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Joel Embiid packed the Sixers and led them to victory on Friday night, scoring his 50-point opener in a 112-105 win over the Chicago Bulls.
Here is what I saw.
Good
• I applaud Bulls big man Wendell Carter Jr. for showing no fear in his clash with Joel Embiid. The WCJ matched Embiid shot for shot early, carrying Chicago’s offense by himself with a lot of fine midrange work.
Unfortunately for the young big man from the Bulls, it got Embiid engaged from the start. Embiid seemed to take those marks personally, and he absolutely punished Carter Jr. on the other end of the pitch, forcing him into early trouble with deep holds in the post and an emphasis on initiating contact. Embiid would score 14 points in a shorter shift than he normally has to open the game.
The hits kept coming. Embiid picked up where he left off in the second quarter, pushing the Sixers back in the lead with great style, punctuating this ridiculous Euro stage and the fault:
There are so few guys in the history of the league who have been able to do all this guy can on both sides. Embiid is regularly able to perform these kinds of moves at top speed, and even if you worry about a guy with his health history who sometimes gets mixed up in traffic without a plan, it’s remarkable how good he is. elegant and graceful for a man of his size.
Then he comes in with the power, and you suddenly remember that he is a great man after all. It was one of the most dominant nights Embiid has had on the glass in a while, the big guy creating a bunch of extra possessions with some hotly contested rebounds where he just decided he wasn’t going to let anyone down. ‘other go down with the ball. That’s a good sign on many levels, mostly in what he says about his physical health after some nasty faces and back pain earlier in the week.
By the time the third quarter went by, Embiid’s assist had almost dried up to start the half, so the big guy continued the assault. By the time he left the game with less than two minutes left in the third, he had up to 37 points on 70 percent of shots from the field in just 27 minutes of action. The Bulls couldn’t come up with an answer when they had every reason to focus their full attention on Embiid. He was so good.
Whenever Embiid is in this form, the Sixers have a chance to win. Even on a night when there was little help from the supporting cast, that was the case on Friday, although it was closer than it should have been. When all was said and done, Embiid had his first 50-point game of his career and the Sixers got a “W”. Good job.
• He will be lost in the sand of time when this story is closed, but possession in the last minute of the first half where Embiid and Tobias Harris have just refused to back down on the offensive glass is probably my favorite possession of the season. I should see the rerun again, but they got 4 or 5 rebounds on just one possession, and when they finally emerged from the sea of Bulls players, Embiid shot a foul and picked up a pair at the charity. Bandaged.
The greatest praise I can offer is that this was a moment that Moses Malone would have been proud of. Not bad for a game in mid-February against a mediocre Eastern Conference team.
• Speaking of Harris, he’s one of the few guys who didn’t have to bow his head in shame for their offensive contributions on Friday night.
The season’s theme of playing with physicality continued against the Bulls, with Harris body just about everyone the Bulls had the audacity to throw at him to the middle of the post. A year after we expected the Sixers to play bully, Harris has finally found a way to make it happen. Rookie winger Patrick Williams – a great athletic dude in his own right – had the misfortune of keeping Harris at a few different times throughout the game.
As ESPN’s Richard Jefferson called him on the show, Harris realized his cover didn’t read the screening report, and he took advantage of Williams tilting too much towards the middle by blowing by him. going left.
If nothing else, Harris’ mid-shift job was able to buy Embiid goods where he could rest while still on the floor, and with the big guy’s workload on Friday night, c ‘was a major blessing.
• Matisse Thybulle’s impact from a box scoring perspective was minimal, but he had a huge stain on his hands on Friday night and he did a great job with Chicago’s top perimeter assignment. Zach LaVine had a few flashes of shine as he has so often throughout the year, but Thybulle was mostly excellent at keeping him, even on property where he didn’t close the game himself.
We’ve seen more of Thybulle’s total package type play on defense lately, performances where he was able to combine the chaos of turnover creation with discipline to force players where he wants to go. Embiid may have encountered LaVine at the edge or dissuaded him from an attempt on several occasions due to Thybulle’s positioning, guiding the Bulls guard to a spot where the big guy could dive late.
