Blown calls, bad turnovers doom Sixers in heartbreaking loss to the Los Angeles Clippers

Overview

• The Sixers led by as many as 15 points in the first half.
• Kawhi Leonard’s 10 fourth quarter points, including two and-1 conversions in the final minute, fueled Los Angeles’ comeback.
• Referee Kevin Scott said after the game that a foul should have been called on Kelly Oubre Jr’s potential game-winning drive at the buzzer.

The Philadelphia 76ers lost a heart breaker Wednesday night in south Philadelphia, falling to the Los Angeles Clippers 108-107 in a game that has already seen the referees admit that a game-changing foul should have been called, and one that will receive even more scrutiny when the league’s Last Two minute report comes out later today.

The Sixers were in control of the game for most of the night, building up a 15-point first half lead thanks to a tenacious defensive effort that saw the Clippers shoot just 8-26 from the field in the first 15 minutes of play. The Clippers were able to trim that lead down to six at halftime, and the two teams spent most of the second half in nip-and-tuck game, but one that the Sixers held the lead for the majority of the way. In fact, Leonard’s game-winner matched the Clippers’ largest lead of the night at 1.

But with the Sixers up 104-101 with a minute left to play, shit got weird. And controversial.

It all started when Nic Batum sent an uncontested inbounds pass to Tyrese Maxey, who started stumbling when he seemingly tripped over the foot of teammate Kelly Oubre Jr coming off of a screen. Maxey, stumbling as he raced towards center court, couldn’t come down with the pass, despite the fact there wasn’t a Clipper within 10 feet of him, and Oubre Jr was forced to foul Amir Coffey on a dunk attempt in transition, sending him to the free-throw line in a game-changing sequence that all unfolded in the span of four seconds.

Coffey made one of two free-throws, missing the second, but when Batum collected the rebound the Clippers sent two defenders Tyrese Maxey’s way, denying him the ball 90 feet from the basket. Batum instead opted to outlet the ball to Kelly Oubre Jr, who had the ball poked away by Paul George when he turned around to put the ball on the floor. The ball went out of bounds, with the referees initially indicating it was off of George, and would be Sixers’ ball. After a review the call was inexplicably overturned, giving the Clippers their second extra possession in less than ten seconds of gametime.

A broken defensive play later, where three Sixers’ defenders converged on Coffey near the rim setting up Leonard for his first of two crucial and-1s, and the Clippers had the lead.

Still, it looked like the Sixers regained control of the game, as Buddy Hield drained a deep 3-point shot at the end of a shot clock after the Sixers struggled to get anything going for most of the possession, giving the Sixers a 107-105 lead with 22.7 seconds left. It wasn’t pretty, but the Sixers were one stop away from beating a reeling Clippers team for the second time in a week.

Then came a staggering number of miscues for such a short period of time.

It all started when Batum, in good defensive position, bit on a Kawhi Leonard pump fake out at the 3-point line, despite Leonard not making a jumper all night. Legitimately. Kawhi was 0-3 from 3-point range and his six made shots up to that point included one isolation drive, three off-ball cuts and two layups in transition, all in the paint. Here’s his shot chart for the game.

(Kawhi Leonard’s shot chart against the Sixers on March 27th, 2024.)

With both teams going small for most of the fourth quarter and the Clippers playing a five-out system with Leonard surrounded by James Harden (39.5% 3-point shooter), Paul George (40.9%), Norm Powell (43.7%) and Coffey (41.2%), not only did the Sixers not have a rim protector near the basket, but they didn’t even have one on the floor, as they attempted to match up with the Clippers’ perimeter talent.

That sent the Sixers into a mad scramble to try to challenge Leonard at the rim, with Oubre Jr making a nice hustle play to recover back to the rim all the way from the 3-point line, but a disastrous decision to try to block the shot, as Oubre Jr fouled Leonard at the rim without impacting the shot in any meaningful way. Rather than the Sixers getting the ball back with 16 left on the clock in a tie game, they instead saw Leonard head to the line and make what would end up being the game-winning free-throw.

The Sixers then came down, electing not to use their final timeout, and the Clippers used their foul to give on a Maxey spin move with eight seconds left. That forced the Sixers to inbound the ball yet again, which, as a reminder, had been the start of their downfall less than a minute (in game action) earlier.

