Sixers likely play-in bound despite eighth straight win to end season

Tobias Harris and Tyrese Maxey led the Sixers to a dominant 107-86 win over Brooklyn to end the season, but results in Orlando and Indiana will leave them in the play-in tournament this week. Bring on Jimmy Butler and the Miami Heat.

Here’s what I saw.

The Good

— Tobias Harris isn’t going to win over many (if any) detractors with a good outing against a horrible Nets team to end the season, but they needed him to do some heavy lifting to secure this one. Kelly Oubre had a poor outing by his recent standards, Nic Batum was ice-cold, and Kyle Lowry hardly even looked to offer scoring punch. So Harris had plenty of opportunities to return to his bread-and-butter plays from the mid-post and attack the Nets in transition.

The Nets had nothing to play for in this one, so concerted effort was essentially the only requirement to beat up on them over four quarters. Even if it got a bit choppy at times on a steady diet of midrange jumpers, Harris was a steady producer throughout this game, shedding some disinterested transition defenders to turn Sixers stops into points on the other end. We haven’t seen him succeed this way too often lately, but he had a nice afternoon of sealing off weak Brooklyn defenders for cheapies at the rim.

Early in this game, Harris was fighting it a bit from three, but I’d argue the best development of the game was seeing him gain confidence from deep with a nice little heater in the second half. Confidence can be a brief visitor for Harris from beyond the arc, leading to long stretches of the season where he passes out of open threes in favor of lower-quality jumpers. This was a good day for his volume and efficiency, and the hope would be that he takes this final game of the regular season and builds off of it heading into the playoffs.

Regardless, a strong outing for him in what is likely his last regular season game for the franchise.

— While we’re on the subject of second-half shooting, what a delight it was to see Buddy Hield get going. He may not have hit the incentive-based bonuses that Derek mentioned in his Sunday morning article. Still, he had his best shooting night in a while, providing the pending free agent with a boost of confidence before a big playoff run.

Earlier this week, Nick Nurse compared Hield’s extended shooting slump to a cold hitter in baseball, saying that you can compound problems by chasing pitches and trying to get out of the hole as soon as possible. Hield’s nerves have settled a bit this week, with the veteran sharpshooter forgoing decent looks in favor of an extra pass to a teammate. There was a nice sequence against Brooklyn in the third quarter, when Hield hit Nic Batum in the corner, only to get the ball back with a better shot opportunity in front of him. The make on that three snowballed into an explosion to end the quarter, with Hield canning three consecutive threes in the final minute to blow the game open.

Hield has the shooting talent to swing playoff games. Maybe he was never as good as the opening stretch with Philly suggested, but here’s hoping for a Buddy moment or two in the postseason.

— Once Joel Embiid was ruled out against Brooklyn on Sunday, this game was always going to come down to Tyrese Maxey. And much to the delight of fans across the Philadelphia area, Maxey delivered a strong enough performance to push the Sixers to victory.

There are nights when we wax poetic and get down into the details to explain why and how a player got rolling. Very little mystery was involved as Maxey sprinted to 20 first-half points: Brooklyn had nobody to throw in front of him that could match Maxey in a foot race, and when they backed off of him to try to cut him off from the rim, he got in his stepback bag. Perhaps you could argue that he needed to focus more on playmaking for others, but I think you can forget all that when your best perimeter player is on a heater and the opponent has little chance to stop him.

The maturity to recognize what his team needed was as important as the scoring output — Maxey’s teammates were slow to get rolling for a rare Sunday afternoon matinee, and rather than wasting time trying to get everyone touches, the best player on the floor simply waved his hand and said, “I got this.”

Maxey had a quiet second half, but getting him out of the game early in the fourth with the Sixers nursing a comfortable lead was as good of an outcome as you could hope for.

— Stepping into a starting role with the reigning MVP on the shelf, Mo Bamba was one of the few Sixers players who met the moment’s urgency in the opening quarter. And while that sounds weird to say based on his stats at halftime — he had one rebound and exactly zero points at intermission — he made a positive impact with his energy on both ends of the floor.

With the Sixers unafraid of the Nets hurting them from beyond the arc, Bamba was able to settle close to the basket for much of this game, bringing his defensive strengths into focus. He had a terrific block on a late rotation in the first quarter, and though he wasn’t credited with another that I thought he had earned, Bamba managed to alter at least a couple more shots from Brooklyn drivers. On the other end, Bamba forced the Nets to take a couple of silly fouls to prevent him from getting the ball around the rim. He was pulled down after leaping for an offensive rebound, and he’d draw another foul after rolling toward the rim for a lob from Kyle Lowry, with the two teammates only upset that they didn’t connect for a dunk.

That activity started turning into tangible production in the second half, with Bamba scoring a couple of early baskets in the third quarter on putback opportunities. Nice work from him in an important spot for the team.

— The Milwaukee Bucks are currently struggling to deal with the Orlando Magic in a game the Sixers need to escape the play-in, which is a bit of a bummer. That being said, Philadelphia deserves a bit of credit for taking care of business and giving themselves a chance down the stretch, using the Joel Embiid rocket fuel to go undefeated in April.

We could lament some blown games during the Embiid-less stretch, and I imagine a few people will get madder about the non-call on Paul George in the nail-biter loss to the Clippers. I prefer to focus on the fact that Philly is playing good ball right now and hope that is a sign of brighter days ahead in the postseason.

(I would be lying if I told you I wasn’t fearful of a Jimmy Butler revenge game in the play-in, of course.)

The Bad

— Fucking Doc Rivers.

— Nick Nurse, please, I am asking nicely, no solo ballhandler lineups with Cam Payne as the ballhandler in the playoffs. I will not stand for it.

The Ugly

— This game would have been over in six minutes with Joel Embiid available. I get why they decided to give him some precautionary rest, but it would have been good for everyone’s blood pressure to have him out there.