PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The NBA Playoffs are finally – almost – here as the Sixers will tip off the first round against the Brooklyn Nets Saturday at 1 p.m.
While the Phillies danced to the National League pennant and the Eagles flew to the Super Bowl, the Sixers have been having another very good regular season. Joel Embiid is once again an MVP candidate and arguably the favorite. James Harden has been an assist machine. And the team collected 54 regular season wins, the most for them in an 82-game season since 2000-01 when Allen Iverson willed them to the NBA Finals.
This year’s team was 12-12 amid early season injuries, but went 42-16 the rest of the way, leading up to the games that matter – the postseason.
The Nets, meantime, are a somewhat familiar foe. The cities are about a 90-minute, two-hour drive from one another and they’ve had some highly publicized regular season showdowns between this season and last.
However, the Nets teams you’ve been accustomed to seeing lately is not the one you’ll be seeing Saturday afternoon.
1 – Ben Simmons isn’t playing
Let’s get this out of the way.
Former Sixers star Ben Simmons won’t be suiting up in this series. My goodness if he did. The attention on this series would be through the roof.
The Nets recently shut Simmons down for the rest of the season because of his latest back issue.
Related
Still, don’t be surprised if you see Simmons sitting on the bench supporting his Brooklyn teammates, as was the case in the regular season finale against the Sixers yesterday.
Even though Simmons isn’t playing, if the Nets upset the Sixers, it certainly won’t sit well that Simmons’ team gets the last laugh.
2 – Mikal, what could’ve been
Frankly, if the Nets upset the Sixers — Villanova great Mikal Bridges playing a part might actually sting more.
Bridges, a local guy who the Sixers drafted in the first round in 2018 only to trade him minutes later, was traded to the Nets in-season when Brooklyn was sending off Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving. Out those guys went, and in came Bridges and guard Spencer Dinwiddie in his second Brooklyn stint. Dinwiddie has given the Sixers problems before.
Related
Since going from the Suns to the Nets, Bridges has shined. He may love the Eagles, Phillies and Flyers (and deep down probably the Sixers, too) being that he’s from the area, but he is still fully capable of having a big series – as is Dinwiddie.
They need to be taken seriously.
3 – The health of the Sixers stars
Embiid, Harden and the rest of the Sixers regulars are essentially getting one week without games because of when the Sixers clinched the three-seed. The Nets are getting a lot of rest, too. But, in past postseasons, Embiid and Harden have had injury issues. Lately, Embiid has been nursing calf tightness and Harden Achilles soreness. Embiid, in fact, has never had a postseason where he is healthy throughout.
If the Sixers are going to finally get past the second round, it would help if those guys were at the top of their game, which includes their health.
4 – 2019 Rematch
This series is a rematch of the 2019 first round when Embiid, Simmons and Jimmy Butler defeated the Nets in five games. Although it was a 4-1 series, Brooklyn took the first game and the Sixers had to squeak out Game 4 in Brooklyn. This Nets team is more experienced than the one four years ago.
Related
Also, while the Sixers swept the regular season series in 2022-23, only one of those games was with Bridges, Dinwiddie and the current group of Nets’ regulars playing.
This will be an interesting series. It’s one the Sixers should win, interesting nonetheless.
5 – Playoff History
This will be the fourth time in history that the Sixers and Nets (Brooklyn and New Jersey) will meet in the postseason. All of them are first round matchups. In 1979, Julius Erving and the Sixers swept his former team 2-0. In 1984, the Nets stunned the defending champion Sixers 3-2, winning Game 5 at The Spectrum. And then, the most recent matchup was in 2019.