We're All To Blame: Ranking Who's Most at Fault For The Sixers' Collapse
Time for some soul searching.
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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As is often the case with the Philadelphia 76ers -- maybe with sports fandom in general, who knows -- I asked for one thing and I did not get it. I said they could lose Game Six in Atlanta and I could ultimately understand and accept that, or they could win both Games Six and Seven and give us an Eastern Conference Finals appearance that would likely be meaningful only as a save point for their season to hopefully improve upon next year. Instead, they did the one thing I specifically instructed them not to do: Win Game Six only to force us to watch a Game Seven loss. At home. To the Hawks. Eliminating us in the second round, again. It's an apocalyptic scenario, and I do not feel fine about this particular end of the world. Jerks.
I do believe there is some version of a bright side to this Sixers series loss, and I'll get to parts of that soon enough, but make no mistake: This is the worst playoff loss in Process history. Worse at the end of the day than the two 20-point blown leads earlier in this series, worse than any part of the series sweep at the hands of the Celtics last year, worse than going down 3-0 to the C's in the Confetti Game in 2018, and far worse than the Kawhi four-bouncer in 2019 (which feels positively quaint right now). Maybe it's the worst loss in Sixers' playoff history; you'll have to consult the council elders about what it felt like to get swept in the first round in 1984 in what should have been a title defense year, or to lose to the Celtics in the '68 and/or '81 ECFs after going up 3-1 in both series, or to get closed out by the Lakers in the 1980 Finals by a rookie sensation with Kareem riding the pine. The team's been around for a while; there's options when it comes to an all-time low.
But for my Sixers-writing lifetime, it's this and it isn't particularly close. It was basically scripted for maximum disastrousness, since this game was in every conceivable way what everything good about this season had supposedly been leading up to for Philly. They ground their way through the regular season to get the 1 seed, managed to avoid the Heat and Celtics in the first round and the Nets and Bucks in the second round, and secured home court advantage in a building where they'd barely lost at all the past two seasons. They could not ask to be put in a better position than to play the Hawks in a Game Seven on their own floor for the chance to face an underwhelming Bucks team in the Conference Finals. It was all there for the taking if they could just play a normal closeout game. Instead, they got took.
And as is also often the case with the Philadelphia 76ers, the question of who's to blame has an easy answer: everyone. No one completely or even mostly escapes finger-pointing in this game or series, it's just a question of who shoulders what percentage of the burden. So that's what I've attempted to answer below, with a ranking of the personnel and string-pullers from least to most responsible for this series being the Game of Thrones Season Eight of Sixers playoff matchups. Every relevant Sixer except Danny Green is included -- and I probably could've thrown him in there for failing to contain Trae Young so miserably in Game One too, but eh, he left this team when they still had more than enough juice left to finish the job and I'm not quite in a nasty enough place to get on him for getting hurt.
You'll notice plenty of players who are not included, however -- the ones who play for the Atlanta Hawks. That's because while many of them proved individual nuisances over the course of this series, and their team identity certainly proved a mentally tougher one than our particular set of on-court folding chairs, I don't really blame the Atlanta Hawks collectively or individually for inflicting this misery upon us. They played well -- they are a good team with one very good star player -- and they deserved to advance over us. But I'm not holding John Collins or Danilo Gallinari or even Trae Young more responsible for this Sixers calamity than even the 12th man on our roster. The Hawks won this series, but not nearly as much as the Sixers lost it.
Anyway, read about our guys here one more time if you have the stomach, and then give yourself a good month off from this team. I still love most if not all of these guys, I still enjoyed our regular season and first round of this postseason tremendously, and I'll eventually still look forward to next season -- but we're gonna need a long taking-the-kids-to-our-sister's break after this to have any hope of salvaging the relationship and what has been so special about it. Here we go, from least-blamey to blamiest:
15. Mike Scott
Against all late-season odds, Mike Scott did not set foot on the floor in this series save for one Unmeaningful Minute in Game Two garbage time, so he nearly gets away here entirely. Still, if he could've shot competently enough this season to give us a small-ball stretch-five option as an alternative to Dwight Howard minutes when Dwight was in the throes of his Electrified Fooling Machine routine, it certainly would've helped. Plus, no one else seems to have been up for hitting the game-winning corner three in Game Four.
