76ers Rout Bucks, Build Momentum for Play-In Tournament Push

Philadelphia left its final regular-season game with a lopsided win and a harder question. The 76ers beat Milwaukee 126-106 on Sunday night, but the cleaner the score looked, the more it had to be weighed against a Bucks roster missing Giannis Antetokounmpo and a Sixers team still waiting to learn its play-in opponent.

Tyrese Maxey led Philadelphia with 21 points as the 76ers pulled away after halftime and showed the kind of scoring balance that could matter when the margin for error shrinks. The result improved the Sixers to 45-37, enough to land them in the East’s play-in field, where the games start April 14 and every possession carries more weight than a regular-season tune-up.

That is what made Sunday night a pressure gauge. Philadelphia needed the win, but it also needed signs that its offense can travel when Joel Embiid is not available. Embiid was diagnosed with appendicitis and underwent surgery in Houston, leaving his postseason status uncertain and forcing the Sixers to prepare for a postseason path that could look very different if he cannot play.

Milwaukee offered little resistance, and its season ended at 32-50. The Bucks were already out of the playoff race, and the game carried the feel of a franchise entering the offseason before the final buzzer. AJ Green was one of the few bright spots, scoring 19 points and making five 3-pointers. His 232 made threes set a Bucks single-season record, passing Ray Allen’s 229 from 2001-02, and came one game after he had set Milwaukee’s single-game record with 11 threes.

The night also centered on Doc Rivers, who was recognized by the arena announcement and then booed by Sixers fans even as he was being honored for entering the Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame. Rivers, 64, said before the game that his answer on retirement would come “definitely sooner” rather than later in the offseason, and reporting after the game indicated he was out as Milwaukee’s head coach. For a Bucks team that has fallen well short of contention, the coaching uncertainty now joins the roster questions and the injuries that wrecked its season.

For Philadelphia, the win did what a finale is supposed to do: it left the team feeling better than it looked entering the night. Whether it was a real sign of postseason momentum or just a final burst against a flawed opponent will be answered soon enough, when the play-in starts and the Sixers are forced to prove that Sunday night was more than a clean finish against a broken Bucks team.