tony Wroten on the break for more free throws. Finally, a couple possessions later, MCW drove again and with the entire Celtics defense collapsing on him, kicked the ball out for a Henry Sims jumper that more or less put the game away.

The entire sequence put the cap on a dominant performance by the Sixers young point guard, who finished with 21 points on 9-13 shooting, a career-high 14 rebounds, and 6 assists. His shot selection has drastically improved this season and his decision-making with the ball is light-years ahead of where it was at the beginning of the year. If he ever develops even a halfway decent outside shot, the Sixers have a perennial all-star on their hands. Watching his growth as a player has been the best thing about this season, and it was rewarding to see his efforts result in a victory (especially one we could whole-heartedly root for with the Bucks out of reach).

Notable Observations:

• The broadcast team interviewed Sixers CEO Scott O’Neil during the first quarter last night and I took two key points away from the discussion. First, he guaranteed the Sixers will have a mascot next season. So start drawing up your Phil E. Moose or B. Franklin Dogg online campaigns. On a more serious note, O’Neil talked about how we’ll see the team taking all of their shots either at the basket or from behind the three-point line, calling that the future of the league. We know that’s the philosophy Sam Hinkie has brought over from Houston and it’s certainly the en vogue philosophy among the analytics community. Regardless of whether or not it’s the best way to go about winning basketball games, it’s just a great sign to have everyone in the organization from the top-down on the same page.
• The fact of the night on the broadcast mentioned this season was the first time in NBA history that the Celtics, Knicks, Sixers, and Lakers all didn’t make the playoffs. Given that the majority of us were hoping the Sixers would bottom out and earn a high draft pick this season, I’d say I couldn’t think of 4 teams I’d rather miss the playoffs more than those.

Tanking Implications:

It’s official. With the Bucks getting gunned down by the Wizards Monday night, the Sixers will finish with the second worst overall record in the NBA. As relayed by @DerekBodnerNBA, among others, the following are the odds for where their first-round draft pick falls in the lottery:

• #1 – 19.9%
• #2 – 18.8%
• #3 – 17.1%
• #4 – 31.9%
• #5 – 12.3%

Things aren’t as promising on the Tanktanic when you really lay out the raw numbers. We endured all that losing and there’s still almost a 50-50 chance the Sixers pick outside the top 3. In other less-than-promising news, somehow Tyreke Evans (41 points!) and a bunch of Pelicans backups defeated a Thunder team that rested Russell Westbrook but still had their other stars play big minutes. It looks like that pick will likely be 10th overall. Draft well, Sam Hinkie. MCW needs some running mates.