NEW YORK — In their 102-97 victory Thursday night, a victory that gave them a three-games-to-none lead in their first-round series against the Brooklyn Nets, the 76ers started a forward who played 29 minutes and took just three shots. One was a layup, which he made, but he hesitated on the other two. They were 3-pointers, and the forward wasn’t sure at first if he wanted to take them. He shuffled his feet and pump-faked a little, and it looked awkward, but he was open, so he took the shots. He missed them. The Sixers did not run any offensive sets or plays for this forward in the game’s closing minutes, either, because … well, why would they? When his team is in the closing minutes of a big game and needs someone to create a shot, he is not the kind of player who really wants the ball in his hands or should have the ball in his hands.
This all might sound familiar, like nothing about the Sixers is different this postseason … when everything might yet be. You can read a box score, without watching the corresponding game, and wonder what value, if any, the Sixers derive from having P.J. Tucker in their lineup. You can read the above paragraph, pick up on the manipulative manner in which it has been written, and say to yourself, Great. He’s making another Ben Simmons reference. And you’d be right. Which gets to the whole point.
If Simmons’ presence was, by the end of his time with the Sixers, a psychological drag on the entire team — and it was — Tucker’s has the opposite effect. He lends them a toughness, in body and mind and spirit, that they had lacked for too long. Yes, he had just three points Thursday. But he had eight rebounds — four, including two offensive boards, in the game’s final four minutes — and four assists, and on a night when Joel Embiid should have been ejected for kicking Nic Claxton in the manhood and James Harden and Claxton were ejected and the entire 48 minutes was closer to playoff hockey than playoff basketball, the Sixers needed every ounce of Tucker’s smarts and fortitude.
