Saturday afternoon was a very bleak day for the city of Philadelphia. The Sixers came out and probably had the most disappointing performance of the first round. This led to scorching hot takes from the national media up until Game 2 on Monday night.
The heat that the Sixers received was totally deserved, you can’t make “all-in” type trades for Jimmy Butler and Tobias Harris and then come out and look like they did on Saturday.
While all the takes were flying, many media members forgot to mention one important thing… James Ennis did not play in Game 1. Honestly, it is just sad that this was not brought up…. I mean national media – do your job. Once I heard that James Ennis was good to go for Game 2 I knew the Nets stood no chance. I mean look at this stat line,
6 points, 3 rebounds, 1 assist, and the Sixers were +14 when he was on the court.
MVP! MVP! MVP! Okay now that I got you to click on this link due to the ridiculous headline let’s talk about the real difference between Game 1 and Game 2, Ben Simmons, JJ Redick, and Tobias Harris.
The Sixers are a very talented team but they have little to no depth. So when 3 of your 5 starters play terrible and your best player, Joel Embiid, is clearly not 100% you are not going to win a playoff game. Let’s look at the box score for Ben, JJ, and Tobias in Game 1 and Game 2:
Ben Simmons
Game 1: 9 points, 7 rebounds, 3 assists, 1 steal, 3 blocks and a very stellar -21 when he was on the court.
Game 2: 18 points, 10 rebounds, 12 assists, 2 steals and a much better +23 while he was on the court.
JJ Redick
Game 1: 5 points, 1 rebound and another -21 to join Ben Simmons.
Game 2: 17 points, 2 assists and an improved +18 when he was on the court.
Tobias Harris
Game 1: 4 points, 7 rebounds, 6 assists, 1 steal, and an impressive +3 while he was on the court.
Game 2: 19 points, 5 rebounds, 2 assists, 1 block and a whopping +30 when he was on the court.
Just looking at those stats it is pretty clear why the Sixers lost Game 1 and dominated Game 2.
Listening to all of the hot takes before Game 2 was frustrating for a Sixers fan as nobody seemed to think that Ben, JJ, and Tobias would maybe not all suck at the same time? There will be games where Ben is off, where JJ can’t hit anything and is getting torched on defense, and games where Tobias just goes missing but the odds of them all playing terrible in the same game seem low to me.
Now, as the Sixers prepare for Game 3 on Thursday you have to feel great about their chances of going into Brooklyn and winning that game because you know James Ennis is playing.