The No. 1 seed Philadelphia 76ers will face the No. 5 Atlanta Hawks in the second round of the 2021 NBA Playoffs. The Sixers were staring down a sweep of the No. 8 seed Washington Wizards on Monday before C Joel Embiid was forced to leave the game due to a knee injury. He was diagnosed with a small tear in his meniscus and is considered day-to-day after missing the series-clinching win in Game 5 on Wednesday. Seth Curry stepped up big on offense for Philly, which will need a healthy Embiid to make a deep run the rest of the way.
The Hawks appeared to be in a dog fight with the No. 4 seed New York Knicks but that wasn’t exactly the case. While the series was chippy, the Hawks were able to get by in five games, similar to the Sixers. Trae Young has a playoff series win under his belt despite some ups and downs. He’ll look to add to that in the second round surrounded by a deep, talented Hawks roster with a veteran coach in Nate McMillan.
The Sixers took two of three games from the Hawks during the regular season, sweeping a back-to-back set in April with two easy wins. The Hawks’ lone win over Philly earlier in the season was when the Sixers were without both Ben Simmons and Tobias Harris. The health of Embiid will be important in this series but the Sixers have capable defenders to lock down Young while boasting enough veteran depth to advance.
Here we’ll be tracking everything you need to know for the Hawks-Sixers series, including picks, injuries and the schedule. We’ll provide the full schedule when it’s released.
Sixers vs. Hawks series schedule
Given the star power and firepower of the East’s other semifinal matchup — Brooklyn vs. Milwaukee — this clash of No. 1 vs. No. 5 was going to need something unexpected to generate some intrigue and suspense. And it got that, in the worst way: Philadelphia’s Kia MVP-worthy center, Joel Embiid, will be a question mark until he’s not thanks to a meniscus tear in his right knee that is hampering him.
That’s the equivalent of tying one arm behind the Sixers’ collective back, as far as evening the odds. It’s the East version of what the Lakers have faced with Anthony Davis’ day-to-day injury uncertainty. It could mean the difference between Atlanta being sent off to summer with a pat on the head or actually pushing the favored Philadelphia to the brink.
The Sixers won two of the three meetings between the teams, taking the pair near the end of April after losing in January without Ben Simmons (hurt) and a handful of players in virus safety protocols.
Three things to watch
1. Joel Embiid’s status. If the big fella is healthy or nearly so, the Sixers are better and more polished at both ends of the floor. With Embiid limited or sidelined, the Hawks’ 3-point shooting could benefit from a heavy complement of rim attacks. Their own frontcourt players, Clint Capela and John Collins, might avoid the foul trouble that Embiid brings with him. The series can’t start too soon or move too swiftly for Atlanta’s liking, staying a step ahead of Embiid’s treatment regimen.
2. Can Trae Young keep it going? The Knicks and their fans got a taste of the havoc Young can wreak on a game with his scoring, his passing, his energy and his elusiveness. The Sixers are better equipped to slow him with backcourt defenders such as Simmons, Danny Green, George Hill and Matisse Thybulle. But the irrepressible Young, in the two games he played against Philadelphia this season, averaged 38.9 points and 8.0 assists per 36 minutes. If the lane is more open now, look out. And Young has X-factor Bogdan Bogdanovic to draw defenders now — he averaged 16.4 points and made 43.8% of his 3-pointers this season but missed all three Philadelphia games.
3. Who wins the free throw contest? Philadelphia outscored its opponents by 156 points from the foul line during the season. The Hawks were even better, going plus-198 from the line over their 72 games. Head-to-head, Atlanta had a 66-49 edge, so the 48 total points that separated them in the three games came from elsewhere. We’d rather not watch a lot of points scored by standing around, but it is a category worth watching.
The number to know
-6.2 — The Sixers are 30-6 with their full starting lineup, and one of those losses was Game 4 against Washington, when Joel Embiid didn’t play after the first quarter. In the regular season, the lineup outscored opponents by 215 points, the best cumulative plus-minus (by a wide margin) among all lineups and by 14.0 points per 100 possessions, the sixth best mark among 30 lineups that played at least 200 minutes. Through the first 3 1/4 games of the first round, it outscored the Wizards by 61 points (45.6 per 100 possessions) in 60 minutes.
The Sixers did win Game 5 without Embiid, and they played well with him off the floor in their two April wins over the Hawks. But in 322 total minutes (275 in the regular season, 47 in the playoffs) with their other four starters on the floor without their MVP candidate, the Sixers have been outscored by 6.2 points per 100 possessions. The difference between those minutes and the minutes with all five starters on the floor has been significant on both offense (10.8 fewer points scored per 100 possessions) and defense (12.2 more points allowed per 100).