This time the Sixers elected to have Tyrese Maxey stand back at the opposite foul line, out of the play, and inbounded the ball to Oubre Jr. Maxey never made an attempt to get back in the play, instead letting Oubre Jr go 1-on-1 with Kawhi Leonard.

Oubre Jr elected to take the two-time Defensive Player of the Year winner, and seven-time All-Defensive Team nominee, off the dribble. Leonard blocked Oubre Jr’s layup attempt, eventually pinning it between the backboard and the rim, a “wedgie” with 5.3 seconds left which resulted in a jump ball at center court.

Leonard won the jump ball, but Batum was able to get his hands on it, tipping it back out to Buddy Hield. With Maxey tightly guarded yet again Hield flipped it over to Oubre Jr, who had a 3-on-2 break with two seconds left in the game. Harden and George collapsed on Oubre Jr, leaving Harris and Batum open in opposite corners with a second left. Oubre Jr took it straight into Paul George’s chest, with Leonard eventually coming over to swat the layup attempt, which came after buzzer anyway. But Oubre Jr was fouled on the play, and fouled before the clock expired. He should have gone to the line with a chance to winner it. He didn’t get that opportunity.

Oubre Jr had a few choice words for the refs after that.

It was an absolutely wild, and disheartening, sequence of events, spoiling what had otherwise been an excellent effort from the Sixers as they try to pick off any win they can before Joel Embiid returns to the lineup. And with the Pacers getting smoked by the Bulls last night, and the Heat losing to the Warriors the previous day, it was a massive missed opportunity, as a win in last night’s game would have tied them in the loss column with the Pacers for sixth seed in the East with nine games to play.

The Sixers were heated after the game last night, with both head coach Nick Nurse and Oubre yelling at the refs after time expired. They had every right to be. The refs have already admitted to one missed call with Crew Chief Kevin Scott telling the pool reporter that “in post-game video review we did observe some slight drift to his left by the defender George, and a foul should have been ruled” on Oubre Jr’s potential game-winner.

I thought both of Oubre Jr’s drives in the last 10 seconds were met with some contact in the paint, and seemingly as much contact as was made on either of Leonard’s and-1s in the final minute. Still, I am generally a proponent of letting some contact go in the guts of a game and neither was an egregious hack. It just seemed inconsistently called more than anything. If you’re going to swallow the whistle on the two Oubre Jr drives, which I get, then it seemed like Leonard’s first and-1 on Tobias Harris should have been let go as well.

Where the biggest shock for me came from was on the out-of-bounds call that was overturned with 52 seconds left. From our vantage point on press row I, based almost entirely off of the direction the ball went because our view of the play was blocked, thought it may have gone off of Oubre Jr’s knee. But that was quickly dispelled once I saw the first replay. At that point, in no way did I see anything even remotely resembling the inconclusive evidence needed to overrule the call and prove that Oubre Jr was the last to touch it. In fact, I thought Oubre Jr did a good job of quickly, and demonstratively, pulling his hand back to make it clear that he didn’t.

For that play to go to the replay center, and to take as much time as they did with it, only to come back Clippers ball was absolutely stunning, and game-changing.

The Sixers had every right to be upset with the officiating last night, with the refs admitting to one mistake last night and undoubtedly a few more to come on this afternoon’s L2M report. But they also should wake up this morning upset with themselves. Bad calls are going to happen and they’re going to influence games from time to time. But if the Sixers controlled what they were able to control, it never would have gotten to that point.

Kelly Oubre Jr’s foul on Kawhi Leonard with 16 seconds left can’t happen. George had used his body to perfectly shield the ball away from Oubre Jr, and Kelly had to come over top of Leonard’s head to even take a swing at the ball. He had roughly a 0% chance of actually blocking the shot. He either has to go straight up or commit a foul so hard that Leonard has no chance to get the shot off. He did neither. It was a hell of an effort from Oubre Jr and I applaud him for that, but the decision was a costly one.

