The Philadelphia 76ers had a golden opportunity heading into Game 7 at home on Sunday night with the young and inexperienced Atlanta Hawks. This was the first Game 7 for plenty of players on Atlanta’s roster, especially their main ones, and yet it was the Hawks who came away with the 103-96 win to eliminate Philadelphia.
The Sixers committed 17 turnovers on the night, they missed six of 25 free throws, and they could not come up with any stops late. The Hawks looked like the tested team that had been in this situation before compared to Philadelphia. The Sixers just could not come up with the right answers.
“We had 17 turnovers,” explained coach Doc Rivers. “If you want to circle one thing, that 17 turnovers. We shot 75% from the free-throw line. They just had too many extra shots at the end of the day for us to win the game, but offensively is what, to me, let us down tonight. I thought our defense hung in there as long as it could. We couldn’t make shots. I didn’t think we trust, passing the night I think is a great lesson for us but not the lesson we want to lose in a Game 7.”
Philadelphia was led by Joel Embiid who had 31 points and 11 rebounds in what was another big game for him, but he did end up committed eight turnovers by himself and that was a big reason for the loss.
“First of all, I gotta give Atlanta a lot of credit for what they did,” said Embiid. “Obviously, they beat us so I got to give them a lot of credit. It sucks to come up short once again, but there’s a lot of stuff that happened. It just felt like this was gonna be our year. Whether it was COVID or injuries and stuff. It just sucks.”
Philadelphia was right there in the fourth quarter, but they were not able to get the necessary stops late. The Hawks were able to get clutch plays from Trae Young as well as Kevin Huerter and that was all she wrote. The Sixers then could not answer on the offensive end which cost them their season.
“I just felt it was a close game all the way through and then towards the end, we kind of made some mistakes that hurt us,” said Tobias Harris. “Give them credit, they had guys that had it going and were able to make tough shots as well and we got a bit stagnant offensively out there.”
Philadelphia also only received five points on four shots from Ben Simmons as he was not able to make any similar impact as he was able to in the past when it comes to the team’s offense. They needed him to get into the paint, but he just wasn’t able to get it done.
“I think we slowed down the pace,” said Simmons afterward. “We didn’t move the ball enough and we didn’t get enough stops.”
Embiid led the team in this one despite having to play with a small lateral meniscus tear in his right knee that was clearly bothering him. As the team heads off into the offseason, the big fella had one last message he wanted to put out there.
“If there’s one thing I want to say, I gave it everything I had,” said a dejected Embiid. “Especially when something always happens at the wrong time. I was ready this whole playoffs to just come in and just dominate and do what I had to do. Then the meniscus happened. It sucks. There’s a lot of regret.”
This post originally appeared on Sixers Wire! Follow us on Facebook!