Sixers 107, Jazz 86: Four’N Twenty Minutes of Good Basketball

The third and fourth quarters of the Philadelphia 76ers' 107-86 victory over the Utah Jazz tonight were highly entertaining. Ben Simmons scored 22 of his career-high 27 points (to go along with his 10 rebounds) during the final two periods, and J.J. Redick followed up a scoreless first half by finishing the night with 20 points.

The highlight of the final 24 minutes? Well... I'll let someone else tell it...

The scene: Jazz rookie guard Donovan Mitchell (who subscribes to the "shooters shoot" philosophy) went full YOLO mode in the closing minutes of the 4th quarter, and tried to drive on Joel Embiid. As you can tell by Keith Pompey's tweet, it did not end well.

Embiid (15 points, 11 rebounds, 1 soul of an adult NBA player) and Mitchell dapped it up at half-court following the final buzzer, so all is well... until JoJo fires off that Instagram post later tonight.

The first half of tonight's game? All I can say is that... it was 24 minutes of basketball, and definitely not of the good variety. Both teams combined to shoot 2-for-20 from beyond (Jazz - 2/12, Sixers - 0/8). More importantly, both teams had 3-plus minute stretches where they didn't make a field goal of any sort.

The Sixers' bench played well in the first two quarters, led by 8 points by T.J. McConnell (who was surprisingly aggressive on offense) and a surprising 6 points and 6 boards from Amir Johnson. Johnson finished the evening with eight points, 13 rebounds, four blocks, and some pretty good defense against the Jazz bigs.

Brett Brown's squad won every quarter on the scoreboard, completely dominated the glass (55 to 34), and literally never trailed after taking a 9-7 lead midway through the first quarter. Sans Rudy Gobert, the Jazz are a team that the Sixers should handle fairly easily, and that's pretty much what happened tonight.

It's a new era, ladies and gentlemen. The Sixers are highly dependent on their starters to provide the offense, yet on a night when three (Embiid, Dario Saric, Robert Covington) of them all shot less than 50 percent, the team still put up 107 points.

The good guys are back at it on Wednesday when the Portland Trail Blazers pay a visit to the Wells Fargo Center.

Six(ers) Notes:

• Is it a coincidence that Simmons set a new career-high on the same night that the Sixers announced that they agreed to a partnership with an Australian meat pie company? I THINK NOT.

• The Jazz are terrible.

• At the end of the first quarter, the Sixers' bench had 16 points. Conversely, every member of the Jazz had a combined 15 points.
• J.J. Redick still isn't getting super-clean looks on his jumpers. He finished with a solid 20 points, but it seems like the team/coaching staff could do a bit more to get him better shots.
• No, seriously... the Jazz are terrible. They shot 35.3 percent from the floor, and their "offense" is a mess. It's hard to imagine that this is the same team that put up 125 against the Orlando Magic two nights ago.

• The Sixers swept the Jazz in a season series for the first time since the Reagan Administration. Marc Zumoff said it, so I believe it. #TempleMade