But Oubre Jr was far from the only one to make a crucial mistake down the stretch, he just made the most visible one given that Leonard’s and-1 proved to be the game-winner. Tobias Harris helping off of Leonard on the previous and-1 is understandable, given how deep into the paint Coffey got off the pick-and-roll with Paul George. But if you’re going to leave Leonard, who had already made a series of buckets off of cuts earlier in the game, you can’t be caught flat-footed when Leonard, averaging nearly 24 points per game, makes a hard cut a second later. The lack of off-ball awareness and anticipation has plagued Harris for most of his career, and overshadows what had otherwise been an excellent one-on-one defensive performance from the Sixers’ embattled forward for most of the night.

And while I might be able to be talked into the theory behind Nick Nurse keeping Tyrese Maxey 70 feet from the play with the Sixers down one with nine seconds left, it’s tough to ask Maxey to be a decoy and have the rest of your team play four-on-four when when the other four players on the court are Tobias Harris (defended by Paul George), Kelly Oubre Jr (guarded by Kawhi Leonard), Nic Batum (blanketed by Norm Powell) and Buddy Hield (“checked” by James Harden).

Batum is the only plus passer and positive decision-maker of the four and he is, to put it politely, taking absolutely nobody off of the dribble at this stage of his career. Kelly Oubre Jr is the only non-Maxey player in that group who can take his man off the dribble with any kind of consistency, but he’s a player whose career has been defined by his tunnel vision and his lack of playmaking negating the impact of his ability to create off the bounce, and on top of that he was guarded by one of the most impactful defenders of this generation.

It didn’t seem like there was any chance the Sixers would get a good shot in that set, and their only chance was hoping Leonard would commit a foul, and that the refs would call it.

I am a little bit surprised that Nurse didn’t have Kyle Lowry on the floor down the stretch, if for no other reason than to give the Sixers another decision maker and, crucially, ball handle to help Tyrese Maxey beat the pressure that Los Angeles was throwing at him every time he touched the ball. The Sixers had 4-on-3 opportunities nearly every trip down the floor if they were able to execute, but rarely did they handle it effectively.

But it was a tough spot for the Sixers to put Lowry in because they needed Oubre Jr and Harris on the floor to guard Paul George and Kawhi Leonard, and Buddy Hield had gotten hot in the second half to give the Sixers a spark offensively, and to bail them out of some otherwise bad offensive possessions. The only real option would have been to put Lowry on the court in place of Batum, but then you’re replacing one mentally quick, but physically slow decision maker with a shorter mentally quick, but physically slow, decision maker. Imperfect options all around.

Which is sort of the rub with this Sixers roster. Outside of Tyrese Maxey there is absolutely nobody who can consistently create anything else for their teammates. The players whose decision making you trust are too slow to effectively utilize it. The players who can force rotations rarely ever create an advantage out of them. The end result has been that teams have spent the last two months effectively goading the ball out of Tyrese Maxey’s hands, conceding a 4-on-3 “break” way more frequently than a defense should ever willingly do, and very rarely being burned as a result of it.

This is the byproduct of a team that has decided to not yet use the team-building resources that they have at their disposal, electing to keep both cap space, and draft picks, available for them to use in the summer. I largely think that is the correct path to take, but it’s one that hasn’t paid off yet, and because of that the Sixers were left filling out their roster with the wildly imperfect role players mentioned above. That all makes a bit more sense when Joel Embiid is able to anchor the team defensively and drop 40 a night, drawing so much defensive attention that everybody else is slotted into a role that limits their playmaking responsibilities.

Hopefully, given the update Nick Nurse gave before the game (see the quotes below), that is a problem the Sixers will only have to try to overcome for a few more games.

Key stats

• After shooting just 5-20 from 3-point range over the first two and a half quarters of play, the Sixers 8-13 from deep from there on out.
• The Clippers won despite shooting 0-9 on long midrange jumpers, and just 6-25 on midrange jumpers overall.
• The Sixers dominated second-chance points, more than doubling up the Clippers, 19-9, despite the offensive rebounding totals being almost identical (11 offensive rebounds on 50 missed shots for the Sixers, 10 on 43 missed shots for the Clippers.)
• The Clippers, conversely, dominated the transition game, with 23 fast break points to just 10 for the Sixers. It seemed like every open 3 that the Sixers missed in the first 2+ quarters led to early offense for the Clippers, and kept them in the game.
• Mo Bamba (12 points, 11 rebounds) picked up his first double double of the season. In fact, it’s his first double double since February of last year, and just his third of the last two seasons.
• Kawhi Leonard shot just 3-9 for 7 points when defended by Tobias Harris, and for as much as I gave Harris grief for his off-ball defense in the final minute, and for his overall disappearing act offensively in the second half, I thought he played some good one-on-one defense throughout.

