{"id":3313,"date":"2022-03-31T10:02:52","date_gmt":"2022-03-31T10:02:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/linksus.net\/bad-news-sixers-flaws-show-in-losses-to-suns-bucks-good-news-remaining-schedule-is-pretty-easy-the-philadelphia-inquirer\/"},"modified":"2022-03-31T10:02:52","modified_gmt":"2022-03-31T10:02:52","slug":"bad-news-sixers-flaws-show-in-losses-to-suns-bucks-good-news-remaining-schedule-is-pretty-easy-the-philadelphia-inquirer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/2022\/03\/31\/bad-news-sixers-flaws-show-in-losses-to-suns-bucks-good-news-remaining-schedule-is-pretty-easy-the-philadelphia-inquirer\/","title":{"rendered":"Bad news: Sixers\u2019 flaws show in losses to Suns, Bucks. Good news: Remaining schedule is pretty easy – The Philadelphia Inquirer"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Sixers made mistakes against the Phoenix Suns and Milwaukee Biucks and it cost them. They need to correct these before the playoffs start.
DETROIT \u2014 There\u2019s some good news and bad news for the 76ers.
The good news is they have the NBA\u2019s easiest remaining strength of schedule in regard to playoff seeding.
The bad news is their shortcomings were exposed in consecutive losses to the Phoenix Suns and Milwaukee Bucks, two of the league\u2019s elite teams.
For the most part, the Sixers (46-29) are expected to dominate their remaining seven opponents, who had a combined winning percentage of .404 as of Wednesday afternoon. That, combined with tough schedules down the stretch for the Boston Celtics and Bucks (47-28), should elevate them in the standings.
\u00bb READ MORE: Rejected: Sixers lose to Antetokounmpo and the Bucks, 118-116 | Analysis<\/a><\/b><\/i>
The Sixers were in the third place in the Eastern Conference, two games behind the first-place Miami Heat with seven games left. They were a game behind the second-place Bucks and a percentage points ahead of the fourth-place Celtics (47-30).
But even if the Sixers climb the standings, they\u2019ll still fall short of their championship aspirations unless their execution improves.
That, among other things, doomed them in what were barometer games against Milwaukee and Phoenix, last season\u2019s NBA finalists.
The Sixers blew a 14-point lead en route to a 118-116 loss<\/a> to the defending NBA champion Bucks on Tuesday night at the Wells Fargo Center. That came two days after blowing a 15-point lead in a 114-104 loss to the defending Western Conference champion Suns in Phoenix.
This is an unfortunate trend.
Their last four losses were against teams expected to clinch playoff spots — Bucks, Suns, Toronto Raptors, and Denver Nuggets. The Sixers had a double-digit lead in each of those games.
But they followed the loss to the Raptors with last week\u2019s three-game winning streak. They pulled off a five-point victory against the Heat (49-28) without Joel Embiid and James Harden. Then they won the first two contests of a three-game West Coast trip by beating the undermanned Lakers and Clippers in Los Angeles.
\u00bb READ MORE: Loss at Phoenix shows the Sixers can play with the best but are not ready to beat the best | Keith Pompey<\/a><\/b><\/i>
So there was some intrigue heading into the games against the Suns and Bucks. However, the Sixers couldn\u2019t overcome their mistakes in those losses.
\u201cExecuting, we got to do a better job, against Phoenix and again tonight we had a lead just like against Phoenix,\u201d Joel Embiid said Tuesday. \u201cIt\u2019s a game of runs, every team is going to make their runs. So we just gotta stay calm and know what we need to do, and the last two games have really shown why those two teams have went to the finals.\u201d
Those two games revealed the steps the Sixers must take to become a legitimate NBA title contender.
In both games, the Sixers were doomed by miscues in clutch situations while the Suns and Bucks elevated their play in similar situations.
Against the Bucks, the Sixers made stops until late in the third quarter when MVP candidate Giannis Antetokounmpo took over the game. Unfortunately for the Sixers, he wasn\u2019t alone in regard to stepping up his game.
The Bucks shot 72.2% in the final quarter with Antetokounmpo (12 points), Jrue Holiday (10 points), and Khris Middleton (nine points, five assists) combining to score 31 of their team\u2019s 37 points.
\u201cWe had a couple mistakes defensively and they made us pay for it,\u201d Harden said. \u201cThey hit three after three after three and off of our mistakes, nothing they did. We could\u2019ve corrected things that we could control and they got 37 points in that fourth quarter. They finish things in the second half.\u201d
Meanwhile, Embiid and Tobias Harris each had eight points in the final quarter. But Embiid committed a costly turnover on a bad pass with his team down two points with 2 minutes, 44 seconds remaining. Harris misfired on what appeared to be two rushed three-point attempts and was a minus-10 in the quarter.
Their performances down the stretch were better than those of Harden and Tyrese Maxey.
Harden finished with a team-high 32 points, but was held to three points on 1-for-4 shooting in the fourth quarter. Maxey failed to score while shooting 0 for 3 in the final quarter. He also was a minus-10 during that time.
Harris agreed that execution and composure were the biggest problems in the two losses.
There were \u201ctwo games that we believe that we should\u2019ve won,\u201d he said. \u201cSo we\u2019ve got to go back to the drawing board and just figure out how we can sharpen our coverages defensively, our communication. That\u2019s the biggest thing.
\u201cThen offensively we just had some looks that didn\u2019t fall for us and we know we can make those.\u201d
That\u2019s the bad news.
\u00bb READ MORE: L.A. Clippers coach Tyronn Lue rips Sixers president Daryl Morey with shot at old Hong Kong tweet<\/a><\/b><\/i>
The good news is the Sixers start a favorable end-of-season stretch Thursday night at the struggling Detroit Pistons.
They follow that with a home game against the Charlotte Hornets on Saturday afternoon. Then the Sixers embark on a three-game road trip at the Cleveland Cavaliers (Sunday), Indiana Pacers (Tuesday), and Toronto Raptors (April 7). They end the season with back-to-back home games against the Pacers (April 9) and Pistons (April 10).
One can assume the Sixers will rest a few key players in several of those games.
But Detroit (20-56) and the Pacers (25-51) are among the league\u2019s worst teams. Meanwhile, the Sixers have won their last 17 games against the Hornets (40-37). It\u2019s the longest current winning streak by an NBA team against a particular opponent.
The Sixers won their two March games against the Cavs (42-34) by a combined 10 points. But they are only 1-2 against the Raptors (44-32).
Most of these games should be nothing more than a tune-up for the postseason. It\u2019s up to the Sixers to make the proper adjustments once the playoffs get here.<\/p>\n

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The Sixers made mistakes against the Phoenix Suns and Milwaukee Biucks and it cost them. They need to correct these before the playoffs start.DETROIT \u2014 There\u2019s some good news and bad news for the 76ers.The good news is they have the NBA\u2019s easiest remaining strength of schedule in regard to playoff seeding.The bad news is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":869,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3313"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/869"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3313\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}