[ad_1]
Joel Embiid packed the rest of the Sixers into his backpack and took them to a narrow overtime victory over the Heat, with Philly emerging as the winner in a 137-134 thriller thanks to 45 franchise center points, a game that should probably trigger the MVP dialogue. .
Here is what I saw.
Good
• I’m not going to sit here and tell you it was a end-to-end effort from Joel Embiid, who dragged out about a quarter and a half of this game. But with Philly looking like shit after 24 minutes, the big guy apparently decided enough was enough and demanded that his teammates remember which team it was. The real damage began as soon as Ben Simmons hit the bench and made way for rookie Isaiah Joe, opening the floor and making doubles a more dangerous proposition for Miami.
Embiid’s business has been a big part of the story. He went back and forth on the lane, demanding the ball from anyone who had it at the time, and he punished Miami’s undersized frontline with a dazzling range of motion. Scythes, euro footsteps, glass shots, post fadeaways, he had absolutely everything to do, and he even sprinkled a superb Simmons lob finish when Miami outplayed their game of Comfortable pick-and-roll in the corner.
Once Miami tried to start sending more pressure on him, Embiid hit their shooters, who most often came for the big guy. It was even more astonishing because Philadelphia struggled to get the ball to Embiid in the first half, with Miami sending doubles and triples to the big guy, daring someone else to beat them. Even when Miami knew he was the guy who would pull it off and take a big hit in tough times, Embiid still managed to take it.
Then there was the defensive effort, with Embiid waking up from a lethargic start and absolutely blocking the paint for most of the third quarter. The lobs that were there for Miami early on were swallowed up by Embiid, even with the Heat beating the Philly perimeter defense like an old battery.
And when the Sixers needed him to dig deep into the second half of a back-to-back, anchoring a lineup filled with players running on fumes, Embiid kind of backed off and found the strength to drag a backup group until arrival. line, with no leader to launch the offense and little help at either end. If the big guy didn’t do it for Philly, no one else did. When plans like this arrive, you know it’s your night:
Even a crucial Danny Green layup in the closing minutes of OT was created by Embiid transforming into a human rag doll in the paint to rock a bounce and extend the play. It’s the kind of game that kicks off serious MVP talks in a normal season, even with the lethargic start to the night. Embiid absolutely refused to lose this game.
• The turnovers were absolutely horrible and he should never be asked to play as much as he is right now, but Danny Green will be a useful basketball player for Philly as long as he plays a proper role instead of need to create the dribble in the halfcourt. His shot finally came on Tuesday night, with Green exploding for nine three pointers and 29 points after a terrible night in Atlanta.
Green can go through cold spells, but one thing you can count on from him is a consistent approach and a lack of fear when the ball swings. It’s a compound shooter, albeit top to bottom, and the Sixers really needed him to come up with Simmons having a howler and nothing else outside of Embiid.
The other end of the field was, similarly, a mixed bag, but that’s not the guy that’s supposed to be the first All-Defense team. Green made up the biggest game of the game with time running out in the fourth quarter, pushing the ball out after a three from Isaiah Joe and giving Philly the possession that would eventually tie the game. He’s one of the guys who played the longest last season and had every right to struggle down the home stretch, but he made up a game when they absolutely had to have it.
• Isaiah Joe will likely be buried on the bench once the Sixers are healthy again, but I really like what he’s shown in the last few games, even with warts on defense. He looks relatively comfortable in his role within the Philadelphia offense, and he’s shown more poise creating than I thought at the start of the year, getting involved. in part of the Philly pick-and-roll attack on Tuesday night.
The most important thing for Joe on Tuesday is that Miami showed him a lot of respect on the perimeter, changing the way they defended Philly in the paint while he was on the ground with Embiid. If you make the franchise player’s life easier, there is a path to the minutes in the rotation. And to Joe’s credit, he hasn’t blinked a single time playing big minutes of crunch time, battling hard through screens, and gaining threesome confidence in the game’s guts.
• Dwight Howard was brutal in the first half like most of the rest of the squad, but kept Philly’s energy high in the second half after Embiid got a well-deserved break and kicked off. ‘he had to maintain the lead, they fought to come back. When he doesn’t just beat guys to fight for offensive rebounds, he creates a ton of second chance opportunities.