14. Tyrese Maxey
He had an unquestionably bad Game Seven -- just two points in 14 minutes, poor defensive rotations, at least one absolutely galling turnover trying to get a pass to Seth Curry in the corner. But of course a normal top-seeded team wouldn't have needed so much or even really anything from late-first-round rookie Tyrese Maxey in the first place, and the fact that he defibulated the offense in Game Six means he's pretty close to off the hook for a no-show in this one, no matter how poorly he played. He was great and he's gonna be great. Go backpacking or something the next few weeks, Tyrese, clear your head a little. Then get back in the gym and get yourself ready to take home that Las Vegas Summer League MVP in August.
13. Seth Curry
Tough to have to rank Seth Curry on this list at all, because he was the lone Sixer that over the course of seven games you could say dramatically overperformed compared to what was expected of him. He hit 30 three-pointers in this series, at a 60% rate! He scored from two pretty competently! He even got to the line on occasion! Absolute superhero shit, the specific likes of which the Sixers have never really had before -- making the fact that he's under contract for a dirt-cheap rate the next two years one of the best reasons for long-term franchise optimism. And yet, he got absolutely bodied by Kevin Huerter in this game and multiple others, the good-not-great Hawks wing scoring at will against him, doing to our weakest defender what we never figured out how to do to Trae Young. Still an absolute Morey heist, and an important part of whatever the Sixers' immediate future holds, but one who showed you unignorable amounts of why he's never been more than a part-timer before.
12. The Refs
Philly fan ire for the refs this postseason felt even higher than usual, and it certainly seemed like our guys got boned on a number of major no-calls and uncharitable 50/50 whistles in this game and most others this series. But then again, Shake Milton scored in the final minute on one of the most obvious up-and-down travels I've ever seen, and nobody seemed to even care enough to consider reviewing it. That alone was unlikely to make a difference, but it was a valuable reminder that when the refs are bad, they usually end up being bad enough on both sides in time. A convenient, fun, and often logical scapegoat, but not actually one of the bigger villains here.
11. Daryl Morey
Obviously, Morey is on the very shortlist of the biggest reasons we were in any sort of conversation for legitimate contention this season, and his three major draft-night moves -- dealing Al Horford for Danny Green and Josh Richardson for Seth Curry, as well as nabbing Maxey with the No. 21 pick -- all played huge parts in getting this team back in the groove after what seemed at the time to be a permanently vibe-killing end to the Bubble Restart. But his inability to land this team that competent stretch five on the cheap was a real blemish, and putting all his trade deadline eggs in Kyle Lowry's gigantic ass-shaped basket and then coming away with George Hill instead obviously did not end up being what this team needed. It's forgivable for a mostly successful first season in the new digs, but all misses reverberate like late-'00s WFC rims when the margins between unremarkable victory and calamitous failure are this skinny.
10. Dwight Howard
A lot of folks would probably have Dwight higher here just based on how destructive he was to the team with his all-elbows clumsiness in this and a couple other of their losses this series, which is fair. My counter is that I basically saw and see Dwight as the veteran version of Tyrese in this series -- we never should have been relying on him in the first place. He was a valuable regular season weapon, but there was no way he was ever going to hold up as a rotation regular particularly deep into the playoffs. That Daryl never found and Doc never developed an alternative option is equally on both men -- but not particularly on Dwight, who played his part to perfection, and then was kept as Main Cast a series too long when he should've been at most a sporadic special guest appearance.
9. Tobias Harris
Man, we were so close. So close. It's probably telling that a large part of me still wants to do the Tobias apology anyway, because I think he was mostly very good in this series. He scored 20-plus points in all but one contest, and by the end of the series, he had studied Trae Young's dance steps well enough to know how to stay with him without stepping on his feet -- a major part in holding the Hawks' offensive engine to a putrid 5-23 shooting night. He had a great regular season. He was great against Washington. He was a legitimate second scorer on a team where he was never supposed to be more than a third (or even fourth) option. He's proven me wrong in most of the ways that count.
