The contrast between Tobias Harris and Josh Hart was series-altering for the Sixers
The contrast between Tobias Harris and Josh Hart was series-altering for the Sixers
The last rebound of the night, and indeed the series, belonged to Josh Hart. Of course it did, because the Knicks forward seemed to grab all the big ones in the six-game playoff scrum between his team and the Sixers.
Once Hart corralled Buddy Hield’s desperate heave and the buzzer sounded on New York’s 118-115 clincher late Thursday night, he turned and waved to the departing crowd. Might as well have been bidding adieu to this iteration of the Sixers as well.
The pillars, Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey, are likely to remain in place next season, but nothing else is certain. Bring back Kelly Oubre Jr.? Sure. Nico Batum? Absolutely, if he wants. Retirement talk has been swirling around the 35-year-old since he was acquired from the Clippers in November, but he clearly remains a viable, valuable player. And after the game he said he will go through the Olympic cycle with the French national team before making a decision about his future.
Cameron Payne? Why not? He seems to thrive as an off-the-bench energy guy. Hield? Maybe, though you clearly have to live with his ups and downs. Kyle Lowry? Paul Reed? Mo Bamba? Pass, pass and pass.
Then there’s the Tobias Harris question, which is really no question at all. The veteran forward is at the end of a bloated five-year, $180 contract, and he marked the occasion with a doughnut — scoring exactly zero points while taking exactly two shots in a little over 29 minutes Thursday.
While his failures in big spots have become commonplace, it boggles the mind that someone of his skill and experience would completely disappear like this. (It was, according to ESPN, his first scoreless game in nine years.) So I tried to ask him about it after Game 6, once the media pack broke up.
The exact phraseology of my question was this: What are the factors that contributed to you not having the night you wanted to have?
He asked me to repeat it, and I did.
“I just finished doing media, dude,” he said.
And that was that.
He has always put up numbers in his career, at least in the regular season — 16.3 points a game on .478/.368/.835 shooting splits for his 13 years, 17.2 ppg on .487/.353/.878 splits in 2023-24. But they ring hollow, especially when they don’t translate to the clutch.
Never was that truer than in this series, when Harris averaged 9.0 points and 7.2 rebounds. Other than Game 5 he was a complete non-factor on the offensive end, and the Knicks continually targeted him defensively.
His work suffered in comparison to that of Hart, who made one winning play after another. In fact, it is not much of a stretch to say that if the two of them had somehow switched teams, it would be the Sixers who would be advancing to face Indiana, not the Knicks.
In Game 6 Hart abutted Jalen Brunson’s 41-point outing with 16 points, 14 boards and seven assists. And it was his three-pointer with a little over 24 seconds left that put New York ahead to stay, in a game the Knicks led by 22 in the first quarter and trailed by 10 in the third.
For the series Hart averaged 16.8 points and 12.3 rebounds, and the only thing he seems to have in common with Harris is that they have both bounced around. Harris, 31, is on his fifth team, while Hart, 29, is on his fourth. Unlike Harris, Hart’s regular-season numbers — 9.8 points a game on .459/.344/.748 splits for his seven years, 9.4 on .434/.310/.791 splits this season — are just OK (though his rebounding numbers — 8.3 in 2023-24, 6.6 overall — are impressive for a 6-foot-4 guy).
At nut-cutting time, it’s abundantly clear which of them is the better option.
Harris said he “hadn’t really thought about” his future after the game, though the writing appears to be on the wall. Hart, seated in an interview room between Brunson and Donte DiVincenzo — teammates now and teammates once before, at Villanova — was only too happy to address his present. Said that when he took a pass from Brunson at the top of the circle in the closing seconds with the game tied at 111-all, his first thought was to swing the ball to DiVincenzo.
But the Sixers, fully cognizant of Hart’s struggles from the arc during the regular season, had left him all alone, as indeed they had throughout much of the series. It had proven costly early on, but less so in Games 4 and 5, when Hart was 1-for-9 from deep.
He split his first four attempts Thursday, and this time he set his feet, fired and connected. That gave him some feeling of atonement, after he had missed a free throw that could have given the Knicks a four-point lead in the closing seconds of regulation in Game 5. That left the door open for the Sixers, and Maxey drilled a game-tying three-pointer, paving the way for Philadelphia’s overtime victory.
“I felt that loss was on my shoulders,” Hart said. “I had a day and a half to think about that. That’s really all I thought about.”
No longer.
“It feels good,” he said of his decisive three. “After I lost the game for us, I won the game for us.”
Another reporter asked Hart about his stamina, seeing as he sat out slightly less than 15 minutes the entire series. He jokingly attributed it to Mike & Ike’s candies, a box of which he had brought with him to the interview room. Even tossed one of the treats to the reporter.
“It’ll change your life,” Hart told the guy.
Tobias Harris’ numbers are not unlike Mike & Ike’s, in that they offer only empty calories. Time to move on. Time for the Sixers to explore healthier options. Doughnuts — or cookies — just won’t cut it anymore.