In between the lines
What a difference a half of basketball can make. The Sixers seemed to be cruising along on their way to a 3-1 series lead, ready to validate that game one was a fluke. At that point, they had outright won or split 11 of the 14 quarters in the series. Then they let a desperate Hawks team tie up the series.
Mr Pessimistic (aka every Philadelphia dad) will tell you that this proves they need a more traditional closer and more players with an overall ability to create their own shot. They will also say that clearly Embiid is too injured to carry this team through playoffs and that Doc is no better than BB. The Ben haters will be out in full force, the Dwight bashers will tell you he cost us critical points and the George Hill search party should be kicking off. They let an Atlanta team shoot horrible from the field and still win. Yet another year of not reaching the ECF is ahead…
But then there’s glass half full guy, they are more rare, but do indeed exist. These Hawks are very strong at home and needed a historically bad half from Jo to eek out a must-win game. Tobi still played very strong (so strong that it would have made too much sense to let the ball find him down one with 15 seconds to go). Jo was clearly bad and something was not right, but he still fought his way to 20 boards and a helluva effort. Three games left and two are in Philly so we got this…
Where’s the truth? Sports imitating life here- it’s somewhere in the middle. It still seems more likely than not that the Sixers win this series, and their reward will be either a hobbled Nets team or a perplexing Bucks team.
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Dave Chappelle always makes me feel better. And so does the Vinsider.
The bottom line
Turning to Master Yoda here- “Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”
There’s fear alright- Jo appeared to have no legs and championship aspirations and that’s a really scary thought. It’s then easy to be furious that he is putting his best year together so this happens while the Nets are wounded. Why wouldn’t you hate this whiny Hawks team and hate that garbage injuries always seem to happen to us? Let’s not even talk about suffering.
Forgetting Master Yoda, have no fear about this Game 4 loss as we will bounce back thanks to our own Thy-master, Jo and Ben- officially named today three of the top defenders in the Association. And if there truly is a problem with Jo’s health moving forward, well at least we know how to do suffering the right way in Philly.
