The Sixers Have Already Passed Every Test They Need To
After the win over the Bucks, it’s hard to doubt the team’s ceiling.
Andrew Unterberger is a famous writer who invented the nickname 'Sauce Castillo' and is now writing for The Rights To Ricky Sanchez, as part of the 'If Not, Pick Will Convey As Two Second-Rounders' section of the site. You can follow Andrew on Twitter @AUGetoffmygold and can also read him at Billboard.
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It was all bad just a week ago. Last Friday, the Sixers lost their third game in a row, at home to a zone-goofy Dallas Mavericks squad missing Luka Doncic. It was the capper to a miserable stretch for Philly that re-ignited all the big picture discussions around the Sixers: Do they have enough shooting and shot creation? Can Brett Brown make adjustments when they need to, have our young guys improved as much as they should have by now? Is Al Horford just an industry plant? Is this actually an elite team, or do they belong at sixth in the standings, where they dropped to after their three-game skid?
Of course, we should have had our answers to all of these questions already -- the Sixers filled us in with that Miami statement win a month ago, after which I essentially declared that we should stop getting mad after losses, LOL. That was never gonna happen, but we at least shoulda known at that point that this team could be as good as they needed to be, that occasional letups would be inevitable but we should never again lose sight of the fact that this team playing at their best is as good as the NBA has to offer.
But fine -- a bad road loss to Brooklyn, a disappointing home-defending performance against that same Heat squad, and a stupid-dumb loss to Dallas later, and maybe we were feeling a little less confident in all of that. Good thing then that we followed it up with a couple solid-if-not-overwhelming wins over Washington and Detroit, and then a dominant, potentially season-defining, not-nearly-as-close-as-it-sounds 121-109 Christmas victory over the supposed beasts of the East, the Milwaukee Bucks. Now, the Sixers have nothing left to fear in the East except their own fans.
Including the 76ers, there are six teams in the East that seem to be some degree of Legitimately Good. After tonight, the Sixers are a combined 6-2 against those five other teams, with a +7.4 scoring differential and at least one win against each other squad. Of the truly big games that the Ballers have played in the East this year, the only one they came up short in was in Toronto against the Raptors team that eliminated them last postseason -- which Joel Embiid somehow went entirely scoreless for, and which the Sixers still very nearly managed to steal anyway. (It’s been less conclusive against the other conference, but they’ve split with the Jazz and Nuggets, with their only really bad loss against the credible West playoff teams coming with that Dallas drubbing.)
And of course, last night’s win was best of all. Well, maybe not -- my personal favorite remains the Miami cool-down, a win so perfectly satisfying in every way (except garbage time, c’mon KOQ) it’s unlikely to ever be topped outright for me. But it was an absolutely convincing outclassing of a 27-4 team and their reigning (and presumed repeating) MVP, with our franchise guy not only outdueling him in the box score but actively shutting him down on the court. It hit all the other high points you’d want for the Sixers at this point as well: They moved the ball well and got open looks, they shot brilliantly (and busted that consarned zone once and for all), their secondary guys played like stars, Horford played acceptably, and their coach… well, we all know Brett must not have actually coached this one, but hopefully this one got him (briefly) off the hot seat just the same.
If there’s a test remaining for the Sixers, it might be doing it against teams like the Bucks on the road. Of those eight games against the East’s best, all but two of them came at the Not-WFC -- the loss in Toronto and the nearly-as-good-as-that-was-bad win over the Celtics in Boston. If the Sixers are gonna continue dropping games to squads like the Wizards and the Magic over this regular season, they can’t really assume they’ll have home court for the playoffs. (Even after the loss, the Bucks still stand 4.5 games over Philly in the standings, an advantage that might already be pretty tough for ‘em to make up.) Maybe there’s an argument that the Sixers won’t ever be totally golden until they prove they can beat Milwaukee in Milwaukee -- a chance they won’t even get until February.
Wow, though -- if that’s the best you can come up with to disregard the significance of just how well Philly has done against the East’s elite thusfar, that’s pretty slim pickings. As corking as I’m sure the Fiserv Forum crowds in Milwaukee really are, as hyped as the Sixers might’ve been to play in front of an electric home crowd today, and as raring for a rematch as I’m sure the Bucks already are -- the Sixers can’t possibly still actually Fear the Deer at this point. Nor Boston, Miami, Toronto or Indiana, none of whom have demonstrated that their best is simply better than Philly’s best this season.
As I acknowledged after the Miami game, I know this won’t actually be the end of it. Embiid will get dinged up, Ben Simmons will have enigmatic on-court moments that serve as Twitter lightning rods, games will get dropped unexpectedly, Brett Brown will return to coach further losses and we’ll have to wonder if there doesn’t remain at least one hole-in-the-Death-Star flaw for this team to be forever exploitable. But even with that knowledge, it’s still just about the greatest Christmas present Sixers fans could ask for to have enough evidence now to show that Philly’s contention in this conference is extremely real -- and that when the new self-crowned King comes at them, he best not miss 19 out of 27 shots.