Sixers lock in top-five lottery odds with loss to Hawks

The Sixers finished the tank job on Friday night, locking in a spot in the top five of the lottery with a 124-110 loss to the Atlanta Hawks. Trae Young put on a show for the visitors, dropping a 36-point, 11-assist game as the Hawks clinched the eighth seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs.

Here’s what I saw.

The Good

— The game ended.

— They did it. They really nailed the tank. I still can’t believe it.

— I have a lot of respect for how the guys still left standing have handled the end of this season. On the one hand, many of them must feel like they have to maximize this opportunity. These are fringe NBA players, if that, and all of them seem to know they could be out of opportunities at this level if they play poorly to close the year. But even with that individual, man-to-man desperation for most of this rotation, they are playing connected, playing hard, and rarely getting lost in the one-on-one battles at the cost of the team. When your own career prospects are on the line, that’s a remarkably tough thing to do and keep sight of.

There are a lot of unselfish decisions being made from possession to possession. You see Adem Bona pulling down an offensive rebound and then looking for an open cutter or shooter; Jared Butler forgoing a heat check to slow it down and hit a cutter; Ricky Council IV hitting a drop-off pass even if it skims off of someone’s fingertips; and every guy is committed to chasing the loose balls, whether they’re rebounds or deflections or mistimed passes. They’re doing things that, frankly, the big boys didn’t often do when this team was healthy.

That’s something to admire, even if those efforts have made some of these games closer than Sixers fans want.

— The quick list of highlights from individual players in this game:

• Marcus Bagley had the game of his life as a shooter, making four threes in a single half to open this one up.
• Adem Bona made two different runners in traffic and showed off a growing number of power moves around the basket. It feels like there’s something new on display for him every night.
• Colin Castleton was, once again, an absolute menace on the offensive glass. It felt like the Hawks needed two or three guys to keep him away from second-chance points, and the crowd broke out in laughter when his first and-one bucket brought “Ice Ice Baby” by Vanilla Ice over the loudspeaker.

That about sums it up.

The Bad

— The game started.

The Ugly

— The margins are too tight to go around celebrating good performances from these guys. Organizationally, they did everything they could possibly do to make this one a loss. All the most important players sat with injuries, real or imagined. The Sixers going into halftime with a lead is, in my scientific estimation, complete horseshit.

If you ever want an example of how preposterous March and April basketball is until the playoffs start, take Marcus Bagley’s first half and rewatch it until you have been mind-melted as in A Clockwork Orange. Bagley entered the game 1/21 from three for his NBA career, and nowhere close to making most of those attempts. So with the Sixers in a must-lose situation, he uncorked a 4/5 effort from three in 24 minutes. I would genuinely rather have the Sixers forfeit than watch a player who will have zero impact on their future shooting them to a win with nothing to play for in mid-April. That’s especially true when said player’s whole problem is that he can’t shoot, and of course, he timed it to happen in a game when Atlanta built a house of bricks.

(This is nothing against Marcus Bagley, of course, as he has been awesome on the glass every night and plays his ass off as a general rule. I have a lot of time for guys like that. Just not right now!)

I am 100 percent behind celebrating Adem Bona’s breakout down the stretch, because he has made more of an offensive leap than I would have expected after two years in the league. The comfort he is showing as an off-the-dribble threat is astounding, and he has become much more productive with one-dribble moves around the rim, hitting opposing players with power before scoring through contact. That said, he threw in some absolute nonsense in the first half. I do not doubt that he works on a wide variety of shot types with Philly’s coaching staff, but I draw the line at one-legged runners in traffic. That’s a star-type shot, and with due respect to the kid, he ain’t that.

Then there’s the garden variety pull-up volatility from their guards, with those shots mostly coming from Lonnie Walker IV and Jared Butler. Both players continue to make their case to stick around next season, with Butler continuing to run the point with excellent pace control. You feel good for these guys — and for Bagley too, mind you — that they’re finding a rhythm and playing competitive basketball down the stretch of the year. But unless you are somehow rooting for wins, and very few of you are at this point, each made jumper brings with it a flinch, a nagging feeling at the back of your mind that says, “Okay, chill out buddy!”

It’s an excruciating way to watch basketball. No one should have to do this, and compared to the average person watching at home or in the stands, I have much less invested in these games emotionally. But with only downside left in these games, any lead or any positive run for the Sixers is a vibe killer.

— Genuinely, Bona has been so good for a month to end this year that I will be apoplectic if Andre Drummond plays real minutes next season. If Embiid is healthy, Bona should be the full-time backup. If he isn’t, Bona should get the lion’s share of the center minutes, save for an out-of-nowhere trade or a draft selection that brings them a lottery talent in the frontcourt.

As a matter of fact, just give me young guys on this team, period. If anyone older than 30 is added to the roster in the summer, there better be a damn good reason for it.

— Dyson Daniels shot threes in this game like he was aiming for the front of the rim.

— Trae Young made about two or three of the most impossible-looking passes I can recall seeing in person. There was an outlet pass in the first quarter that I thought was a complete throwaway, spinning sideways into empty space for no real reason. And then out of the corner of my eye, a Hawks player appeared in the exact spot the ball was headed, with the English on it carrying it perfectly into his teammate’s hands.

When Young is rolling, he’s an incredible in-person watch. Though the NBA has gotten a little samey in terms of how they go about their offense, Young is still an experimenter, liable to try something creative that you can’t see coming.