Sixers Collapse Late in San Antonio

By Sean Kennedy (@PhillyFastBreak)

San Antonio 92, Philadelphia 83 – Box Score

There’s something to be said for having a championship pedigree. Along with the validation for years and years of hard work, the national endorsement deals, the visit with the President, it also means that when it’s a four-point game in the closing minutes of a game in November, you don’t crack under the pressure. On the other side, you have the Philadelphia 76ers, where every player on the floor is young enough to be Tim Duncan’s son, crack like the city of Los Angeles in San Andreas.

With Kawhi Leonard and Manu Ginobili both out for San Antonio, the Sixers were able to hang around with the Spurs, mostly on the strength of a tremendous game from Jahlil Okafor. Facing one of his idols in Tim Duncan (15 points, 5 blocks), Jahlil bounced back from his worst game of the season against OKC Friday to put up 21 points on 9-17 shooting, 12 rebounds, and 2 blocked shots. After Philadelphia fell behind by as many as 19 points late in the third quarter, Okafor scored 9 points over a 5-minute stretch in the 4th to help the Sixers close the deficit to 87-83 with 3 minutes remaining.

That’s when the Sixers started to look like one of those movie montages where a team is being forced to throw a game, and you think, “Come on, they could have tried to make this look more subtle, no one would believe this.” After getting within four, their final eight possessions of the game were an Isaiah Canaan missed three, T.J. McConnell turnover, Isaiah Canaan turnover, Jahlil Okafor missed jumper, another T.J. McConnell turnover, Canaan missed 20-footer, Nerlens Noel turnover, and finally, a Hollis Thompson missed three.

At least three of those turnovers were plays which the Spurs didn’t force at all, and either a teammate wasn’t looking or the pass was thrown behind the player for the no reason. As much as you might know logically it doesn’t make sense in the big picture for the Sixers to bring in a veteran guard, it was nights like this that make you want to scream out, “Just get anyone, I can’t take it anymore!” Hopefully, Kendall Marshall is at least a facsimile of that guy when he returns later this month.

Aside from Okafor’s solid night, there weren’t a ton of great takeaways from this game for this Sixers. After I tweeted out yesterday morning how atrocious Jerami Grant had been shooting the ball, he actually had a good game offensively, scoring 12 points on 4-7 shooting, including hitting 2 of 3 from behind the arc. Shockingly, Phil Pressey was much more than McConnell on this night. Pressey scored 8 points on 4-7 shooting and had 6 assists against zero turnovers, while McConnell only had 1 assist against three turnovers and was a -20 on the game.

Meanwhile, Nerlens had one of his worst games of the season. Noel struggled against LaMarcus Aldridge, as the Spurs’ big free agent acquisition collected 7 of his game-high 19 rebounds on the offensive glass on his way to a team-high 17 points. Noel had just 3 rebounds total. On the other end, Noel was just 2-8 shooting on the game and is now below 40% from the field on the season. That is a poor figure for a scoring point guard, unconscionable for a big man. Maybe we need to collectively slow down on the “Noel’s offensive game is coming around narrative”.

Now 0-10 on the season, this walk of shame marches on as Philadelphia faces Dallas at home Monday night. Despite the struggles, I deem that to be a winnable game! Push all your emotional chips into the center of the table Monday and hope this group finally puts together a full 48 minutes of basketball.