Worst. Game. Ever.
What is there to write and say at this point? You know what happened. A 26 point lead. Up by 24 with 14 minutes left in the entire game. It was supposed to be a bounce-back game after a disappointing Game 4 in Atlanta when they had an 18 point lead at one point.
We didn’t know it until the lead had been cut to single digits, but the 4th quarter turned out to be maybe the biggest collapse in 76ers franchise history. The story was similar to that of the previous game: The Hawks kept chipping away at the lead, while the Sixers stopped making shots.
Lou Williams, the ghost of Sixers past, suddenly became the Hawks best player in the fourth quarter by scoring 13 points. It seemed as though he took the ball down the court without passing it to anyone and making every single shot he took.
While Joel Embiid and Seth Curry were hot throughout the game, they started to cool off at the end and the rest of the team was contributing nothing. Suddenly Trae Young started to get hot and made every single shot took. The lead went up in smoke from the 20s, to the teens, to the 10s, to single digits. The pressure was on, and the Sixers were not prepared for the intensity.
Just as they did in Game 1 and Game 4, the Hawks embraced the moment and left the Sixers and their fans in complete and utter bewilderment. And Ben Simmons, don’t get me started. All of the talent and accolades Ben has is no longer worth having if he cannot make even a quarter of his free throw attempts. It’s over and time to move on, as Ben Simmons is better off being the 3rd best player on a title-contending team. It’s over for Tobias Harris too. As good of a season he’s had he CANNOT disappear and miss all these shots in the 4th quarter.
Atlanta sports are notorious for choking in the playoffs, but now the Hawks have shaken off that reputation with what they’ve done to the Sixers the past two games. The series is over. The Sixers have no chance to win Game 6 and Game 7 and if they do it will be a miracle. This is the type of loss that teams don’t recover from and major roster changes will be needed. As much as this adds to Doc Rivers’s reputation of his teams falling apart in the 2nd round of the playoffs, he probably deserves to remain as the head coach for the next few years since he’s still one of the better coaches in the league.
This loss feels worse than both Celtics losses in recent years and maybe even worse than the loss to the Raptors in 2019. The Sixers didn’t have home court advantage against Toronto and the best player of the series won it for them at the end. This year they were suppose to beat the Hawks and take on the real challenge in the Eastern Conference Finals, and they couldn’t even do that. Another season ended abruptly, another season wasted.
Take it away Layne,