Sixers Fall Just Short to Cavaliers in 127-125 Double OT Thriller

By Sean Kennedy

In case Friday night was the only time you’d ever watched Kyrie Irving play, let me fill you in on a little secret: Kyrie Irving is good. Like, good enough to become the best point guard in the league good. So it was no surprise that with his Cavaliers trailing the Sixers by double digits in the fourth quarter on Saturday night, Irving took matters into his own hands to bring his team all the way back and re-take the lead. And it wasn’t a surprise that he almost made an impossible, acrobatic lay-up at the regulation buzzer. So when he finally delivered the dagger with the game-winning drive in the closing moments of double overtime, no one was too taken back. Irving finished with 39 points and 12 assists, but enough about Kyrie Irving, because there was so much to love about the Sixers performance in Cleveland Saturday night.

We’ll go through the three big stars for Philadelphia in the order of their heroics. First, in the final seconds of regulation, Brett Brown drew up a play for Thad Young to be isolated on his defender along the wing. Young drove to his right and threw in an impossibly angled left hand shot off the glass for the game-tying points. On the game, Thad dropped 29 points, found his outside stroke again with 3 threes, and gutted through a tweaked ankle for the majority of the overtime periods.

Another member of the old guard, Evan Turner, achieved career-highs in points (31) and free throw attempts (11-13), to go with 10 rebounds. In the waning moments of the first overtime, the Sixers again down two, Turner drove the ball along the baseline, absorbed the contact (and what should have been a foul) from Anderson Varejao, and sunk the bucket to give fans at home some more bonus basketball. Early in the game, the broadcast showed that Evan Turner was the first Sixer to 22 ppg, 55% shooting, and 6 rpg in the first 6 games since Charles Barkley in 1991-92. Turner’s performance thus far this season has ranked among some rarefied air and he brought it once again, as he was the driving force of the third quarter run that saw the Sixers build their big second-half lead.

Finally, as for the man playing right now most crucial to the future of the Sixers, Michael Carter-Williams did everything you could ask for and more from a rookie point guard. The Hyphen dropped 21 points, 7 rebounds, and 13 assists, and hit huge threes when the Sixers were trailing in both overtimes. MCW was smothered by a defender when he tied the game up with a three from the left wing in the second overtime. The rook proved once again that he has ice water in his veins and that means more to this franchise right now than any victory in November.

Box Score

Notable Observations:

• I feel like the Sixers bench players have a conch they pass around to determine who will have the good game on a particular night. Coming off a career-best performance, Tony Wroten was completely ineffective in this contest, but got picked up by teammate Darius Morris. Morris couldn’t miss from the outside, scoring 12 points on 5-7 shooting. He was feeling so proud of himself that he started whipping out some fancy between the legs and behind the back passes, so that was fun.
• Brandon Davies had his best stretch of play in his young career, tracking down offensive rebounds on consecutive possessions in the fourth quarter and getting four points for his trouble. Like Hawes and Turner, Davies opted to stick with the headband tonight; maybe there’s some magic in that old red, white, and blue headband he found.

Tanking Implications: 

This game was the 5/5 rating the other 5/5 ratings even think is out of their league when they’re out drinking at the bar. It was simply a monster performance by Michael Carter-Williams with the huge stat line and a few of his patented step back threes which I’m loving more and more each day, including the huge shot toward the end of the second overtime. A double-overtime contest with everyone on the floor playing their hearts out, only ended in defeat due to the play of one of the top players in the world in Kyrie Irving. As Jonny Gomez would say, ‘Good fight, good night.’