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Tim Bontemps, ESPN
PHILADELPHIA — Long after the Philadelphia 76ers emerged with a comfortable 107-86 victory over the Brooklyn Nets in their season finale here at Wells Fargo Center, most of the 76ers roster was standing in the locker room watching the final moments of the New York Knicks–Chicago Bulls game a hundred miles up Interstate 95.
If New York won the game, it would clinch the second seed — and would be Philadelphia’s potential first round opponent next weekend. If Chicago won, the Knicks would be third and the Milwaukee Bucks would clinch the second seed instead.
Ultimately, it was the Knicks who escaped with a thrilling 120-119 overtime victory after DeMar DeRozan‘s potential game-winning jumper went wanting. The 76ers — relegated to the play-in tournament close to an hour earlier by the Orlando Magic’s 113-88 victory over the Milwaukee Bucks — will now shift their focus to Wednesday’s 7-8 play-in game here against the Miami Heat.
“Obviously we’ve had some great battles with them, and we always expect that facing them,” 76ers coach Nick Nurse said after the win of the prospect of facing Miami. “The mindset is we’re playing well and do everything we can, like we’ve been doing the last month of the year … digging in and playing our guys and doing whatever we have to, whatever we got to do to win.
“We’ve got a good mindset, and we’ll take that into Wednesday.”
While Philadelphia ultimately finished in a three-way tie with both the Magic and Indiana Pacers, who walloped the Atlanta Hawks Sunday, Orlando earned the fifth seed by virtue of wining the Southeast Division — the tiebreaker between the three teams.
Indiana then won the head-to-head tiebreak with Philadelphia thanks to winning the season series 2-1, and thus got the sixth seed and, with it, a matchup with the Bucks in the first round.
That relegated Philadelphia to seventh, where the 76ers finished despite ripping off eight straight wins to end the year. Now, they will entertain the Heat in Philadelphia after Miami won a second straight game against the Toronto Raptors Sunday to close the season in eighth.
It was a wild day of results around the Eastern Conference, however, led by the Cleveland Cavaliers seemingly going out of their way to ensure they were the fourth seed by playing their end-of-bench players down the stretch to lose to the hapless Charlotte Hornets, who had basically their entire rotation ruled out before the game. The Hornets outscored Cleveland 32-14 in the fourth quarter.
“Yeah, I mean we were trying,” Cavaliers coach J.B. Bickerstaff told reporters after the game. “Again, in live time it’s hard to get all that information. We were aware, as some of that stuff was going on.
“But once we sat our guys at the end of the 3rd quarter and they had the mindset of not going back in, I didn’t want to take any risks of putting them back into the game. When everyone had already cooled down and then something else happens.
“So, you are always aware of it, you are always taking a peek at it but I thought the safety of our guys was the most important thing. When they were shut off, I didn’t want to have and ramp them back up to put them late in the 4th quarter when something worse could happen to them. That’s what we stuck with.”
That loss by Cleveland ensured the Cavaliers would finish fourth. If they had won Cleveland would have secured the No. 3 seed due to owning the tiebreaker over the Bucks.
Both the Cavs and Bucks losing meant the Knicks would wind up as the second seed with a win. They played an overtime thriller vs. the Bulls that went right down to the buzzer at MSG, with Chicago — despite having nothing to play for — giving the Knicks everything they had before New York finally was able to come out on top.
Four players on both teams played at least 40 minutes, while Donte DiVincenzo never came out at all for New York.
Now, though, he and the Knicks will get a full week off to rest and will watch Wednesday’s game here to see who they’ll face in the first round of the playoffs, with the loser then hosting the winner of the Bulls and Hawks Friday for the right to face the top-seeded Boston Celtics in the first round.
The one lingering question going into that 7-8 play-in game Wednesday is the health of the 76ers — and, specifically, reigning MVP Joel Embiid, who sat out Sunday’s game against Brooklyn in what sources told ESPN before the game was a precautionary measure.
Nurse, though, said Embiid will be ready to play Wednesday.
“He did everything at practice yesterday,” Nurse said after the game, “but we decided out of caution to hold him out.
“He’ll be ready to go.”
Robert Covington, however, will not be, as Nurse said it’s unlikely the veteran forward will return this season due to a bone bruise in his left knee. He also said De’Anthony Melton, who has dealt with back issues for most of 2024, is trending towards not being available, either.