And yet. The 24 and 14 line in this one -- and in maybe one or two of those other 20-plus-point nights, too -- covers up a lot of poor half-court decision making, hesitation from beyond the arc, and stupefying shot-missing. It was hard not to lose count of the number of bunnies Tobi flubbed in this one -- look-ahead transition feeds, short half-court push shots against a defensive mismatch, and one very loud putback dunk attempt, among others -- and each one seemed to be a crucial piece of momentum that the Sixers lost and would never get back as a result.
I don't really blame him for this loss, and I can even forgive his historic no-show in Game Five given how consistent he'd been for the team to that point. But the guy who closed out the Jazz for us in the regular season, the guy who hit the cold-blooded game-winner against the Lakers, the guy who for most of the season was our true Plan B for nights when Joel was lagging late -- that just wasn't the guy we saw down the stretch in Games Four through Seven of this series. And we kinda needed him to be.
8. Joel Embiid
Right in the middle of the pack feels about right for Joel. On the one hand, he was supernaturally brilliant through the first three games of this series -- as well as the first halves of Game Four and Game Five, and even stretches in Game Seven -- dominating the Hawks on a torn meniscus, legitimately making a claim to being the best basketball player in the universe. On the other hand, he's the Sixers' best player, and he ultimately wasn't consistent, tough, or great enough to finish the job. His 0-fer meltdown in the second half of Game Four will haunt me forever. His mental unraveling and inability to suture the hemorrhaging in Game Five wasn't much better. And in Game Seven, despite some stunning shot-making, his lack of defensive focus, his inability to really punish the Hawks' bigs down low, and his looseness with the ball -- including the final-minute live-ball turnover that sealed the Sixers' fate -- were just unacceptable from a team's best player and leader.
Embiid is still undeniably more solution than problem, and anyone who suggests otherwise probably isn't worth giving too much time or thought to. He played MVP-caliber basketball this regular season, and for most of this postseason as well. Hell, if he doesn't have that awkward landing in Washington, maybe he doesn't have those ineffective stretches in this series that ended up making the difference in a couple games. But we have seven years' worth of evidence now to suggest it's always going to be something with Embiid health-wise -- and if he's in the MVP conversation, than he has to be held to MVP standards, and that includes providing the kind of intangible leadership that keeps a team from blowing major second-half leads or letting a close Game Seven slip through their fingers, even when physically compromised. This was easily Joel's best postseason showing to date, but ultimately it still wasn't good enough -- and like everyone else, he's got real work to do.
7. Matisse Thybulle
Yes, it was a very bad foul, one that all but drowned the Sixers when it was looking like they might have one more shot to get their heads above water. And yes, he missed an open three that could've jacked the lead to seven -- unfathomably high for a game this tight -- just a few minutes earlier. Those may make him one of the game's primary goats to some, and I guess they have a point. But he was also one of the Sixers' only real sources of energy in the second half with his defensive playmaking and transition explosiveness -- actually slamming home a contested dunk when nobody else on the team could seem to make a shot from within three feet of the basket. And he's still just a second-year player, proving vital on a team that still doesn't have quite enough offensive firepower to make up for his obvious shortcomings. (He was 5-14 from three in this series btw -- not what you want but hardly a total lost cause.)
Hopefully the team can fit him in lineups that are a little less spiky next year, and hopefully he works to sand down the admittedly rougher parts of his game, on both sides of the ball. I remain about as excited for Matisse's future on this team as I am for anyone.
6. Furkan Korkmaz
Again, I don't relish being too hard on Furkey from Turkey for being thrust into a role that shouldn't have been his in the first place, once Danny Green was lost to injury for the series. But the bottom line is we needed at least one Furkan Game in his four starts, and we got zero -- particularly not in Game Seven, when he went 1-5 from deep, struggled to cover the Hawks' pick-and-pop game and just generally added little on either side of the ball. (Of course, he somehow ended up a +5 for the night, best of any Sixer.) He may have cost himself some money this offseason with his inability to step up in this series, but he'll still probably price himself out of a Sixers return, which likely makes this his Philly swansong. If so, a tough way to end what's been one of the more fun and unpredictable relationships we've had with a late-Process Sixer.
