Home Court For What? Sixers Lose Game One in Decisive Miami Victory
No Ben Simmons. No juice. No win.
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.
Andrew's writing is brought to you by Kinetic Skateboarding! Not only the Ricky's approved skate shop, but the best place to get Chucks, Vans, any apparel. Use code "DAVESILVER" for 9.1% off your order.
NBA Playoffs First Round: Heat Lead Sixers 1-0
Well then.
Maybe the Sixers were unprepared after playing softer competition for most of the last month. Maybe Ben Simmons being ruled out a half-hour before tip-off was too big a psychic blow to the rest of the team. Maybe I jinxed it by watching Stephen A. Smith speak in tongues about the Jimmy Butler trade as a hype-up video too many times before Game One. (Sorry, I know, but there's still just no substitute for it.) Whatever it was, for the second year in a row, the Sixers clearly weren't up for their playoff home opener, losing to the Miami Heat by a 114-99 final in a game that really wasn't even as close as the final score indicates.
The Heat basically had control of this one from the jump. Their gunners were firing in the first quarter, with Duncan Robinson -- who I swear terrifies me only slightly less than prime LeBron at this point -- hitting three triples before the first timeout, and Tyler Herro, Kelly Olynyk and Derrick Jones Jr. following his rhythm from there. Even our old friend Andre Iguodala, the one perimeter guy on this Miami team you can live with leaving open on the perimeter, hit a pair of threes before halftime, as the Heat ended the second on a 15-3 run to put them up 60-42 at the half. Were there boos? Yeah, you probably heard a couple. Like, if you were anywhere along the East Coast and happened to stick your head out the window around 4:30 ET. Mighta heard one or two.
And even though he never really got in on the team's hot shooting -- just 1-4 from downtown -- Miami's MVP on the night was certainly Jimmy Butler. Already nearing a triple double with 12 points, eight rebounds and seven assists in the first half alone, getting into the teeth of the Sixers' defense and causing all kinds of havoc once there. A couple of early fouls drawn on Joel Embiid at the rim rendered Joel a non-factor for far too much of the first 24, and he just imposed his will on the game from there. Jimothy and Game Ones... what once you loved to see, you now blanch at the sight.
The Sixers just didn't have much in response. Embiid missing most of the first half with his early foul trouble certainly didn't help there, and Al Horford didn't exactly rise to the occasion of replacing his production -- being swallowed in the post by Bam Adebayo on several occasions, and just generally getting blitzed by the likes of Kendrick Nunn and Goran Dragic on perimeter switches. With no Simmons or Embiid, Tobias Harris had to carry the load offensively, and while his numbers weren't terrible -- 5-11 for 12 points in the first half, 23 total on the night -- he wasn't able to help the Sixers do more than tread water. The most resonant image of Tobi in this one was him lunging at Duncan Robinson too late after getting knocked off by a screen, offering little but polite discouragement on the shot's way down .
So here we are: one game into the Sixers' much-anticipated playoff run, and already having sacrificed any remaining home-court advantage. What the Sixers worked so hard to secure the last month-plus of the regular season -- the right to host at least one Game Seven in their home building, should the need arise -- is now entirely moot unless they can pick up at least one road victory first. For a normal playoff team in a 4/5 matchup, that would be an undesirable but not exactly toweringly intimidating challenge; however, most normal 4 seeds don't go 14-27 away from home in the regular season, with a grand total of one of those 14 Ws coming against a team of legitimate playoff caliber. To quote a burgeoning Philadelphia sports great, it's not what you want.
Of course, equally discouraging as the team's Game One loss was the inactivity of one Benjamin David Simmons. There was no major revelation about Simmons' status or any particularly foreboding development in his recovery that presaged his sitting out the game, just him being listed as "questionable" with his lower back issues on the day's injury report, and that being updated to officially "out" just as the pre-game festivities began on ABC. Ben Simmons' typically blank demeanor on the sidelines certainly didn't give us any clues as to what was going on there, and from his press conference after the game, it certainly didn't look like Brett Brown had any more of an idea than we did.
The 72 hours have elapsed, and the JJ Redick story closes with some controversy, as Spike and Mike work through the details. We catch up with Andrew Unterberger, who has continued to follow the Sixers season in an alternate reality, and start their 4 vs. 5 seed series with the Heat today.
"Would we have loved to have Ben Simmons out there tonight? Of course, you know we would have," Brett offered basically unprompted (and already sounding a little bit hoarse) to an only tangentially related question about the team's perimeter defense. "But that's not up to me. It's up to the team's medical staff, and to him and his own people, and we can't play him if he's not ready to be played. In the meantime, we've got to fill in for his production as best we can -- and that means staying connected to our man on defense, that means forcing the issue by taking the ball to the bucket, that means playing unselfishly and getting our shooters and big men good looks so they don't have to work so hard to generate offense. And I just don't think we did any of that well enough today."
The bright side from this one, if you wanna really squint for it, is that everything went so wrong so immediately that you can maybe mentally toss this one in the gutter, Bynum-bowling style, without having to read too much into it. Certainly the Sixers have bounced back from discouraging Game One first-round losses before, even at home. And though the game was already mostly out of reach, JoJo did have a fairly productive second half in this one, working his way around and through Bam down low, and developing his two-man games nicely with Shake Milton and Furkan Korkmaz on the perimeter. Brett also made an interesting early counter by putting Matisse -- looking healthy and spry as ever -- in the starting lineup for the second half, for the express purpose of hounding Jimmy Butler. He definitely got got by Butler a couple times on pump-fakes and contact-seeking drives, but he also shut off any easy looks for Jimothy, and even managed to poke the ball away from his dribble once or twice. A matchup worth returning to if Ben's gonna miss more of this series, certainly.
Of course, after a game like this, it's hard not to wonder if Ben missing much more of this series just means that the Sixers are out of their depth altogether. For all their preseason starriness, without Simmons it's pretty clear that the Heat have two of the three best players in this series, and maybe have some arguments for Nos. four and five as well. They're deeper, they're more athletic, they're more versatile... they might just be, y'know, better. We only had two things definitely going for us in this matchup: home-court advantage and Joel Embiid. The first one is gone now. The second one is still in play, but is gonna have to be a much, much bigger factor in Game Two. Otherwise the not-Wells Fargo Center faithful might have to wait till October for the next chance to boo their beloved home team.