Joel Embiid puts the rest of the Sixers in his backpack and carries it to a close overtime victory over the Heat, with Philly emerging winners in a thriller of 137-134 thanks to 45 points from the franchise center, a match that is likely the MVP dialogue must be fueled. .
Here’s what I saw.
The good
• I will not sit here and tell you it was a wire-to-wire effort by Joel Embiid, who dragged through about a quarter and a half of this match. But while Philly looked like shit after 24 minutes, the big guy apparently decided enough was enough and demanded that his teammates remember whose team it was. The real damage began as soon as Ben Simmons hit the bench and made way for rookie Isaiah Joe, who opened the floor and made double teams a more dangerous proposal for Miami.
Embiid’s activity was a big part of the story. He moved back and forth across the court and demanded the ball from everyone who had it at the time, and he punished the lower bound of Miami with a brilliant series. On fake, Euro-steps, shots from the glass, away from the pole, he had absolutely everything going on, and he even sprinkled a wonderful finish from Simmons when Miami picked up their cozy pick-and-roll set overplayed in the corner.
After Miami tried to put more pressure on him, Embiid hit their shooters, who more than often came through for the big man. It was even more beautiful because Philadelphia struggled in the first half to even get the ball from Embiid, with Miami sending double and triple teams to the big man, and daring someone else to beat them. Even when Miami knew he was the man who would get a great chance and take it in a difficult time, Embiid could still deserve it.
Then there was the defensive effort, with Embiid waking up after a sluggish start and the paint absolutely stuck for most of the third quarter. Lobbe who was there early for Miami was swallowed up by Embiid, even as the Heat defended Philly’s perimeter like an old drum kit.
And when the Sixers needed him to dig deep into the second half of a back-to-back, and anchor a series filled with players running on fumes, Embiid somehow returned and found the power to drag a group backup to the end. line, with no point guard to start the offense and little help on either side. If the big man hadn’t done it for Philly, no one else would. If such photos are taken, you know it’s your night:
Even a major Danny Green lineup in the final minutes of OT was created by Embiid who becomes a human rag doll in the paint to tilt a rebound and expand the play. These are the kind of games that start serious MVP discussions in a normal season, even with the slow start of the night. Embiid absolutely refused to lose this match.
• The turnover was absolutely gruesome and he should never be asked to play as much as at the moment, but Danny Green will be a useful basketball player for Philly, as long as he plays a proper role instead of having to create the dribble . the halfway. His shooting finally took place Tuesday night, with Green exploding for nine three-pointers and 29 points after a terrible night in Atlanta.
Green may be going through cold pieces, but one thing you can count on him for is a constant approach and a lack of fear as the ball swings to his side. He is a composite, as an up-and-down shooter, and the Sixers desperately needed him to get a whimper and something else right outside Embiid along with Simmons.
The other side of the floor was also a mixed bag, but he is not the man supposed to be All-Defense of the first team. Green came up with the biggest game in the game in the fourth quarter, and loosened the ball after a try from Isaiah Joe and Philly earned the possession that would eventually enable them to level the game. He’s one of the guys who played the longest last season and had every right to struggle on the piece, but he came up with a play when they absolutely had to get it.
• Isaiah Joe will probably be buried on the bench when the Sixers recover, but I like a lot of what he has shown the last few games, even with the warts he is defending. He seems relatively at ease in his role in Philadelphia’s offense, and he showed more composure than I thought he would do early in the year, and got involved in some of Philly’s performances on Tuesday night.
The most important thing for Joe on Tuesday is that Miami showed him a lot of respect for the perimeter, and changed how they defended Philly in the paint while he was on the floor with Embiid. If you make the franchise player’s life easier, there’s a way to minutes in the rotation. And to Joe’s credit, he did not blink once while playing a great crunching time, fighting hard through the screens and stepping confidently into the gut of the game.
