Oh Thank Heaven, It's a Blowout Game Seven: Sixers Douse Heat, Onto Milwaukee
They were never going to lose Game 7 at home. Right?
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NBA Playoffs First Round: Sixers Win Series Over Heat, 4-3
Probably around the time Furkan Korkmaz hit his fourth three of the second half -- and turned to the Sixers bench to feign a shrug, clearly forecasting his TV plans for after the game -- you were finally able to let go of six games of unbearable accumulated tension from this Heat series.
The blowouts. The booing. The “CHAR-MIN!” An up-and-down Joel Embiid. A two-games-truant Ben Simmons. A forever-frustrating Al Horford and eternally unsatisfying Tobias Harris. An erratic and unpredictably facial-haired Brett Brown. And of course, the five-trips-to-Staples’ worth of bulletin board material provided by one Jimmy Butler. All gone: melted away, like so much Rita’s Italian Ice on a sweltering Sunday afternoon.
No, this one was easy. Easy? As in the opposite of hard? Yes, *that* easy. That’s what it was, unmistakably so. That’s what you call it when your team goes up 36-22 at the end of one quarter, with your two best players already combining for 24-9-6. That’s what you call it when Al Horford scores 12 points in his first 10 minutes of game action, finally getting the shots to go down on the pick-and-pop jumpers he’s been bricking all series. And that’s when you call it when a Kork-Popping run to close the third ends with the not-Wells Fargo Center crowd bellowing as one for a team that had taken a 33-point lead going into the final frame, ultimately winning 129-101. That’s easy like Sunday morning, my friends -- in this case, late-ish Sunday afternoon.
And Jimmy Butler? Well, he was present, certainly. He got off to a hot start even, notching a couple early jumpers over Ben Simmons and staring his stoic defender down on the way back up the floor. But the shots stopped falling as the game progressed, and despite living at the line all series, Jimmy only got to the stripe a total of five times in this one. He got his stats before checking out in the fourth -- 20 points (on 7-21 shooting), eight boards, seven dimes -- but they were Kenny Chesney ticket bundle-type numbers, not necessarily signifying what they would seem to imply in the box score.
Meanwhile, Brett finally implemented the adjustment many on Twitter had been screaming at him to make for a couple games now, unleashing fifth starter Matisse Thybulle full time on Duncan Robinson, with Matisse attacking the assignment with the appropriate single-minded mania. His bulldog approach led to him picking up some cheap fouls, but after six games this series of Robinson shooting the lights out -- then screwing in new bulbs, and shooting those out for good measure -- the Spurs plant finally posted an 0-fer from beyond, not even hitting the one triple he needed to pass Steph Curry and sit alone in the single-series record books.
Really, though, this was Jo and Ben’s game, from start to (pre-garbage time) finish. Responding to criticism that he’d let his foot off the gas pedal the last two games, Ben was Sammy Hagar all day yesterday. He pushed relentlessly in transition, he attacked the rim like it was wearing Sixers scrubs and a stethoscope -- and yes, he shot. He nailed one of two early jumpers, and then finally gave the motherfucking people what they motherfucking wanted in the third by interrupting Furk’s three-point barrage with a beyond-the-arc swish of his own, eliciting a Mike Breen “BAAAAAAAAAAAAANG!” like he was calling Kyrie Irving over Steph Curry in 2016.
Joel was simply the best player on the court. He only took 13 shots on the night, hitting eight of ‘em, but that was more than enough -- he got to the line, he hit a couple open triples, he passed out of double-teams and found Ben in the dunker’s spot (five assists, just one turnover), and he never forced the issue. Meanwhile, on defense he did absolutely everything: hurrying back in transition, blowing up pick and rolls, giving no quarter to Bam Adebayo (11 points on 4-11 shooting) and letting the Heat get nothing easy at the rim (only two blocks, but countless more alterations and generally shut-down opportunities). Brett Brown described his performance after the game as “Duncan-esque” -- as in Tim, not Robinson (I think) -- and really, there’s no better way to describe his casual, undeniable two-way brilliance in this one.