5. Shake Milton
It certainly didn't help that he was used so haphazardly, inserted into the rotation like an eephus pitch at the most seemingly random times -- ranging from moments when we just needed a jolt of X-factor energy from the bench unit to legitimately crucial late-game stretches of tightly contested games. It worked once, in a temporarily series-saving Game Two performance, and then never again -- as Shake was otherwise an absolute mess in this series, as he was for the entire Washington series, as he was for most of the second half of the regular season. We might never totally understand what went so fundamentally wrong with Shake Milton that his season sunk from Sixth Man of the Year candidate to end-of-the-bench novelty in a matter of months, but man would reversing the trajectory on that be huge for next season, because that reliably above-average guard play could've made all of the difference in this series. Still rooting for you to get yourself right, Shake.
4. George Hill
I remember getting the feeling towards the end of the regular season of feeling like George Hill should have been contributing more to the Sixers than he actually was. But that could still largely be explained away at the time: He was coming back from injury, while finding his footing and figuring out his role on a new team. But we'd see the benefits of George Hill -- a combo guard who could hold up on defense at the highest level, run the offense when required, and hit some threes at a high clip when the ball was swung to him -- in the playoffs, where he'd offer valuable veteran stability and experience from his many postseason runs with the Spurs, Pacers and Bucks. Eventually, that guy was bound to show up.
Well, maybe he would have if the Sixers got to the conference finals and beyond, but I suppose we'll never know. The George Hill who did show up was solid if unspectacular on defense, and an absolute bagel on the offensive end. Nobody was expecting him to be prime (or even aging) Lou Williams off the bench scoring the ball, but Williams scored nearly as many points in the fourth quarter of Game Five (13) as George Hill did for the entire seven-game series (17). For all that Matisse Thybulle's lack of an outside stroke may handicap his ceiling as a core NBA contributor; Matisse both made and attempted more threes (5-14) in this series than George Hill (2-8), and shot a much higher percentage (36% to 25%).
Whether he's cooked or disengaged -- or just far more compromised by his earlier thumb injury than Morey realized when he traded for him -- Hill was an absolute on-court flop in this series, and obviously whatever vetty intangibles he brought to the proceedings did not lead to particularly tangible results. I still think the price for Kyle Lowry at the trade deadline was higher than we should have paid, and Hill should have been a decent enough backup option. But we'll always have to wonder a little what this series would've looked like with a proven championship-caliber point guard and leader in our backcourt mix, rather than a guy who never looked like he was doing anything but a halfhearted impression of veteran help, based on a vague memory of what' it’s supposed to look like.
3. Us
You didn't think we were getting away on this one, did you? No, as always, we share as much of the blame for our team's failure as just about anyone. Whatever energy and/or karma we needed to keep this series from going all the way left, we were roundly unable to summon it, and when our guys started getting tight, we only ever seemed to respond by getting even tighter. Maybe it was too much to ask after all we'd been through in this series, but I'd hoped that the WFC crowd tonight would be able to push through the unbearable tension and remorseless mini-momentum swings of the game and still be a real presence throughout this one. Unfortunately, by the late third it seemed like all you could really hear was the anxiety.
Perhaps we should've committed to booing earlier -- I wanted us to bring out a purposefully shitty bell ringer to really bring that edge out of the home crowd early, and hoped we could maintain the weird energy from there. Or maybe we should've focused on going in harder on the individual Hawks, beyond the impossibly lame balding chants and the less objectionable (but still not particularly inspired) "FUCK TRAE YOUNG!" shout-alongs. And certainly we weren't helped by the fact that every two good Sixers plays in a row was answered by a head-smackingly easy Hawks basket or forced turnover, never letting us really find a groove for the evening. But when a team loses three out of four games at home in a playoff series they should win, the fanbase has got to take a long, hard look in the mirror as well.
Maybe we should start by banning me -- for tweeting that accidentally self-fulfilling win six / lose seven prophecy, or for pointing out the series' foreboding echoes of the 2019 Toronto seven-gamer, or for generally being a coward who couldn't even stand to think about the Sixers for most of the last week. I certainly didn't help!
