In their 82nd and final game of the 2023-24 regular season, the Joel-Embiid-less Sixers played host to the eliminated Brooklyn Nets Sunday afternoon, with plenty of playoff seeding implications ready to be decided during the day.
Embiid was ruled out due to injury management – likely a precautionary move more than anything else – and despite a slow start, the Sixers were able to take care of business, knocking off the Nets 107-86 to finish the season with a 47-35 record.
Miami is up next, and the Heat will be coming to the Wells Fargo Center.
For the last time this regular season, here is what jumped out from this one:
First Quarter
• With Embiid resting, there was a lot of expectations on the shoulders of Tyrese Maxey, and the first-time All-Star guard delivered in the opening minutes of the final game of his fourth NBA season. Maxey scored a dozen points in his nine first quarter minutes, and looked as aggressive as ever in doing it. In front of a crowd that featured Allen Iverson, who Sixers head coach Nick Nurse told reporters on
Friday has been one of the many voices imploring Maxey to seek out his own shots as much as possible, Maxey did a tremendous job being exactly as assertive as Nurse has wanted him to be all season long.
• Nurse returned to a strategy he utilized during much of Embiid's two-plus month absence, starting Mo Bamba over Paul Reed and allowing the Sixers' typical backup center to remain in a reserve role. Bamba swatted two shots in his opening stint of play in the first quarter.
• Maxey's growth on offense has been well-documented, but the progress he has made on the defensive end of the floor in the latter half of the year has been impressive as well. A sign of the increased trust Nurse and his staff have in Maxey as a defender: he was tasked with the assignment of defending Brooklyn's star wing and leading scorer, Mikal Bridges. In a game that definitively meant something for the Sixers, Maxey was given the most critical defensive assignment.
Second Quarter
• Tobias Harris has struggled mightily for much of the second half of the season, sparking many to believe he should be removed from the starting lineup. Like it or not, Harris being benched seems like a near impossibility, as the Sixers attempt to optimize the 19th-highest paid player in the entire NBA. Harris was not perfect early on in this one, missing a few shots he normally knocks down and committing a silly turnover, but on the whole, he was quite effective as a scorer, and that is exactly what the Sixers needed from him with Embiid sidelined.
• With Embiid, De'Anthony Melton and KJ Martin out, it seemed like one of the Sixers' recently-converted former two-way players now on standard NBA deals – Jeff Dowtin Jr. or Ricky Council IV – would receive some run as the 10th man in the rotation. But Nurse trimmed his rotation to nine and played neither of the two: given the implications of the game, shortening the rotation by one is more than understandable.
Third Quarter
• Kyle Lowry has not done a lot of scoring recently, but that does not inhibit his ability to impact the game in other ways. Lowry was terrific in this game despite doing nothing of note as a scorer. He did an outstanding job setting up his teammates for good looks, regardless of whether or not he collected assists (in this one, he often did). Additionally, he spent the vast majority of the game guarding up on the defensive end – that is, defending players much bigger than himself. Lowry has been one of the best guards in all of basketball at that skill for most of his playing career, and even ate age 38, that has not changed. If the Sixers make a deep postseason run this year, Lowry will be a major reason why.
• Bamba does not figure to be part of the playoff rotation barring an injury. Embiid and Reed likely have the 48 center minutes nailed down at this juncture, but it certainly did not hurt to see him play some of his best basketball of the season down the stretch, and that continued Sunday. Bamba did not just swat multiple shots around the rim and man the paint at a satisfactory level. He did a solid job on the glass, where he has occasionally struggled this season, and finished around the rim on multiple occasions.
Fourth Quarter
• It is unclear what Cam Payne's role is going to be once the postseason arrives: Maxey and Lowry are entrenched in the starting lineup, and a healthy Melton figures to slot in ahead of Payne on the guard depth chart as well -- as will Buddy Hield. But even if Payne is a situational / emergency piece from here on out, his regular season effort has been admirable since first donning a Sixers jersey. Sixers President of Basketball Operations Daryl Morey took a lot of heat for making the deal that sent Patrick Beverley to Milwaukee for Payne and a future second-round pick, but particularly with the Sixers bringing Lowry into the fold, Payne has likely given the Sixers more value over the last two months than Beverley would have, thanks to his constant motion and consistent production on the offensive end of the floor.
• Maxey led the way for the Sixers offensively, but they handled the Nets with ease because of an excellent defensive showing. Granted, the Sixers were facing a short-handed, eliminated Nets team without any incentive to win the game. But still, they were both cohesive and disciplined on the defensive end of the floor, allowing them to run away with the game despite an offensive showing that was decent but nothing special.
Sixers headed to Play-In Tournament
Sunday's action, however, was always about more than just this Sixers-Nets game. In particular, the team had its eyes on the Magic-Bucks and Hawks-Pacers matchups, as they had direct impacts on the Sixers' playoff seeding. In order to avoid being the No. 7 seed and participating in the Play-In Tournament, the Sixers needed one of the Magic or Pacers to lose.
Unfortunately for the Sixers, neither team did.
The Pacers bludgeoned Atlanta early on, and ended up handling their business with ease. The Magic trailed Milwaukee by eight at the end of the first quarter in Orlando, but it went downhill from there for the Bucks, who ended up losing a game in which a win would have clinched them the No. 2 seed in the Eastern Conference.
And so, on Wednesday night, the Sixers will play host to the Miami Heat in the 7-8 game of the Play-In Tournament, with the winner being awarded the No. 7 seed. The loser of that game will play the winner of the 9-10 game between the Chicago Bulls and Atlanta Hawks, and the winner of that game will be the No. 8 seed, while the loser will be eliminated.
One win away from the playoffs. Two losses away from going home. This is the new life of the Sixers.
Bill Streicher/USA TODAY Sports