And that was it: For one magical afternoon on Broad Street, just about everything went right. Shake Milton had his moments, Josh Richardson had a couple pick-six steal-and-scores, even the technical free throw that Tobias Harris missed felt like an inside joke for the real fans. Andre Iguodala was his usual 1-4 self from downtown, and even the Heat players that had pretty good games didn’t go nuts -- in a closer game, maybe the 17 that Kelly Olynyk chipped in off the bench would’ve been cause for flesh-ripping, but yesterday, eh. There were no quadruple-doinks to be found in this one, unless it came from an irate Jimothy whipping a basketball at his underperforming teammates in the visitors’ locker room afterwards.
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“Yeah, it’s disappointing,” said a less-animated but hardly chastened Butler following the game. “We thought we found the momentum in Game Six, and we liked our chances in Game Seven on a floor we’d already won on once in this series. But the bounces just didn’t go our way this time, so… we gotta take a look at some things in the off-season, get in the gym this summer, come back next year ready to take that next step as a team.” Butler was asked if he still felt like the Sixers were soft following their Game Seven performance. “Look, they’re the winning team, tip your hat to them. They were ready to play today, they earned that W. Do I think they got what it takes to go all the way? Well, we’ll see what Milwaukee has to say about that, right?”
Even with the back-and-forth all series, Jimmy and Joel still had an extended on-court embrace after the game -- with Jimmy taking several seconds to whisper some parting thoughts in Jo’s ear, much to the consternation of Sixers Twitter. “You know, just that I’m a great player and he’s proud of the progress I’ve made, and good luck in the next round,” Joel relayed of Butler’s final message to him. “I mean, he said some stuff this series, and we didn’t like a lot of it, but at the end of the day it’s not personal. Jimmy’s just a competitor, just like I’m a competitor. We still got a lot of love and respect for each other, and this series isn’t gonna change that.”
Ben, unsurprisingly, had much less patience for Jimmy Butler after being asked about whether his Game Six comments provided extra fuel for his Game Seven aggressiveness. “Nah, not really. Jimmy had a great series, and he tried to get a little edge on us with some of the things he said. And if that’s how he wants to play the game, that’s fine -- it doesn’t bother me. I mean, Jared Dudley had a lot of things to say last year, and then he went home. Now Jimmy’s gotta go home too. Me, I’m looking forward to talking about playing Milwaukee.”
As for Milwaukee, Brett Brown -- looking happier and heartier than he has all series -- talked a lot about the “healthy fear” with which his staff was approaching that matchup. “I don’t think I’m breaking any news here by saying we’ve got a tough draw with these guys,” he quipped. “I mean, 67 wins, top defense in the league, steamrolled Orlando in the first round -- plus they got that guy Giannis who I’m pretty sure is about to win his second straight MVP -- we’ve got our work cut out for us, sure. But I think you saw today that when this team is humming, our ceiling is still as high as anyone’s. Plus, we played ‘em four times in the regular season, and they won twice at their place, and we won twice at ours. So we’ll see. I think it’s gonna be a great series.”
We’ll talk more about that series (which the NBA announced will tip off Wednesday at 8:00 in Milwaukee) soon enough, but a final note on this one -- a couple folks asked me on Twitter today if this now had to be considered the best win of the Process era. Boy, it sure has a case: Even taking out everything else that this W means and implies, the sheer relief of not having to spend all summer in fear of the next Jimmy Butler “I’m not saying, I’m just saying” interview about his old squad automatically gets this one in the discussion.
Ultimately, though, I might still give the edge to the Game Three blowout over Toronto -- where Joel Embiid threw down the most gratifying dunk in Sixers history and it really seemed like we might’ve had the higher-seeded Raptors running scared. This Game Seven win was satisfying in all the best ways, but it was more about confirming that the Sixers were as good as they had to be -- rather than allowing us to dream that the team could be better than we’d ever imagined.
Still, even at number two, this was pretty close to as good as it gets for Sixers basketball. We’re going on the road to face a juggernaut shortly, and the good feelings may very well not last through much of that. So be sure to take a moment or 200 before Wednesday to really bask in this, to loop the Simmons three for an hour straight, to blast Lorde’s “Ribs” over the top of your Jeff McDevitt-assembled Process pump-up montage of choice. It’s been hard all season. We’ve earned a couple days of soaking up the easy.