2. Doc Rivers
It takes a lot for me to blame the coach, but Doc Rivers in this series was a great argument for a team having separate head coaches for the regular season and postseason. Everything that made him great for the Sixers when they were racking up Ws from December to May -- his willingness to play to his best players' explicit strengths and not force them out of their comfort zones, his trust in the consistency of a bench with a deep rotation, his general solidness in the face of adversity -- made him a liability in June, as Ben Simmons' comfort zone shrank to virtual nothingness, his deep rotation left multiple players more exposed than they need be, and his own constancy failed to snap the team out of several late-game stupors. Many of Doc's individual decisions I thought were either defensible or blown out of proportion, but taken as a whole, it's fairly undeniable that he didn't put this team in the best position to win this game or this series.
Plenty of folks will be calling for Doc's head this week, and it's tough to know how to respond to that. It'd be a disaster in practical terms to fire a coach new one year into a fairly pricey contract -- let alone one who stewarded a fantastic turnaround regular season for the Sixers, and is generally well-liked by players and around the league. But after yet another historic collapse, following a Clippers tenure in which he oversaw multiple series losses from up 3-1, the evidence is mounting that Doc is simply not the guy you want calling the shots when the games matter most, no matter how helpful he is in the regular season. Ultimately, I'd expect Morey to focus on rebuilding the roster rather than the coaching staff, and hoping that an easier time with the former in the playoffs makes for less issues with the latter. Anything's on the table, though, and Daryl's fired successful coaches before when he just doesn't think there's a future there, so he probably won't stand on formalities with Doc either.
(But I'm telling you, goddamn it: bullpen coaches! Think about how much simpler guys like Doc Rivers and Mike Budenholzer's lives and legacies would be if they only had to worry about the first 82 (err, 72) games of the season?? Then get 'em out of there and hand the reins to an assistant (like the Clips did with Tyronn Lue, who had a so-so first regular season coaching in L.A. but now has them in their first Conference Finals in franchise history). Unlikely that such a massive paradigm shift would arrive in the NBA soon enough to save Doc in Philly, but man, some franchise needs to give this a shot eventually.)
1. Ben Simmons
In a way, you have to appreciate just how perfectly Ben Simmons crystallized his reaching the point of no return in this game. When he maneuvered his way around Danilo Gallinari on a crucial fourth-quarter possession with the Sixers down two, for what appeared to be a wide-open, game-tying dunk -- and then inexplicably dished it to a cutting-but-contested Matisse, who instead got a pair of free throws of which there was no chance in the world of him hitting both -- it was as perfect a demonstration you could ask for of just how deep in his head he'd gotten, and how much the Sixers were suffering as a result. Real show-don't-tell shit, y'know? My 10th grade Language Arts teacher was undoubtedly beaming.
You don't need me to tell you that Ben Simmons is not long for the Sixers at this point. Even if he'd played well -- or at least, less weird -- and the Sixers had lost anyway, it'd probably still be the end of the Embiid-Simmons pairing, because that's just how much they needed to win (and should have won) this series. But with him crawling further into his shell with each game, with his ineffectiveness on offense having trickle-down effects over the entire roster, and with even his defense getting increasingly sloppy, there was no doubt that he was going to end up being the No. 1 scapegoat for this disastrous playoff loss. If there's an argument that he doesn't deserve it, I don't really see it. (Joel probably agrees.)
Trading Ben in the offseason will be tricky, but I don't think it'll be as tough as some have begun to paint it. Yes, his value dropped precipitously this series, yes, his shortcomings were exposed in fairly horrific fashion, yes, many fanbases will recoil at the idea of their team going anywhere near him at this point. But he's still a 25-year-old megatalent, a Defensive Player of the Year runner-up just a season removed from being All-NBA, and there's a real argument to be made that on a team with less post play and more shooting -- perhaps a less-coddling coach -- his offensive drawbacks would be less crippling. After watching this series, you might hear that argument and die cackling; understandably so. But there will be GMs who view him as a buy-low opportunity -- which Morey knows as well as anyone, since he'd probably be one of those suitors if he wasn't the guy giving Ben up. Considering he was able to get off the Horford contract and get a starter-caliber player back for him, it's safe to assume he'll be able to get real stuff back for Simmons -- not Harden or Lillard-caliber real stuff at this point, regrettably, but real stuff nonetheless.
