Pros and Cons: Sixers vs. Pistons
Let’s get to the playoffs already.
Adam Aaronson, whose legal name is Sixers Adam (@SixersAdam on Twitter), covers the Sixers for The Rights To Ricky Sanchez. He believes cantaloupe is the best food in existence, and is brought to you by the Official Realtor of The Process, Adam Ksebe.
In their regular season finale, the Sixers played host to the Detroit Pistons. Here’s what’s on my mind before we head to the playoffs.
Pro: Shake Milton finding his groove
Joel Embiid and James Harden took the night off, and that gave their teammates some chances to shine more than usual.
The biggest benefactor from the situation was Milton, who has played very well of late and punctuated his strong end to the season with an excellent showing tonight.
Milton did it all: he scored from beyond the arc, did damage in the mid-range, got to the rim and drew contact to get to the foul line. He also made a few impressive passes that caught my eye, including a left-handed on-the-move skip pass to the weak-side corner in the first half. Milton ended up with 30 points, a huge step in the right direction for him.
Milton had a rough start to the year before suffering a serious back injury that caused him to miss a considerable portion of the regular season. But over the last few weeks, he has given the Sixers a quite useful scoring punch off the bench, and in turn solidified his standing as the team’s third guard.
Pro: Paul Reed once again shows he is this team’s best option
After the Sixers’ win against Indiana yesterday, I wrote about Reed continuing to show potential as a backup center option. With Embiid and Paul Millsap out, it was Reed and DeAndre Jordan who logged the center minutes.
Let’s just say it was… a tale of two centers?
Jordan had a few nice plays, but on the whole was the exact same player we’ve become familiar with: one who, quite simply, is just not nearly good enough to be relied upon in the playoffs.
Reed, on the other hand, was very good, including an absolutely dominant fourth quarter that generated deafening “BBALL PAUL” chants in the arena. He legitimately took over the game for a significant period of time, finishing the game with 25 points.
Is BBall Paul going to be rock solid? Probably not! But he is clearly the better player of the two, and has at least shown that at times he can make an impact thanks to his relentless demeanor and excellent athleticism.
I would never claim that Reed is the ideal option at backup center in this year’s playoffs, but somebody has to log backup center minutes, and when you look up and down the Sixers roster, there simply isn’t a better option right now than Reed.
Pro: Sixers will face Toronto Raptors in first round of playoffs
As tonight’s final scores across the NBA trickle in, it will become a certainty: in the first round of the postseason, the Sixers will face the Toronto Raptors in a series that will tip-off in South Philadelphia, as the Sixers hold the fourth seed in the Eastern Conference.
We’ll have a lot of time to really dig in and preview this matchup. But for now, here’s where I stand: the Raptors are a very, very good team who present a lot of issues for the Sixers. And if you told me you think they’ll upset the Sixers and win the series, I wouldn’t argue with you. It is absolutely a feasible outcome -- after all, the Raptors beat the Sixers just a few days ago without Fred VanVleet or OG Anunoby on the floor.
Those two will be back in time, but when the series heads to Toronto after the first two games, it appears Matisse Thybulle will not due to his vaccination status that makes him ineligible to play.
I lean towards the Sixers winning an extremely close and competitive series.
There’s a whole lot of time between now and the series actually beginning, though, so we’ll be able to dive into the matchup a bit more in the coming days.