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Tim BontempsESPN
Before the Philadelphia 76ers meet with the Brooklyn Nets on Wednesday night to see who would finish atop the Eastern Conference at the end of the night, Sixers coach Doc Rivers was asked if getting the best seed in the East would make getting the best seed in the East a priority. made him. team this season.
“We really haven’t talked about it much,” said Rivers. “We’re only talking about winning games.”
Then the truth came out.
“Obviously it would be nice to have,” he said.
There is no doubt about the significance of Philadelphia’s 123-117 victory over the shorthanded Nets Wednesday night – one that put the Sixers firmly in the driving seat to claim first place in the Eastern Conference.
Philadelphia made it much more difficult than it took to get that win, almost a 22-point lead with eight minutes to go before holding on to win against the Brooklyn reserves, but in the end the Sixers took the win – one that moved them. a game for the Nets with 17 games left for both teams. It also placed the season series for Philadelphia, turning that one-game advantage into a two-game advantage.
“We made a lot of mistakes,” said Joel Embiid, who had his last dominant performance of the season with 39 points, 13 rebounds and two blocked shots in 33 minutes. “We turned the ball around defensively. We didn’t have the focus we had all night. That can’t happen when we’re a team that wants to compete for a championship.”
Frustrations at the end aside, the Sixers got what they wanted. And, coupled with the Nets dealing with an assortment of injuries and also facing a much more difficult remaining schedule (fourth-hardest) than the Sixers (seventh-easiest), the path is now officially clear for Philadelphia to fate in the East. .
[It’s] very important, ”said Ben Simmons. We want that one seed. “
The main reason is because of the much simpler path it carves out to escape the East – something the Sixers hope to do for the first time in 20 years. With three elite teams in the East – Philadelphia, Brooklyn and the Milwaukee Bucks – holding onto that best seed means you only need to beat one of those teams to make it to the NBA Finals.
And meeting them would also mean that you have home advantage in the final of the Eastern Conference. Conversely, finishing second or third probably means taking out two of the best teams to make it to the final, with one or both series coming with no home advantage.
But specifically for this Philadelphia team, there’s an added significance to retaining that advantage on the home field: The Sixers play better at home than any team in the league.
Since Embiid and Simmons started playing together in the 2017-18 season, the Sixers have gone 111-28 – a 79.9% win rate – in games at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia.
The league’s second-best team, the Denver Nuggets, have won just over 75% of their home games – and have the advantage of playing those games at higher altitudes.
“If you play in Philly, [the fans are] “I’m going to push you,” Embiid said. ‘They’re going to take you. They’re going to berate you. You have to come out and give 110 percent and just play really hard and give them everything you got. I feel like since I’ve been here in Philadelphia, that has played a big part in how dominant we have been at home. “
And while the ravenous Philadelphia fans have undoubtedly played a part in that success – and in particular clearly fueled Embiid, who has always fueled their energies – the Sixers were still a leading team of the Eastern Conference at 23 this season. -5. at home, even if those fans are largely kept away from the building.
“I think we feel comfortable at home,” Rivers said. “I think this year is surprising without the fans. I can understand with the fans, but without the fans we have had a lot of success too.”
That success continued Wednesday night – though it’s hard to take much away from a match where Kevin Durant, James Harden, LaMarcus Aldridge and Blake Griffin all wore street attire for Brooklyn. Kyrie Irving (37 points on 13-for-21 shooting, plus 9 assists) was brilliant, and DeAndre Jordan played as well as could be expected against Embiid.
Embiid was dominant, continuing his season-long parade to the foul line by going 10-for-11 from the charity line. It reminded us how dominant Embiid was against everyone else when he was on the pitch this season, and how he is perfectly suited to attack Brooklyn’s soft underbelly defensively.
But Embiid, as good as he is, isn’t the only thing driving Philadelphia’s success – and wasn’t the only one driving it Wednesday night. Tobias Harris played another high-impact, high-efficiency game (26 points on 11-for-17 shots), both of which were constants of him in what was easily his best NBA season. Simmons remains one of the league’s elite defenders, and Seth Curry and Danny Green delivered everything Philadelphia hoped they would do by swapping Josh Richardson and Al Horford for them in the off-season respectively.
As a result, that five-man unit is now 20-4 this season after Wednesday’s win, surpassing its opponents by 14 points per 100 possessions in nearly 500 minutes on the field. Meanwhile, George Hill – the main deadline pick-me-up for the team – still hasn’t played due to a broken bone in his hand before the deal was closed.
All of that gives Philadelphia confidence that it can finally break through and return to the championship round of the league. It took an important step towards that goal on Wednesday evening.
“All we need to do is arrange our business night in and night out,” Harris said. “We have to be up for the challenge every night.”