Sixers refuse to harp on ‘what-ifs’ or sweat playoff race: ‘Game 2 is just as important as Game 82′

Joel Embiid had abandoned his locker for the shower following the 76ers’ win over the Detroit Pistons on Tuesday night. But his cell phone remained on a shelf, still live-streaming a matchup between the Miami Heat and Atlanta Hawks that eventually went into double overtime.

It’s that time of the season, especially while the Eastern Conference standings continue to shift heading into the final weekend of the regular season. The Sixers (45-35) will enter Friday’s now-marquee home matchup against the Orlando Magic in seventh place, one game ahead of the Heat and one game back of the sixth-place Indiana Pacers and fifth-place Magic.

A number of circumstances could have landed the Sixers in an even more favorable position, but this is not the time to ponder the “what-ifs?” that pepper any 82-game slate, although sometimes human nature makes avoiding that challenging.

» READ MORE: Joel Embiid intends to ‘play as many minutes as possible’ to get in shape for Sixers’ playoff run

“You can think of recent games and be like, ‘Man, if you could have that one or that one — or just one call or whatever — it would have been different,’” veteran forward Nico Batum said Thursday after practice. “But, hey, we are where we are right now. So can’t really control that.

“Right now, it’s about [Friday’s] game. It’s going to be a big one, against a good team.”

Potential missed opportunities extend beyond the mega-question of how the Sixers’ season may have unfolded differently had Embiid, the reigning NBA Most Valuable Player, not missed eight weeks following knee surgery. That midseason blow sent the Sixers tumbling from third place in the East to fighting to get out of the play-in tournament, and headlined a multitude of injuries that disrupted lineup combinations and schematic progress during coach Nick Nurse’s first season.

This exercise instead covers “bad” losses during the struggles without Embiid, such as a late-January blowout defeat to the tanking Portland Trail Blazers, or two losses in February and March to the lottery-bound Brooklyn Nets, or dropping a March 6 game against the injury-riddled Memphis Grizzlies. It also includes heartbreakers such as a one-point loss at the Milwaukee Bucks on opening night, or overtime defeats against the Cleveland Cavaliers in November and Atlanta Hawks in January.

Or, perhaps most fresh and frustrating for Sixers supporters, a 108-107 home loss to the Los Angeles Clippers on March 27 that ended with Nurse and wing Kelly Oubre Jr. storming the officiating crew over a no-call that the league acknowledged it missed just before the buzzer.

About a week after that debacle, data compiled by Croatian software engineer Daniel Bratulić — who has created a chart-heavy basketball analytics website called Bballytics — gained traction online. It revealed that, as of April 2, the Sixers were “the most-affected team by ‘wrong’ calls in the last two minutes” of games during the regular season. In 21 games with a Last Two Minute Report, there were 22 officiating errors “against” the Sixers, and 11 errors in favor of the team, yielding the largest discrepancy in the NBA.

The Inquirer asked Bratulić earlier this week for a more detailed breakdown, to present a clearer picture of how those incorrect calls potentially impacted a game result. As of April 7, per Bratulić’s compilation, eight errors against the Sixers occurred in 11 games with a Last Two Minute Report that the Sixers lost, while four errors went in favor of the Sixers. Those errors against were more than the Heat (seven in 14 losses) and Pacers (four in 14 losses), and fewer than the Magic (10 in 10 losses).

But here is evidence that a bad call does not necessarily cause a loss: There were 15 errors against the Sixers in 12 games they ended up winning.

The other teams fighting for postseason positioning could similarly dissect their schedules, or injuries, or officiating. And more scoreboard watching will surely occur Friday, when the Heat host the Raptors and the Pacers play the Cavaliers.

And the Sixers will aim to avoid thinking about “what if?”

“Every year, it comes down to some teams needing these last couple games,” Nurse said. “So the lesson is, Game 2 is just as important as Game 82 in the standings.”