Blowout losses have a way of creating calm. In close games, you can point to one player, one call, one set of plays that could have made a difference.
Losing by 20 alleviates all of that, they were terrible in the second half and showed their bellies to a streaking Sixers squad. It doesn’t leave much room for hand-wringing.
What’s harder in a loss like last night is identifying which players stood out and for what reasons. As the team faded in the third, scoring a mere 15 points, the outstanding performances in the first-half faded as well.