Sixers head coach Doc Rivers was at a loss for words. He had just gone through a tough Game Seven at the Wells Fargo Center, and he had yet to fully process his charges’ inability to translate their status as playoff top seeds to an Eastern Conference Finals berth. Still, the disappointment he felt was evident in the languages used by his eyes, his voice, and his body as he met members of the media for his post-mortem. They shouldn’t have bowed to the upstart Hawks — not with their talent depth, not with their opponents’ relative lack of experience, and not with the myriad opportunities given them throughout the series.
That said, the Sixers now have no choice but to take stock of their gross underperformance and wonder if staying put means subsequently getting ahead or taking a step back. They have heavy and hard decisions to make, beginning with All-Star center Joel Embiid’s contract situation. When healthy, he has performed exactly as envisioned — a dominant force inside on both ends of the court, and whose determination to keep improving his game has expanded his offensive repertoire. Unfortunately, he’s down due to injury plenty and often, Moreover, his conditioning remained suspect to the point where he disappeared late in the matches against the Hawks.
Another choice in the hands of Sixers’ honchos is how they will be dealing with Ben Simmons, whose all-world defense wound up being negated by a nonexistent offense. So awful was he in scoring against the supposedly porous Hawks that he had only three field goal attempts all told in fourth quarters of the series, and not a single one after Game Three. In retrospect, it doesn’t even matter that he made all three; as hockey legend Wayne Gretzky once noted, “you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” And so polarizing was his paralysis that Rivers — long noted for resorting to hyperbole to praise players by way of motivation — actually responded with “I don’t know” when asked if the starting point guard could be a vital cog on a championship team. Even Embiid saw fit to call him out for his evident timidity.
To be fair, Simmons owned up to his shortcomings, acknowledging that they were “mental” more than anything else. And he’s right. For all the problems with his shooting fundamentals, he finished with the worst free-throw shooting percentage in playoff history because he was in a constant battle with himself. How that battle will ultimately lead to victory for him remains to be seen. In the meantime, however, he will have to accept being Public Enemy Number One in the City of Brotherly Love.
Significantly, Rivers walked back somewhat on his assessment of Simmons after having had a day to himself. He said the ill-fated campaign, if nothing else, showed him what the problem is, and that they will be doing a lot of work in the offseason to address it. All the same, the Sixers would do well to explore any and all options at their disposal, trade scenarios included. At this point, they have nowhere else to go but forward. How and how fast are the questions they need to answer.
Anthony L. Cuaycong has been writing Courtside since BusinessWorld introduced a Sports section in 1994. He is a consultant on strategic planning, operations and Human Resources management, corporate communications, and business development.
