"It probably didn't end the way you thought it would. Or the way the Sixers thought it would. It certainly didn't end the way Doug Collins thought it would.

The Sixers played the Clippers at the Wells Fargo Center on Friday night. It was a close, ugly, physical game for much of the evening. In the fourth quarter, the Sixers were up one when Chris Paul took what Lou Williams called a "360 jump shot in the lane." It was more acrobatics than basketball, but it went in. That left the Sixers with 3.2 seconds and one final chance to win.

The in-bounds play wasn't much of one. Andre Iguodala passed the ball to Williams, who got pinned against the sideline by Paul and two other Clippers. By the time Williams turned toward the basket, the clock had expired and Los Angeles was celebrating a 78-77 win. The Sixers never got a shot off.

No one in the building, save the Clippers, seemed happy about that – least of all Collins. When he walked into the interview room, his eyes were red. He took a moment to hug his grandchildren and compose himself before taking the podium.

"At the end of the game, I'll put that on me," Collins said. "I've got to give our team more help executing the play. That's not on the players, that's on me. I've got to be better. I'm the coach of this team. In that situation, I've got to get us a better shot. So there's no excuses other than I didn't do a better job in the last three seconds of that game."

When Collins was asked what the play was designed to do, he opted to flog himself a little more.

"It wasn't very good, was it?" Collins asked rhetorically. "Whatever it was, it did not work. It was terrible on my part. You can put that down. Terrible on my part.""