In a loss to the Suns, a Sixers trade deadline need comes into focus | David Murphy

If the road to the NBA Finals is going to run through Brooklyn, then the Sixers’ 120-111 loss to the Suns on Saturday is a game that Doc Rivers and Daryl Morey might want to keep in mind as they look ahead toward the trade deadline.

Nobody will ever accuse Chris Paul and Devin Booker of being James Harden and Kyrie Irving, but for a Sixers team that has yet to face the Nets with their two backcourt stars, the Suns’ duo is as close of an approximation as they have seen thus far this season. As you may have gleaned from the final score, it did not go well.

The Sixers we saw out in Phoenix on Saturday looked disconcertingly similar to the teams we’ve seen in the previous two seasons whenever they’ve been asked to contend with a team that can kill you off the dribble. If you did not happen to catch the telecast, feel free to fast forward your DVR to any four-minute stretch. Chances are, you’ll quickly catch yourself up.

» READ MORE: Sixers lose, 120-111, in Phoenix as Devin Booker, bench give Suns edge in win

You’ll see Paul breaking down a defender and getting into the paint as the Sixers’ defense disintegrates around him. That, or you’ll see Booker stretching things past their breaking point with one of his usual variety of long-distance threes. If you’re interested in the latter, I’d respectfully point you toward the second half of the fourth quarter, when Booker drained a couple of absurd shots from downtown that pushed the Suns’ lead into the realm of the insurmountable.

By the end of the evening, Paul and Booker had combined to score 54 points on 22-of-36 shooting with 14 assists. In other words, the duo scored or assisted on all but 12 of the Suns’ 48 makes.

“They went downhill on everything,” Rivers said after the loss. “Just over and over again, collapsing our defense and that created all the ball movement and all the stuff that they got. We just didn’t have the ability to stay square.”

In fairness to the Sixers, this team is not nearly as porous as it has been in recent seasons, regardless of what Saturday’s box score may indicate. Had this team been those teams, there’s a chance that the game would have ended with an emergency evacuation as the arena filled with smoke pouring out of the scoreboard. Those teams did not have Ben Simmons playing a level of defense that has led him to make the defensible claim that he is the best all-around defender in the NBA. Those teams did not complement him with Danny Green, who remains one of the league’s most heady and consistent wings.

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At the same time, those teams did not have to worry about winning a playoff series against a team with a backcourt as talented as the one that the Nets have cobbled together. That might seem like a random and gratuitous point to raise after an anonymous midseason game that was played in the middle of the afternoon and near the end of a long West Coast trip. But as Morey himself has said, the Sixers are in championship-or-bust mode, which means the regular season is first and foremost a time to learn what the road to the Finals is going to look like. On Saturday, it looked like a place that would really benefit from a wing defender who can give Rivers the option of subbing in for Tobias Harris (or Seth Curry) in situations where a guard or guards have the Sixers on their heels.

The trade market is not going to yield another Simmons, who, we should note, was the least of Rivers’ concerns against the Suns. The question is whether Morey can find another Danny Green, or maybe even a slightly quicker version of him. That in itself is a tall order, but it is increasingly looking like a necessary one, given what we’ve seen from this Sixers defense over the last five or six games.

“We learn a lot more from losses,” Green said. “I think these wake-up calls are much needed.”

He wasn’t referring specifically to roster composition, but the point stands. There can be a lot of value in losses if you glean the right lessons. The Sixers haven’t had many of them this season, and that’s obviously a good thing. At 18-9, they remain in first place in the Eastern Conference, even after losses to Portland and Phoenix gave them their second multi-game losing streak of the season. All the same, they are not a perfect team, and the goal between now and March 25 is to get the roster to a point where it has close to that bar as is possible.

Assuming the Sixers don’t make a run at another superstar, the top priority on their shopping list should be a player in the mold of the three-and-D wings that the Heat stocked up on last season.

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