• I say this to give the rest of the squad a shot, but to praise the topic: Philadelphia’s best bench offense on Friday night was to throw some shots and just pray that Dwight Howard could come up with an offensive rebound. This is the one area of the game where he has always had a consistent impact this season, and they needed every opportunity he pulled because they couldn’t count on anyone else to produce against the Bulls.
If that’s the cost of its typical bad issues, I guess they’re just going to have to live with it.
The bad
• There has been a lot of talk on the bench lately, almost all bad, and I can understand the concern as a person. at to watch every minute of these matches. They offered next to nothing on both sides of the pitch, and it’s easy to look at this squad as it’s currently built and think they won’t be good enough to make the playoffs.
They were basically the only reason Chicago stayed in that game on Friday night. Rivers tried to buy Embiid a little more rest in the first half, and without Tobias Harris to back them up, it was an absolute nightmare for Philly. Tyrese Maxey made it ring runner after runner, Mike Scott was basically jogging the court, and Furkan Korkmaz … well, we’ll see that below.
(Staying with Maxey for a second, that kind of game is part of the reason rookies struggle to buy time with a lot of coaches, including Rivers. It’s one thing to miss shots, especially when you’re asked to. wearing a second lifeless unit, but he made that worse by making terrible mental mistakes and trying to make up for them all at once, instead of letting the game come to him. I have a feeling he might be parked on the bench for a while after Shake returns.)
Here’s a ray of sunshine in a dark time for the second unit – I don’t think they need to panic and I don’t think that’s the drastic issue we’re feeling right now. Shake Milton will come back and give them a boost, yes, but a lot of these guys will also be minimized or completely out of the rotation by the time the games start to matter.
I’d bet a fair amount of money that there will be an add / swap or two before the trade deadline, and drawing conclusions about this group on a night without Ben Simmons is a bit futile. When your most versatile player (and the top-minute man) is parked on the sideline, you’re absolutely going to see some overloaded guys.
• The stinky bench is one thing, but it was a lousy game for Seth Curry and Danny Green, who were bad in their own (but relatively familiar) ways.
Curry’s night is one that you can excuse to some extent because he was just out of rhythm. I still think he’s way too hesitant to turn at times, with Curry distrusting several open looks at some great passes from Embiid, but he’s been a lot better most of the year so I ignore the fight in to some extent.
Green was bad in the strongest way he could on defense, blown several times for layups and late in the close after the close he was fortunate not to get burned. He’s been a regular player for most of his career, but it’s a bit worrying that we’ve seen so few actively useful games from the veteran this year. If he stays past the deadline, they need a lot more from him if he is to stay in the starting and closing groups.
(I’ll say this – Green pulled off the Big Three when they needed them all night long. I’m just a little shocked at how defensively he’s been for most of the season.)
• Doc Rivers just needs to shift Embiid and Harris in a game like this to have one of them on the ground at all times. The bench hasn’t had it in weeks now, and letting the all-bench squad die is a preventable problem.
The ugly one
• Furkan Korkmaz achieved not one, but two of the worst sales of the season in a short period spanning the end of the first quarter and the beginning of the second quarter. I have no idea what he thought he saw, but he threw two separate passes at absolutely no one and then looked up in disbelief as the other players hovered where they were the entire time. .
I came into the year with pretty high expectations for Korkmaz, who had a good year last year and looked like a guy who could benefit from Rivers’ contact with the movement shooters. It went the other way, with Korkmaz being the obvious guy to give up on the rotation to mix things up.
Mike Scott deserves a bit of review for a very different version of ineffectiveness. Korkmaz’s mistakes are louder, no doubt, but Scott basically doesn’t do any of the little things right. When the stationary shooter does the occasional open shot that comes to him, we excuse the rest, but defensive errors are plentiful and there are few times when you say to yourself, “I didn’t expect that from him. ! ” in a positive way.
There are many stationary shooters around the world.
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