• Dwight Howard was cruel in the first half like most of the rest of the team, but he kept Philly’s energy high in the second half after Embiid got a well-deserved break and had to maintain the lead they fought hard to to come back. If he does not just run guys to fight for offensive setbacks, he creates a lot of opportunities for the second chance.
The bad
• Ben Simmons had some nasty games in a Sixers uniform, but it’s up there with the worst games he’s had as a professional player. It was hard to figure out what exactly he was hoping to achieve possession to possession, and the longer this season goes on, the clearer it becomes that they will have problems as the playoffs roll around and he has to create something out of nothing.
I feel like a broken record and we’re only a few weeks into the season. There were only several possessions in the first half where Simmons picked up his dribble without keeping any plan in mind, including one ugly moment where he had a clear shot on the basket, and no one really guarded him at the release line , but still never even looked at the edge. It would be ridiculous for a high school basketball player, let alone a man with a maximum contract in the NBA:
On a night where they rely on short-term and rely on bench players to play big roles, he only had two total shot attempts. This is simply unacceptable. What’s the point of spending a portion of your prediction routine with Sam Cassell on mediocre shots if you are not even going to look at the edge during the game?
When he was a rookie and judicious with his shot choice, it was easy to say he was judicious and wanted to involve other people. How can you say that now with a straight face? Nor is it as if his unwillingness to attack is balanced by consistently good decision-making. Against Miami, he often tried to play temporarily without anyone joining him, defending opponents and picking up offensive fouls, or recovering the foul instead of trying to challenge someone on the edge.
There is no measure of defense he can offer to cover the holes in the attack, especially not in a team that is around a center. And even his defense was a mess on Tuesday, while Simmons committed 2-3 heinous offenses that would eventually earn him a spot on the bench.
In defense, I can buy: “It’s just one game.” Offensive should change something and fast. They do not pay him to be Rajon Rondo, and even a young Rondo would have been embarrassed by some of these plays.
• Joel Embiid did not have a big impact on the game in the first half on Tuesday night, although you could attribute much of it to a supportive cast who simply could not get the ball for him or not. Joel Embiid fought hard early on to get a position and play in the flow of an offense that didn’t really keep him involved. Miami dared Philly’s shooters to beat them, and it worked in the Sixers’ favor for a spell, with Danny Green and Mike Scott starting from deep.
As time went on, however, Miami’s pressure on the big man in the arc increased their offense somewhat severely, and they ran out of answers pretty quickly. This is a team that needs to know at least any time how to get their best player the ball, as they would eventually do in the second half.
• Tyrese Maxey’s defense has been terrible for long periods of Tuesday’s game, the kind of thing you expect from most rookies, but is a little more painful when you basically have to keep one on the floor to be a credible ball dealer in the mix to keep.
There are excuses you can attribute to his age – successfully fighting through screens will make it easier for him as he gets stronger and can repel traffic – but there are misunderstandings in the reconnaissance report that are hard to excuse. Maxey gave way too much space to guys like Tyler Herro and Duncan Robinson on the perimeter, and he tried to make up for the shots made by gambling off the ball, a decision for which he was quickly burned.
Maxey’s entry (or lack thereof) is another thing to watch to move forward. He was a major scapegoat in Philly’s inability to touch Embiid early, either because he was unable to feed him or not, while under duress. He did not look very comfortable in an Embiid-centered environment, and he must find ways to prevent the ball from getting stuck when he is the man on Embiid’s strong side.
(A side note: Embiid was absolutely reluctant with Maxey because he was not in the place he expected him to be for a perimeter. Be wary of the wrath of the big old, young man.)
The Ugly
• At what point do we see Sixers displaying much the same problems on the assault, with the same effort, problems with less competition, and concluding that there is something wrong with the core pieces playing together that is difficult for anyone to fix?
Maybe not soon, especially not because the Sixers walked on fumes Tuesday night and were cut short, but they were not exactly up against the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls. It should not have required this kind of action from Embiid to achieve an OT victory over an eight-man team.
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