The Wizards’ time-trial race to the playoffs has been one of the stories of the regular season, but now that they have arrived here and have to face the greater, the harsh reality has slapped them in the face. It has not been thunderous, but it was firm enough to show them where they are compared to their rival. Because the Sixers, without making an otherworldly game (even bad for a long time in the first half), they stepped on the defensive accelerator at the end of the third quarter, they did not lift their foot in the last quarter and only with that (which in the case of those from Philadelphia is a lot) they ended the resistance of their rival.
It is true that in that last quarter two men began to see the rim as a pool who are absolutely key in the Sixers’ ring aspirations. Seth Curry and Danny Green, who are neither the first, nor the second, nor the third best player on the squad, but with their presence on the court they have radically changed their team’s attack. Threatening from the perimeter, the only problem is not that they can hit you a triple on each play, it is that to defend them well they force you to open the defense, and with those spaces inside Joel Embiid (and to a lesser extent Ben Simmons) they destroy you. Between Curry and Green they scored 26 points, most in the last 12 minutes, with a 6/13 on shots of three.
While all that was happening, in front It was Bradley Beal who, almost alone, kept his people alive putting the baskets that the rest did not know or could not put. The guard went to 33 points, very good the closer to the basket (12/17 in shots of two) and very bad the further (1/6 of three). In any case, the superhero costume will not be enough in this series, in which they have a gentleman team in front of them. You need support, starting with Russell Westbrook, who forgot his stellar version of the last few weeks and remembered old vices: 7/17 shooting, 6 losses, bad decisions in the last minutes …
Meanwhile the rival stars were at the expected level. Or even above, as in the case of Tobias Harris, who scored a great game. Top scorer of the match with 37 goals, the power forward was the one who pulled the Sixers’ car in the second quarter, the worst of his team by far, and continued to add until the end, not to give respite to a defense that he brought headlong. If to that we add that Joel Embiid, who went to halftime almost without contributing due to foul problems, returned in the second half in MVP candidate mode (30 points), and what Ben Simmons was brilliant at directing (15 assists, plus 15 rebounds), the game ended up falling from the home side under its own weight. The Wizards will have much more to do if they want this series to last.
