Should've Won That Fucking Game
Should've Won That Fucking Game
Bad loss, moral and otherwise. And once again, I can't quite get my head around how it happened.
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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The most merciful thing about last postseason was that I had a half-work, half-birthday trip to L.A. planned for the morning after Game 7 ended -- just hours later by the time I was done writing about it. My girlfriend was (justifiably) worried the loss would make me a miserable bastard for the entirety of our quasi-vacation, but in reality it was just what I needed to at least pretend to be a person again: Putting 3000 miles between myself and both the scene of the crime and the New York couch where I watched it unfold, as well as anyone who might try to talk to me about it. I zoned out on the conference finals. I checked Twitter sparingly, at least by my certifiable standards. I probably touched grass at some point. It was nice.
"You wanna go to California tomorrow?" I asked my girlfriend after Nuggets-Sixers ended. Confused but sympathetic, she agreed. I'm out, y'all. See you on Pacific time.
Chances are I’m not actually on the other side of the country by the time you read this, at which point I’ll hopefully be able to acknowledge that Monday's defeat wasn't actually as bad a loss as Game 7. But it's the first time since then that the Sixers played a game where I felt they absolutely had to win -- and one that they absolutely should have won -- and they just didn't. Just didn't do it. No win. Bad loss, moral and otherwise. And once again, I can't quite get my head around how it happened.
The Nets loss was probably more meaningful, and it was certainly more deflating given how much we had all been howling at the moon for the first five games of the James Harden era. My Nets fan co-worker predictably complained about the surfeit of dip on Sixers fans' collective chip before that game; after that and after the razor-thin Magic win that followed, said chip was pretty close to bone dry. Still, we were 6-1 with Harden -- even if it was a fucking loud 1 -- and Monday night felt like a good opportunity for a bounceback performance. After all, we escaped with the win in Orlando, maybe figured out some things, and seemed likely to come back with newfound focus (if significantly less bravado) in one of the most anticipated regular-season matchups of the NBA season: Jokic vs. Embiid, possibly for the inside track on this closest of MVP races. If the Sixers could win this one convincingly, I could shrug off the Brooklyn loss pretty easily.
And that's exactly what happened, for about 15 minutes. Embiid dominated for the first quarter while Jokic struggled uncharacteristically. The recipe for beating the Sixers the last couple months has been to bury them early and hope they get exhausted before they can finish digging themselves out, but this time they were the ones standing over the grave. A Georges Niang three made it a 19-point lead in the second, and it felt like the juju had flipped. I really thought we could just kind of lean on them from there -- this just wasn't the first act in any script I'd read for a 2021-'22 Sixers loss.
Then we coughed the advantage up. A soft third foul on Joel sat him for the final two minutes off the half and let Jokic get loose against the wax statue of DeAndre Jordan, cutting the lead to five, and then Jo went ice-cold to start the third, allowing Denver to take the lead back outright. But then Embiid settled in, Harden got his own game going, Jokic looked hesitant and the rest of the Nuggets roster came up swagless. A recaptured seven-point lead going into the fourth with Jokic on the bench and Embiid on the floor seemed like a good time to put the game away. Nope! Austin Rivers, DeMarcus Cousins and Bones Hyland -- good ol' Bonesy -- combined for six threes in five minutes, and the Sixers were playing from behind again. Mini-runs were exchanged, and a couple times it looked like Philly regained the momentum, but never for long enough. A final Georges Niang double-brick sealed the W for Denver. I put my head in my shirt.
I hated what happened against Brooklyn, but it's not like I struggled to explain it. What hurt about the Brooklyn games was how predictable in retrospect -- maybe even in futurespect -- the way it unfolded was: The Nets showing up with everything in the world to prove, Harden no-showing, Maxey getting swallowed up by the moment, and Embiid proving increasingly unable to hold off the onslaught on his own, all while Doc as always chose the path of least adjustment. It sucked but it felt eminently plausible.
This one I still don't get. Their stat lines may look close enough to even, but Sixers fans will go to their (perhaps rapidly approaching) graves swearing that Embiid outplayed Jokic in this one: Embiid scored at will for a lot of the game regardless of who was on the court, while Jokic mostly got his licks in with Joel on the bench -- and the Nuggets biggest surge came with Cousins keying Denver's attack, as the Joker spent most of the fourth chilling on the sidelines. Really, Jokic did nothing down the stretch of this one; he registered three points and zero assists, with the three points coming on one end-of-game FT with the outcome already decided and one sprawling circus shot that was 95% him trying unsuccessfully to draw a sixth foul on Joel. And honestly, those fouls he did draw on Jo -- a couple pretty soft whistles, all told -- were his most consequential plays of the game; his only way to get the edge on Joel was to prod Doc into getting him off the floor altogether.