Stray thoughts

• When Buddy Hield checked in for Kyle Lowry midway through the third quarter he had just two points on 1-3 shooting in eight minutes of play. He then dropped 10 points in the final five minutes of the third, before chipping in with another five in the fourth, playing the entire final 17+ minutes of the game. Getting him going down the stretch would be a huge boost for the Sixers heading into the playoffs.
• Even with those 15 points in the final quarter and a half, which included a monster, deep 3 with 23 seconds left that could have been the game-winner, I was perhaps most impressed by the hustle play he made to strip Norman Powell of the loose ball with 3:50 left to get the ball back and set up a key Oubre Jr floater. If Hield continues to make more plays like that it’ll be easier to keep his shooting on the floor.
• I thought the game started to change when the Clippers went away from Terance Mann down the stretch, instead going with Powell and Coffey for the entire fourth quarter. The Sixers were aggressively helping off of Mann in the corner, and that roamer helped them clog up the paint defensively.
• Outside of one particularly disastrous floater, I think this was easily Mo Bamba’s best game of the season, both in the box score and on film. He was pursuing rebounds with more aggressiveness and physicality than we frequently see, and was altering shots near the rim.

Quotable

• “This is an intense basketball game, of course. We’re not perfect. The refs aren’t perfect. I want to apologize for just losing my cool, because that’s something I try to work on each and every day, and try to represent God in the best way I possibly can, and that wasn’t it. So I just ask for forgiveness.” — Kelly Oubre Jr, on his heated exchange with the refs after the game.
• “There was absolutely contact, but they were calling those calls for those guys. They were getting and-1s, and they were changing the game in that aspect, and then we get down to our side and it’s like they didn’t even see any contact. But I barely touched them on the other end and they still called it. So it was just uneven, in a sense.” — Kelly Oubre Jr, on whether he was fouled on his final drive.
• “They’re selective with the explanations. They said that this is what we’re doing, and we’re gonna keep it moving from here. The ball didn’t go off me, but the review center said that it did, so, yeah, they changed the call.” — Kelly Oubre Jr, on whether he was given an explanation for the overturned out-of-bounds call.
• “I’m banged up, I ain’t gonna lie to you…I haven’t been able to make a shot in probably two months. But I just saw a chiropractor, and he just snapped, crackled and popped every single bone in my body, and I feel a little better so hopefully we can stay healthy. I just keep fighting through this stuff because I wanna hoop. At the end of the day, man, I’m gonna do that. I’m gonna just go through a wall for my team and my guys, and I hope that the city respects that.” — Kelly Oubre Jr, on his shoulder injury.
• “He’s on the court, as you guys know. We still don’t have a timeline for his return…Just trying to get him strong and confident, and in shape and ramped up, and all those wonderful words.” — Nick Nurse, on the status of Joel Embiid.
• “I think there’s a very good likelihood that he will return before the play-in/playoff.” — Nick Nurse, on whether he expects Joel Embiid to return by the end of the regular season.
• “I thought there was certainly contact, certainly as much as the last two or three that got called and-1s at the other end. That’s all. I just thought it was enough contact to call. But that’s the way it goes sometimes. I mean, we don’t turn it over a couple times [things are different], right?” — Nick Nurse, on Kelly Oubre Jr not getting the foul calls.
• “I think our defense is getting a lot better. We’re getting a lot better, and we’re figuring out some things, and effort’s there and all that kind of stuff. I mean, we outplayed them. I thought we guarded them. I thought we created good shots. All that kind of stuff.” — Nick Nurse, on his team’s defensive effort.
• “I think our defense has been really good…In our losses it’s not always our defense that’s hurt us as of late, it’s been our offense. We couldn’t score, or down the stretch we couldn’t get a bucket. I mean, that’s a better sign. I think guys are really going out there and competing, competing their tails off. Guys really want to win, and to win you gotta compete on that end. And I feel like we’re in the right frame of mind, right spot, especially with Joel coming back.” — Tyrese Maxey, on the team’s recent play defensively.

Press conference video