April 18, 2024
Bill Streicher/USA TODAY Sports
Some thought of Nico Batum as salary filler in an underwhelming trade. On Wednesday night, he saved the Sixers' season.
The Sixers were on the verge of doing it. Despite an abominable first half in which they scored just 39 points, Philadelphia was one stop away from beating the Miami Heat and advancing to the NBA Playoffs. That's when the star of the night, first-year Sixers wing Nico Batum, who scored 20 points off the bench and knocked down six pivotal threes, turned to his coaching staff for guidance that helped him make his most pivotal play of the night.
The contents of that conversation: a prescient prediction of the play the Heat would run for guard Tyler Herro, who despite an eventual 4-for-14 shooting line from beyond the arc was Miami's best available three-point shooter.
"Coaches showed me that play on video like a minute before," Batum said. "We were expecting that play, for them to go around catch it and go right. Right away. That was the exact play they showed me like a minute before. So I was expecting it"
Nico Batum said postgame he was able to block Tyler Herro's 3 in the clutch because the Sixers coaching staff showed him the exact the play the Heat ended up running just a minute before.
— Daniel Olinger (@dan_olinger) April 18, 2024
"Coaches showed me that play literally like a minute before. So I was expecting that play." pic.twitter.com/pQmA1wMhdV
Just like that, a hilariously up-and-down game finished with the Sixers ahead, defeating Miami 105-104 and advancing to a matchup against the No. 2 seed New York Knicks in the first round of the Eastern Conference Playoffs. But the journey there was a bumpy one to say the least.
Miami scored just two points in the first five-plus minutes of action, but once they got going, it was the Sixers whose offense was disastrous. They scored just 22 points in a disastrous first quarter which featured seven turnovers, before things got even worse in the second quarter, where they scored only 17 points. Before the game, Sixers head coach Nick Nurse sounded prepared for the Heat to utilize a zone defense, something Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra often does in big games to throw off opposing offenses. But on the floor, Nurse's team looked ill-equipped to beat the zone, posting one of their worst collective offensive halves of the entire season at one of the worst possible times.
"It couldn't get worse," Batum said.
The biggest reason for the Sixers' struggles was the most noteworthy cause for concern: the reigning NBA MVP Joel Embiid, whose playoff struggles on the offensive end of the floor have been well-documented. Embiid looked flummoxed by the looks he was getting from Miami's defense, and his teammates followed suit.
Embiid eventually made key offensive plays in the final moments of the game. But for the vast majority of the contest, he was a shell of himself. That is why the team's most valuable player in their biggest win of the year was the 35 year-old Batum, who was a member of the Los Angeles Clippers when this season tipped off.
Batum realized during the second quarter, he said, that he was doing exactly what Miami wanted him to do: think. Batum decided, rather than trying to manipulate Miami's complex defense into generating perfect looks for Embiid or All-Star guard Tyrese Maxey, he would simply let it fly. That he did, launching 10 triples over the course of the game. Six of those shots went down, with five of those coming in the second half, after his epiphany of sorts.
Batum's 20 points was the most he has scored in a single game as a Sixer, and the most he has scored in a single NBA game in well over a calendar year.
On a night when Embiid was shaky, Maxey was not the best version of himself and Tobias Harris had critical blunders, leave it to Batum, perhaps the team's most underrated and versatile player, to step in and save the season.
"He obviously knew we needed some offense and needed to crack that zone with some perimeter shooting, so he found some areas to get to and he just kept pulling the trigger," Nurse said. "You want to talk about sparks?"
"He was big time," Maxey said of the 15-year veteran whose jack-of-all-trades nature has uplifted the Sixers. "Nico hit some big shots... he was probably the star of the night."
Batum has not had a game quite like this since joining the Sixers. The odds are that he never will again, at least not at this magnitude. But ever since the moment he first checked into a game as a member of the Sixers on Nov. 6, he has been an X-Factor, a two-way player extraordinaire, a star in his role.
"I'm a good shooter," Batum correctly proclaimed after Wednesday night's thrilling victory. He knocked down 39.9 percent of his three-point tries as a member of the Sixers in the regular season, and has hovered around or exceeded 40 percent from three-point range in each of the last four years.
Perhaps where Batum has made his largest impact on the Sixers, though, is the defensive end of the floor. He is the most versatile defensive player the team has had since Ben Simmons finished No. 2 in Defensive Player of the Year voting. As Maxey pointed out Wednesday night, Batum has defended tiny guards like Trae Young, and he has also manned the 7-foot-4 rookie phenom of the San Antonio Spurs, Victor Wembanyama.
Tonight, before Batum turned his attention to Herro and came up with the most crucial play of the night, he defended Miami's do-it-all superstar, former Sixer Jimmy Butler. Batum spent most of the second half defending Butler, who, between dealing with Batum and a knee injury, managed a measly 5-for-18 shooting line. Butler, known for raising his level of play in the postseason, failed to take over the game despite repeated attempts. While the extent of Butler's injury remains unknown, it is abundantly clear that Batum's pestering defense had a lot to do with his struggles.
"We tried to be aggressive with him," Batum said. "Nobody wanted to lose, and [the Heat] were aggressive in the first half. They were aggressive with us, attacking us. We just turned that around in the second half."
Maybe this is the year. Maybe it will just be another chapter in the long book of Sixers playoff failures in the Embiid era. But one thing is for sure: the season was saved Wednesday night, and the man responsible: Nico Batum.
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