Not that Jokic wasn't still good -- 22-13-8-2-2 on efficient shooting is nothing to brush off, particularly in a W -- but you'd figure that if the Nuggets were gonna steal this one in Philly, it'd be because he played the Big Bad Indefatigable MVP propelling his undermanned team to victory, while Embiid mostly shrank in the spotlight. It certainly wasn't that: Embiid's 34 points felt enormous, his defense was mostly superlative, and despite his five turnovers (matched by Jokic), he made some excellent reads with the ball on the move. And it wasn't his new running mate letting him down either: Harden had 24-9-11 on good efficiency, controlling the game the way a point guard should, largely taking the game over in the third, and getting to the line while remaining dangerous even when not getting the benefit of the whistle. Maxey showed up with 19 points, Matisse was everywhere on defense, Tobias hit a shot or two. All of that plus a dynamite first quarter and a good-not-great Jokic performance should've added up to this being an easy, MVP-cinching win for Joel and the Sixers.
So did we really lose this game just because Niang, ballsy shotmaker to end all Sixers ballsy shotmakers, went 2-12 from the field and whiffed on the two biggest open shots of the game? Because DeAndre Jordan was busy wondering about the accuracy of Jason Clarke's portrayal of Jerry West in Winning Time while his man was busy cutting for easy Jokic layup feeds? Because Danny Green, in his week lost to a lacerated finger, forgot how the one thing he should never do when receiving the ball behind the arc is pump-fake, dribble in and attempt a long pull-up two or (gasp, shriek, convulse) running floater?? It certainly appears so: Their bench outscored ours 48 to 14 for the game, and 28 to 3 -- what the fuck -- in the fourth quarter. Our stars played well enough to win the game, it was the reserves -- and, you could certainly argue if you were so inclined, our coach's deployment of said reserves -- that cost us this one.
That explanation isn't really satisfying, though. Yes, role players occasionally let you down -- which is why they're role players -- and stars can have good games and still come up short. But if there was ever a game you'd want your stars to dig deep within themselves and find a way to just fucking carry the humps on the court with them over the goal line, this would be the one -- and they couldn't. And they were hardly perfect: Embiid missed a bunny that should've tied this one late and a wide open dunk led to one of Bones Hyland's 17 threes earlier in the quarter, while Harden had a pass picked off in the final minute that could've sealed Philly's fate even earlier. If Embiid doesn't pick up a couple avoidable charges, maybe the cheap calls on him guarding Jokic don't make a difference. If Harden can keep things together while Embiid sits the final two minutes of the first half, maybe the momentum never swings Denver's way in the first place. Even with their 6-9 guys treating the not-WFC court as their own collective litter box, the Sixers should not have lost this goddamn game. They shouldn't have. And they can't keep losing games like this. Having Harden and Embiid means you don't have excuses for losing that game anymore.
So whatever. Embiid didn't clinch MVP on Monday, but he didn't let it slip away either: Both Denver and Philly fans can go to sleep thinking their guy proved definitively that they were the superior player while the rest of the NBA world mostly calls it a draw and curses both fanbases for being insufferable pricks. Embiid still seems to be the odds-on favorite at betting sites; assuming he keeps up this level of play and scoring and keeps the Sixers afloat against a tough remaining schedule, he should probably remain as such. The Sixers are now 6-2 with James Harden, which is totally acceptable. Our team is flawed as hell but as dangerous as anyone; if we get to the playoffs healthy I still like our chances just fine.
And really, it's not the losing that hurts with this one -- it's the not winning. It's the not getting to crown Joel with four weeks to go still in the season. It's the not recapturing the beautiful vibes of that fabled Honeymoon Period of just a week ago, the not getting any precious dip back on our now frustratingly plain chip. It's the not getting to unclench our gut for the next two days before we have to go to Cleveland and try again to recapture what we've lost. It's the not feeling that finally, after all these years and all these false starts, we finally have a team that doesn't force us to stomach losses as brutal and inconceivable as this.