The bad
• Ben Simmons has had some ugly games in a Sixers uniform, but it’s up there with the worst games he’s had as a professional. It was difficult to understand exactly what he was hoping to accomplish from possession to possession, and the further this season advances the clearer it becomes that they will have issues when the playoffs roll in and that he will have to create something out of it. nothing.
I feel like a record broken and we are only a few weeks into the season. There were several possessions in the first half alone where Simmons resumed his dribbling without any sort of plan in mind, including an ugly moment where he had a clear shot to the basket without anyone really keeping him on the line. free throws, but he never even looked at the rim. That would be ridiculous for a college basketball player, let alone a guy on maximum contract in the NBA:
On a night where they are shorthanded and rely on bench players to play big roles, he only had two shooting attempts in total. It is simply unacceptable. What’s the point of spending part of your pre-game routine working on mid-range shots with Sam Cassell if you’re not even going to be looking at the rim during the game?
When he was new to and shrewd in his selection of moves, it was easy to tell he was shrewd and looking to get other people involved. How can you say that with a straight face now? It’s not like his reluctance to attack is offset by consistently good decision making. Against Miami, he often tried to play with tempo without anyone joining him, stealing into opposing defenders and picking up offensive fouls, or resetting offense instead of just looking to challenge someone on the edge.
There’s no defense he can provide to cover holes on offense, especially not in a team built around a post-up center. And even his defense was in disarray on Tuesday, with Simmons making 2-3 horrific fouls that would ultimately have earned him a place on the bench.
In defense, I can buy: “It’s just a game.” In attack, something has to change and quickly. They don’t pay him to be Rajon Rondo, and even a young Rondo would have been embarrassed by some of these plays.
• Joel Embiid didn’t have much of an impact on the game in the first half on Tuesday night, although you could attribute a lot of that to a supporting cast who just don’t or don’t was able to get him the ball. At first, Joel Embiid fought hard for post position and play in the tide of an attack that didn’t really keep him involved. Miami dared the Philly shooters to beat them, and it worked in the Sixers’ favor for a spell, with Danny Green and Mike Scott taking decent starts from depth.
Over time, however, Miami’s pressure on the big guy inside the arc threw their attack something fierce, and they ran out of responses pretty quickly. They are a team that should, at the very least, know how to get the ball from their best player at almost any time, as they eventually would in the second half.
• Tyrese Maxey’s defense was horrible for long stretches of Tuesday’s game, the sort of thing you would expect from most rookies, but is a bit more painful when you have to keep one down in order to keep one up. credible ball player in the mix.
There are excuses you can attribute to his age – successfully fighting on screens will become easier for him as he gets stronger and can sweep traffic – but there were some misunderstandings about the screening report. that are hard to excuse. Maxey gave guys like Tyler Herro and Duncan Robinson way too much room on the perimeter, and he tried to make up for the shots by playing away from the ball, a decision he was quickly burned for.
Another thing to watch out for is Maxey’s entry (or lack thereof). He was a big culprit for Philly’s inability to touch Embiid early on, either because he was unable or unwilling to try to feed him while he was under duress. He didn’t seem particularly comfortable in an Embiid-centric environment, and he has to find ways to keep the ball from sticking when he’s the guy on Embiid’s strong side.
(A side note: Embiid was absolutely pissed off with Maxey for not being where he expected him to be in a perimeter exit. Watch out for the big guy’s anger, young man.)
The ugly one
• At what point do we see the Sixers presenting a lot of the same issues on offense, having the same fades in the effort, issues with less competition, and concluding that there is something wrong with the pieces? basic playing together which is difficult for anyone to fix?
Maybe not soon, especially since the Sixers were running smoky and shorthanded Tuesday night, but they weren’t exactly against the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls. It shouldn’t have taken that kind of performance from Embiid to clinch an OT victory against an eight-man squad.
Follow Kyle on Twitter: @KyleNeubeck
Like us on facebook: PhillyVoice Sports
Subscribe to Kyle’s Sixers podcast “The New Slant” on Apple, Google, and Spotify
[ad_2]
Source link