It was all going so smoothly until it wasn’t. The Sixers Friday possessed an 18-point lead. They even had a 16-point lead with four minutes to go in the ballgame. Their stars should have been put on ice. But of course they had to make us sweat with a predictable bevy of turnovers, folly, all while logging monster minutes in what should have been an open-and-shut case. They got it done in OT.
Failing to close out big leads has been a problem for this organization for years. Fans still have nightmares about the blown double-digit leads to the Atlanta Hawks in 2021.