So That Happened: Sixers Win (?) Game Three After Battling Back in Fourth

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"If there ever a time for the Sixers to win one BS, low-scoring close game..." tweeted
friend of the blog Where is Ben Rivera with about five minutes left in
this game. Indeed, recent history—including the last time the Bulls
played at the Wells Fargo Center—suggested that, injuries to Chicago
stars Derrick Rose and (now) Joakim Noah be damned, the Sixers were not
gonna find a way to take this game. Down 14 early in the fourth, they
would battle back, cut it to three or four, miss a couple crucial
jumpers or blow a couple key stops, and lose in unnecessarily
heartbreaking fashion. It's been the same story for as long as we can
remember as Sixers fans.

Yet, either due to genuine team
evolution or some working principle of how you Can't Lose 'Em All, the
Sixers did indeed find a way to take and hold the lead in this one. Jrue
Holiday (17 points, six rebounds, six assists) and Evan Turner (16 points, nine rebounds) were given the reins down the stretch and they
responded, scoring or assisting on 13 of the team's final 15 points in
the last five minutes, including going seven of eight form the line in
the final 90 seconds to seal the deal. Spencer Hawes also rebounded from
a tough start to the second half to finish with a team-high 21 points
and nine boards, and Philly was able to scratch out the W in an ugly
79-74 slugfest that not a lot of people outside of the City of Brotherly
Love are gonna have fond memories of watching.

Through
three-plus quarters, the outlook on this one was not good. The Sixers'
guards were playing solidly, if unspectacularly, but the frontcourt was a
total no-show. Through three quarters, the big-man rotation of Thaddeus
Young, Spencer Hawes, Elton Brand and Lavoy Allen were shooting a
combined 4-24, with the Old Schol Chevy Brand in particularly picking a
bad time to suffer engine failure, ending the game with 0 points (0-5
FG) and just two boards. Worse, they got killed by the Bulls on
the boards, resulting in a stretch of consecutive offensive rebounds in
the third and fourth that actually inspired boos from the WFC. Spencer
Hawes, while technically doing the best of the bench with his nine
points and six rebounds, had missed a series of good-look jumpers and
absurdly easy layups early in the half, leading me to wonder if Coach
Collins was gonna put him in the sleeper hold after yanking him to the
bench, and just have one of the assistants wake him up when the game
ended.

But the Sixers somehow managed to stay tough, and both
the shots and the offensive boards started to dry up for the Bulls after
Rip Hamilton's pull-up three put them up 14 with ten to go. Hawes
started converting on his chippies and jumpers, Jrue and Lou Williams
made plays, and all of a sudden, the team was back in the game. The team
defense just got tighter and tighter as the exhausted and undermanned
Bulls went totally cold, and suddenly, the team was up 72-71 with 90
seconds left and a chance to actually win this damn thing, for once.

What
happened next can be explained by a number of factors. For one
thing—and I feel this has to be acknowledged—they got a lot of help from
the refs, who had called a tight game the whole way, and whistled a
number of borderline calls on Chicago that I personally didn't toally
agree with. But this was systematic of the fact that the Sixers were
attacking the basket—especially Jrue and Evan, the duo of whom Coach
Collins finally entrusted with ball-handling and play-making
responsibilities down the stretch. The two forced the issue time and
time again, most notably when Evan Turner went down among the trees on
the clinching possession, rebounding his own miss twice and eventually
getting the foul call, in a play that Collins would later deem the "play
of the year" for the Sixers, calling Turner a "big-game player" in
turn.

It's hard to overstate just how encouraging this final
stretch was for the Sixers. At a certain point it occurred to me that I
didn't really even care if the Sixers won or lost—well, I cared, of
course, but I realized it wasn't the most important thing—because I was
just so glad that Collins finally handed the keys to the team over to
his two young bonafides, and so glad that they were rewarding his faith.
Lou wasn't even out there for the final stretch once Evan checked back
in, and after bricking an open three with 2:54 left that would've put
the team up two and brought the house down—as emblematic of 'Dre's
late-game futility as a shot could be—he was not asked to contribute on
offense again. This is Evan and Jrue's team now—finally—and that's far more important a development for this team than anything that could happen in this series.

So
hey, speaking of this series—it does bear mentioning that we're up 2-1
on the hurting Bulls now, with a chance to take a commanding 3-1 series
lead at the WFC again this Sunday. But as positive as things may seem at
the moment, and as much as we want to start eyeing the Celtics/Hawks
series to see who would make a more favorable second-hand matchup for
this team, let me remind you that this is not the first time we've been
in this situation as an underdog—we took similar leads against both
Orlando and Detroit, then proceeded to lose the next three games to
each. Now, this seems different, with the Bulls' best (and possibly
their second-best) player injured, and the Sixers clicking in some
importantw ays, but just because it seems different doesn't mean that it is different. Let's talk about that again after Game Four, shall we?

And
a final note, about that second-best Bulls player and the injury he
suffered tonight: You're probably going to hear a lot of crap over the
upcoming days about the way the Sixers fans reacted when Joakim Noah
brutally twisted his ankle on Andre Iguodala's foot in the open court,
and we cheered as he writhed on the floor in pain, booing when he
finally got back up. And we'll deserve most of it—it was a classless act
on the part of the WFC crowd, and names like "Michael Irvin" and "Santa
Claus" will be not wrongly invoked. But let's also keep in mind that
Noah is a historical NBA irritant, someone who takes pride in getting
under the skin of opponents and their fans, and while such methods are
All In the Game as far as the NBA is concerned...well, sometimes people
are going to take joy in your misery. No disrespect, and frankly, any
Sixer fan who doesn't have a great deal of admiration for how he hobbled
back onto that court after his injury and managed to hit a couple free
throws and a jumper before limping back off is simply out they damn
mind.

1:00 tip from Wells Fargo this Sunday for Game Four. Still
a ton of questions to be answered, still a whole lot undecided in this
series, but even if we lose the next three games, tonight was progress
in this team's evolution that can and should not be ignored. It might
not mean we're any closer to contending, but it means we're a lot closer
to understanding who we are as a team, and where to go from here, and
at this stage in the 76ers' development, that's nearly as important. Go
Jrue and Evan, go Coach Collins, go you marvelous bastard 76ers.

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