Sixers’ losing streak grows to nine after Knicks defeat

The Sixers now have a two-game lead on the Nets in the race for lottery positioning, thanks to a 105-91 loss to the New York Knicks that ended without incident. With just six games to play, Philadelphia’s season of misery is finally nearing its completion.

Here’s what I saw.

The Good

— The game ended.

— By virtue of simply running and playing hards, Adem Bona is going to carve out a career in this league. There are problems he has to clean up, disadvantages you could see even within this game, but he has a chance to be a rotation big for quite a long time.

Several times against the Knicks, Bona put himself on the free-throw line by challenging his man to keep up with him on the break. With Precious Achiuwa rarely in the frame and Mitchell Robinson still working his way back to full form after a long layoff, Bona had a couple of free lanes to sprint into in early offense, with Knicks players hacking away to stop him from simply dunking it on them.

(One problem for Bona on Tuesday: his recent success at the free-throw line evaporated, with Bona going 3/6 from the charity stripe.)

The verve he plays with on defense is infectious, with Bona joining a long line of NBA players who want you to hear “GIMME THAT SHIT!” every time they come up with a blocked shot. He did find out the hard way, however, that larger bigs are a lot tougher to deal with on the glass as you’re trying to contain drivers and contest shots of all types. Mitchell Robinson had seven offensive rebounds against Philadelphia, with Bona a passenger on at least a few of those plays. That’s a tough matchup for Bona physically, and to be more than a rotation player, he’s going to have to figure out ways to be more impactful against the behemoth types around the league.

Still, another versatile performance out of him.

— I appreciate the fight the Sixers showed to claw within five points of the Knicks in the third quarter. New York is down their two most important offensive players, so I don’t think it was a ton that Philly did to junk them up, but they played hard and brought their pickup points out much higher, pressuring New York’s ballhandlers into a few sloppy possessions. If we’re going to ride this out until season’s end and everyone is simply rooting for lottery positioning, they might as well give us some watchable stretches of basketball en route to defeat.

— Marcus Bagley’s 10-day contract with the Sixers ends on Wednesday, so he picked a good night to have his best performance during that brief run with the big club. The Arizona State product was active on the glass, pulling down four offensive rebounds in the first half thanks to Philadelphia’s total inability to hit shots. Hey, can’t complain about a guy digging for extra opportunities.

Alex Reese had a stellar game of his own off of the bench, giving the Sixers a bit of production in both halves.

The Bad

— The game started.

The Ugly

— These are genuine shooting numbers for the Sixers in the first half: 15/40 from the field (37.5%) and 4/20 from three (20%). That is borderline impossible for a professional basketball team. Aside from Bagley, who finished 3/5 on a series of shots that came primarily around the rim, the “best” Sixers shooting effort in the first half came from Alex Reese and Adem Bona. They were each 1/2 from the field.

If Philadelphia is going to pull off an upset at some point between now and season’s end, they are going to have to have a randomly good shooting night from deep. They don’t have the creative talent to consistently get to the paint, and without a true offensive leader, they have to play touch-pass basketball to cobble together most of their good possessions. That’s good news if you’re hoping they lose out, and bad news if you have a desire to watch a good basketball product. They’re playing unselfish, and honestly well-connected for a team that was stapled together over the last month or so, and they just don’t have the offensive talent to score consistently.

Even the guys who have been fun surprise stories have begun to falter as of late.

Quentin Grimes appears to be wearing down under the burden of a high-usage role, or perhaps he is simply regressing after the out-of-body experience he went through as the team’s alpha. In any case, his pull-up jumpers have been less reliable lately, cutting off a critical piece of his scoring repertoire.

I liked what I saw from Justin Edwards on the defensive end in this one, with Edwards showing and using his size to create a turnover here and there. That has been lacking for the rookie wing since the roster has thinned out, with most of his best moments coming on the other end of the floor. Unfortunately, Edwards had his struggles on offense in New York City, skunked from three in the first half and almost wholly reliant on drives.

At the end of the day, this is a group of players that does not have a chance as the leaders of a competent NBA team. Jared Butler was a two-way player for the worst team in the league before he was brought here to be a rotation guard, and now he’s a frequent starter drawing tougher defensive matchups. I can blame a guy like him for basic mental miscues, but not for struggling with efficiency in this poop soup of a basketball situation.

They’re competing, they just don’t have much to compete with. So it goes.

— A year ago, it would have been unthinkable for a Sixers-Knicks game at MSG having this little juice. Two weeks out from the playoffs, both teams presumably gearing up for some Eastern Conference battles, this would have been a marquee event if you were looking ahead at the start of training camp. One team has (mostly) lived up to their end of the bargain, and it certainly isn’t the Sixers.

— Did I hear the organ player at MSG drop the Severance theme during a brief stoppage in the first half? Elite stuff.