It's very sad for me. Simmons at the peak of his game was about as majestic and exciting a do-everything-except-one player as I've ever rooted for, and while the guy we saw in this series was hardly unrecognizable from the Ben Simmons we've seen for four years prior, it's a shame that this is the guy that everyone will remember now -- and not, say, the guy who led the Sixers on a 16-game winning streak to close the season and then dominated the Heat in his first-ever playoff series as a rookie, or the guy who elevated his game with Joel out in the pre-pandemic 2019-'20 season and led the Sixers on a 7-3 stretch while posting the best numbers of his career, or the guy who hung 42 on the Jazz just this year. He's never been a perfect or even just a not-frustrating player to watch, but he's still the kind of prime young talent that you almost never want to give up on until you absolutely have to.
But now, the Sixers may absolutely have to give up on him. Aside from the entire fanbase turning on him, it's just hard to imagine how his teammates could trust him at this point -- particularly Embiid, who desperately could've used whatever help Simmons could have offered in shouldering the offensive load, and who instead just saw this guy cluttering his driving space and missing free throws and making absolutely nothing easier for him on that side of the ball. Their defensive fit remains special, but their offensive fit just looks to be untenable at this point; even if Simmons attacked with newfound aggressiveness next regular season, it would still be hanging over both of them that at any point when shit got too real, Simmons would be at risk of vanishing again. Honestly, it's probably unfair to even ask them to try to make it work together again after an experience this scarring.
In ways, it's exciting to think what a Simmons-less offense could mean for the Sixers. Could Embiid become an effective pick-and-roll partner, maybe even a lob threat for the first time in his career playing alongside the right guard? How deadly could his two-man game with Curry, which really shined under the spotlight of this series, be with three shooters dotting the perimeter around them? Could you play Thybulle, as uniquely disruptive a perimeter defender as exists in the current NBA, 30 minutes a night if you don't need to saddle him with another non-shooter for so many of those minutes? How close to ready will Maxey be to take on greater lead guard responsibilities in his sophomore year without being automatic No. 2 on the depth chart? It's all tantalizing stuff, even before you get to thinking about what scoring guards they could also potentially add in a Simmons trade -- a conversation for another day, though one we will undoubtedly have a truly insufferable amount this offseason.
Make no mistake, though: The Sixers will miss Simmons in many respects when he's gone. Of course there's the defensive versatility and tenacity, which only a handful of players in modern NBA history have possessed on the same level, and which plays a critical role in the Sixers' current team identity. But there's also his transition and semi-transition attacking, and his ability to exploit mismatches, all of which -- particularly when he's willing to look at the rim -- opens things up for shooters and drivers and puts pressure on a defense in countless little ways that ultimately ends up breaking a lot of lesser opponents. Even tonight, in the game that may ultimately prove his professional undoing, he had 13 assists and just two turnovers, getting his teammates a lot of their easiest and best offensive looks of the game, despite being a non-entity in the half-court for much of the contest. He’s gifted enough to make greatness look incidental, maybe even accidental at times.
Still, if there was one good thing that came of this devastating series loss, it was the clarity it affords us in being able to see now that whatever Morey's vision is for the best version of this team -- centered around Joel as a perennial MVP candidate -- it just can't also include Simmons anymore. Even Detrick thinks so. He's made things too difficult in the playoffs too many times, and not only shown no willingness or ability to grow beyond that player to whatever version of himself might be able to get the Sixers to that next level, but actively regressed at the biggest moments. Getting rid of him won't be anywhere near a cure-all -- the Sixers wouldn't have gotten swept by Boston last year if it was that simple -- but it's a necessary first step to building a truly championship-caliber roster around our transcendent two-way big man. And hopefully, one of these years, actually getting out of the fucking second round.