Sixers had no answer for Jalen Johnson and no control of the boards as Atlanta wins 117-107

Coming out of the All-Star break, the Sixers spent the night watching Atlanta win the effort plays that almost always decide close games. Jalen Johnson lived at the rim and the foul line, the Hawks owned the offensive glass late, and Philadelphia’s margin without Joel Embiid disappeared again in a 117-107 loss.

The teams traded baskets in the first half, with Atlanta taking a seven-point lead into halftime, but the energetic play of Johnson and CJ McCollum in the first kept the Hawks just out of reach for the Sixers. In a turn of events, the Sixers came out of the locker room and played hard the entire quarter, which is progress, and actually won the third 31-28. Atlanta pushed the lead to 14 in the fourth. When the Sixers cut it to four, Atlanta answered with second-chance points off tips and long rebounds. Atlanta played faster to every 50-50 ball and was a step ahead of the Sixers all night, keeping them on their heels.

The Sixers are now 0-3 against Atlanta this season, a significant mark in a tight play-in race where the Hawks hold the tiebreaker.

The Game Pivoted on the Offensive Glass

The game pivoted on the offensive glass when Atlanta kept turning Sixers defensive possessions where they clamped down, forcing bad shots into second chances where the Sixers were having trouble getting reset. By 5:40 of the fourth, Atlanta had 23 second-chance points off 11 offensive rebounds. Those extra possessions wiped out the momentum from a run and exhausted a team that had just forced a bad shot. A stop is only a stop if you finish it with the ball, and the Sixers didn’t. Instead, they ended possessions with hands on their hips while the Hawks reset and forced them to defend a second, and sometimes even a third, time. It wasn’t necessarily the boards; it was the timing of them, coming at the exact moments when the Sixers needed momentum to swing.

Andre Drummond’s line looks very typical of what you expect: 14 rebounds with 5 on the offensive end. Although he wasn’t the X-Factor he usually is when he’s dictating the pace of the game with two or three possessions in a row, because Atlanta’s rebounding was collective and strategic. They pulled him into constant traffic inside that didn’t always end with a clean look. The Hawks put bodies on him early, guards swooped in for long rebounds off misses, and their bigs kept him from turning his OREBs into back-to-back points. Without Embiid on the floor, that spread Drummond incredibly thin. As the lone big, Drummond had to cover too much ground, and too many possessions turned into scramble drills that Atlanta won.

The Sixers Had No Answer For Johnson

Everything the Sixers tried on Johnson landed them in a different kind of trouble. He kept forcing them into possessions that they had no chance at winning, dropping 32 points, 10 rebounds, and five assists. He punished smalls with drives that ended at the rim or with free throws. He blew by the bigs by turning the corner before they could get their feet set, and once the Sixers started sending help toward him, he calmly let the play come to him, making the extra pass and making sure one of his teammates got a clean look without losing his own rhythm. Johnson’s 14-of-16 at the free-throw line means he wasn’t just scoring, he was driving at will.

Despite going 0-for-5 from three, Johnson scored 32 by attacking the paint. He didn’t need the three-ball because the Sixers never made him see a second body early enough to change his line. His pressure created long rebounds and scramble sequences that fed into Atlanta’s extra chances, so it stopped being a one-on-one problem and turned into a constant stress test, which the Sixers failed until the final horn.

Sixers Feel Lost Without Embiid

Without Embiid, the Sixers’ offense slipped into late-clock possessions. This is exactly how you end up with Maxey carrying the scoring load on a rough shooting night. The Sixers are 1-7 in their last eight without Joel dating back to late December, but what mattered was the way the game slows down for Philly without his gravity, the way defenders stay attached to shooters because they are not terrified of the rim behind them, and the way the margin for error disappears because stops have to turn into clean offense instead of another half-court slog.

Earlier in the season, they could still win these nights because the structure held, and Tyrese Maxey’s speed actually took over games where they played without Embiid and still got to a real, repeatable fourth-quarter push instead of hunting miracles.

Maxey didn’t dodge it postgame, and he sounded more annoyed than defeated: “We’ve gotta make plays, we’ve gotta be more aggressive, we can’t be afraid to make a mistake.”

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