Philadelphia 76ers: Final quarter woes cost Sixers dearly

The Philadelphia 76ers struggled mightily down the stretch, coming up short in their opening home game of the 2017-18 season.

In their first game in the Wells Fargo Center for the 2017-18 NBA season, the Philadelphia 76ers had every chance to come away with the victory.

Leading 72-69 entering the fourth quarter against a Boston Celtics team missing its starting forwards in All-Star Gordon Hayward and Marcus Morris, a full strength Sixers team looked poised to record their first win of the season.

But a disastrous 33-20 final quarter meant head coach Brett Brown and his men find themselves with a 0-2 record to commence the season.

On a night where the Sixers shot 38.0 percent overall as a team, there were naturally very few highlights.

Veteran guard J.J. Redick led the way with 19 points, including 4-of-7 from 3-point range, while another veteran in Jerryd Bayless added 18 points, shooting 4-of-6 from long-range.

Unfortunately for the Sixers, the rest of the team shot a combined 2-of-19 from downtown.

A further positive was the second-game performance of rookie Ben Simmons. While he scored just 11 points on 4-of-11 from the field, he managed to add 11 rebounds and five assists, marking his consecutive double-double to start his career.

Following his performance, Simmons was still relatively upbeat as to the immediate direction of the team:

"“It’s a scary sight, but at the same time, we’ve got to get together, otherwise it’s not going to happen. I think we’re getting there. Everyone’s starting to gel and figure it out.”"

Also posting his second consecutive double-double was center Joel Embiid, with 11 points, 14 rebounds, 3 assists and 2 blocks. Unfortunately for Embiid and the Sixers, he shot just 4-of-16 from the field, which included missing his first eight shot attempts. Furthermore, he has now shot just 1-of-10 from 3-point range over the first two games.

Following the game, coach Brown was relatively philosophical about where the Sixers currently stood:

"“I feel like the endurance that we’ve all gone through to look at just a snapshot of what can be, there is a tiny element of satisfaction that we all should have. But it’s completely tempered with the reality that there is way more to do — way more to do.”"

But despite their shots not falling in the final term, this marked back-to-backs games in which the Sixers gave given up at least 30 points in the final quarter.  In fact, the Sixers had a catastrophic defensive rating (points allowed per 100 possessions) of 158.5 in the final period.

After the game, Redick alluded to this being a decisive factor in the outcome:

"“In the fourth, we couldn’t get stops. We got good looks, but just didn’t get stops.”"

While the performance was far from rosy, this is after all just game No. 2 of a long, long season. And the sight of Embiid, who played in just 29 minutes throughout the preseason, on the court for the second consecutive game will be extremely heartening for all Sixers followers.

But with the big picture still in mind, Embiid has already been ruled out of their Saturday night road trip, when they face the Toronto Raptors.

Next: 30 reasons to be excited for the 2017-18 NBA season

So while the end results haven’t been to their liking, the Sixers are certainly confident that their fortunes will turn around in the not-too-distant future.