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The Sixers fought the Grizzlies to the end of the phone on Saturday night, but fell short in a 106-104 road loss in front of a back-to-back.
Here is what I saw.
Good
• One of the most encouraging things you can say about Shake Milton so far this season is that he has been able to play an effective sixth man despite his outside touch slipping away at times. Milton has been an outdoor sniper dating back to his amateur days, and that’s where a lot of his value comes from going into this season.
With time and seasoning, Milton tightened up the rest. He’s had tighter control with his grip this season, helped by some extra force / weight he put on in the offseason which helps him keep defenders on his hip and finish around the basket. Touch has always been there and Milton has enough arms to score around people, and now you’re starting to see him tie it all together.
It was Milton, not Ben Simmons or Tobias Harris, who did his best to keep the Sixers from plunging into the abyss in the second half. With nothing really working and sharing the ball leading to nothing but turnovers, Milton threw up a personal run series to open the fourth quarter, which gave them one last chance. to get back into the game.
The Grizzlies were so scared they started to trap him as he crossed the half-court, and Milton pulled off a few smooth moves to escape the pressure, including a clean split that led to free throws. And the usually soft-spoken Milton was even vocal when coming out of the timeouts, trying to lead his teammates with his actions and words.
From the time the camp opened this year, Doc Rivers has had a message for his first guard off the bench: “May Shake be Shake.” It gave him a lot of confidence, and while the Sixers didn’t score a win, they’re watching a major breakout from one of their young guys.
• Think of me as a real supporter of the Tyrese Maxey float / runner package at this point. I still think there might be a point where he needs to be trained to get closer to the rim more often in order to get to the free throw line consistently, but if you can tune in on those intermediate looks at a elite clip, it’s probably best not to mess with what you’re doing too much.
Just looking to score instead of getting caught in the revenue vortex made Maxey stand out from some of his teammates on Saturday. Granted, it’s a low bar, but you all watched the same game as I did. A shot attempt from Maxey’s hands is better than a roll the other way around, and fostering his aggression should be a team goal this year.
Maxey and Milton are the best guard combo the Sixers have had off the bench in a long time, and while Seth Curry deserves his place in the starting lineup, I think it’s fair to wonder if any of those guy should take Danny Green’s place in the starting lineup ASAP. They’ll still have overlapping minutes, and that spreads momentum throughout the rotation (besides giving you a solid vet off the bench).
• Isaiah Joe taking charge of Xavier Tillman is probably the bravest thing I have seen the rookie do so far in his career. I cannot question the child’s desire to compete and put it on the line for his team.
• Matisse Thybulle was very good on the bench on Saturday night, with his fouls on call I think it was questionable at best and his overall positioning as good as he has been all year.
The bad
• I don’t need to tell you all this if you’ve been through the Process Age, but you just aren’t going to beat NBA teams if the rotation margin is as bad as it was. in Philadelphia on Saturday night. The Sixers returned the ball with unparalleled creativity, ranging from “kicking the ball in the backcourt” to “Dwight Howard trying to throw a pick-and-roll.”
Hanging around in this one is an indictment of Memphis’ ability to leverage more revenue than the testimony of everything Philadelphia has done.
• There was a stretch in the second quarter where Ben Simmons played with more offensive goals than we’ve seen from him pretty much all season. A few fouls he forced to commit at Memphis were in transition, something he never struggled with, but he made a point of continuing to challenge the Grizzlies with an attacking physique, a welcome sight after his worst start to the game of the whole season.
Unfortunately, there was still this early game and the rest of the game for that matter. Simmons just feels like a less decisive player this season, getting 3/4 of the games he has comfortably done in the past and is suddenly hesitant to attempt. It’s even more confusing because of this section of the second trimester.
It’s in him to attack and impose his will on the game. It’s not a change from the way he usually tries to play. But he doesn’t, more often than not choosing to get the ball out of the perimeter instead. The defenses are anticipating this now and flipping Simmons more frequently than ever.
Already averaging 3.9 turnovers per game, a career-high, on the night, Simmons spat five more at halftime across a wide variety of games, many on mid-flight passes, the world’s worst nightmare. ‘a trainer. He rarely had the chance to make it down the home stretch, with the ball (rightfully so) in the hands of Shake Milton. It was one of the most important possessions in the game, and he just pissed him off.
He was out of play almost entirely in the second half. That was quite a contrast to Embiid’s response against an under-endowed Heat team earlier in the week – Simmons kind of let the game go by him and his team in the final 24 minutes, and that was a conclusion for Philly.
• The Sixers just needed more Tobias Harris on Saturday night. He’s off to a good start, escaping in transition and punishing Memphis for missed shots and early turnovers, looking like the guy who came to live under Doc Rivers this season. Simmons was part of that strong start, with assists that found Harris in the stride and simplified his decision making.
Unfortunately, the pit dried up, and as the Grizzlies increasingly retreated from the paint and forced the Sixers to beat them with something more creative than a basic center pick-and-roll. In practice, this meant that Harris was asked to create from a standstill on a lot of twists and turns and / or broken possessions. It was the recipe for disaster.
Harris did his best to get play back down the home stretch, ignoring the brutality of the middle quarters to find big buckets in the middle of the post to give them a shot at winning it. Unfortunately, he went out of bounds for the game’s crucial possession, forced to the baseline even before getting a shot.
• Danny Green is at the point in his career where he’s not going to have it some nights and there’s nothing you can do about it. It felt like one of those games, with Green behind the beat and taking to the air throughout the evening.
With the chaos of the past week in mind, it’s understandable enough that he spends an evening like this against a young team with a lot of drive in their approach. But they’re going to need him to establish some sort of defensive base during this season if he is to be one of their reliable veterans in the playoffs.
• While we’re on the subject of Green, the Sixers performed an almost unfathomable number of pick-and-rolls with Green and Dwight Howard as the combination at the center of the action. Even one of those plays is probably too much, and it should come as no surprise that it ended with several turnovers, goofy shot attempts, and generally uninspiring basketball.
I understand Philadelphia had a really tough time opening the year for a team led by a new coach, with COVID and injuries disrupting their rotation and their ability to build the playbook. But it looked like a team that didn’t. ‘had never set foot on the ground together before Saturday night’s game. No real excuse for this level of neglect.
(A note on Howard: You see the difference between a guy who’s a good replacement and a guy who can handle a rookie-sized role. Howard was obviously more up to the task early in his career, but he did. asking to be the man in the middle for almost 48 minutes is asking a lot.)
The ugly one
• When Joel Embiid was on the pitch, the Sixers looked like a markedly different team than last year, in large part because of how he took advantage of the change in personnel around him. When Ben Simmons was on the floor without Embiid, very little looks different from last season despite the squad difference and the presence of a whole new coaching staff.
To be clear, that doesn’t mean it always looks good with Embiid on the floor. The Sixers played the clunker of a game with Simmons unavailable and Joel Embiid on the floor against Atlanta this week. But even if it was only through systemic changes, there should have been a noticeable difference for the team this season.
You can decide for yourself why.
• You should have known that this photo was going to be placed here.
Again, in the interests of fairness, I will never criticize anyone for winning an open hat-trick, and I applaud them for finally doing what people have been asking for all this time. But boy, it was difficult in this place.
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