The Sixers fought the Grizzlies to the wire on Saturday night, but they fell short in a 106-104 road loss in front of a rugby team.
Here’s what I saw.
The good
• One of the most encouraging things you could say about Shake Milton so far this season is that he was able to play an effective sixth man, despite the fact that he sometimes eludes him. Milton was an elite shooter from the outside dating back to his amateur days, and this is where much of his value comes from before this season.
With time and seasonings, Milton sharpened the rest. He had tighter control this season, aided by extra power / weight he exerted during the off-season, helping him keep defenders on his hip and finishing the basket. The touch has always been there and Milton has arms long enough to scare 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 not to drop the Sixers into the abyss in the second half. With nothing really working and the ball leading to nothing but turnover, Milton went on a personal points run to open the fourth quarter which gave them one last chance to get back into the game.
The Grizzlies were so haunting that they started catching him when he crossed the halfway line, and Milton made some slippery moves to dodge the pressure, including one clean split that led to a free-kick. And the usually gentle Milton even voted out during the countdown and tried to lead his teammates with both his actions and his words.
Since the camp opened this year, Doc Rivers has had a message for his first guard off the bench: “Let there be shaking.” It gave him an abundance of confidence, and although the Sixers did not win, they are seeing a big breakthrough from one of their young guys.
• Consider me a true believer in the Tyrese Maxey float / runner package at this point. I still think there might be a point that he needs to be coached to get closer to the edge more often so that he gets to the release line regularly, but if you can watch an elite clip in between, it is probably best not to do too much with what you do.
By simply trying to score Maxey instead of getting caught in the vortex, Maxey was able to stand out from some of his teammates on Saturday. I admit it’s a low bar, but you guys all watched the same game as me. A shot effort from Maxey’s hands is better than any other turnover, and to promote his aggression should be a team goal this year.
Maxey and Milton are the best waiting combination the Sixers have had off the bench in a long time, and although Seth Curry deserves his place in the starting lineup, I think it’s fair to wonder if one of these guys is Danny Green’s place must take. the starting lineup sooner rather than later. They will still overlap for minutes, and this spreads the dynamics during the rotation (on top of that, giving you a solid vet off the bench).
• Isaiah Joe taking on a complaint from Xavier Tillman is probably the bravest thing I’ve seen so far in my career. Can not question the child’s desire to compete and put it at stake for his team.
• Matisse Thybulle was very good off the bench on Saturday night, with his mistakes being calls, I think he was questionable at best and his overall position as good as the whole year.
The bad
• I do not have to tell you this if you have been through the process era, but you are simply not going to beat NBA teams if the turnover margin is just as bad as for Saturday night for Philadelphia. The Sixers turned the ball around with unparalleled creativity, on the spectrum from ‘kicking the ball in the backfield’ to ‘Dwight Howard trying to do a pick-and-roll’.
To hang around here is an accusation of Memphis’ ability to earn more on revenue than it testifies to anything Philadelphia has done.
• There was a piece in the second quarter where Ben Simmons played with more attacking goal than we saw from him almost the entire season. A few offenses he forced Memphis into were in transition, something he had never struggled with, but he indicated he would keep the Grizzlies with corporality on offense, a welcome sight after his worst start of ‘ a game all season.
Unfortunately, there was still the start of the match and the rest of the match in that regard. Simmons feels just like a less decisive player this season, playing 3/4 of the way through what he has drawn comfortably in the past and is suddenly reluctant to try. This is even more confusing because of the second quarter.
It’s in him to attack and force his will on the game. This is not a departure from how he generally tries to play. But he does not, and mostly chooses to ride the ball to the perimeter instead. Defense expects it now and they turn Simmons over more often than ever before.
Simmons, who already had a career high of 3.9 per game at night, coughed up five more at halftime during a wide variety of plays, many in the air, a coach’s worst nightmare. He rarely even had the chance to do it in the piece, with the ball (rightly) in the hands of Shake Milton. It was one of the most important possessions of the game, and he just made it angry.
He was almost completely out of the game in the second half. It was quite a contrast to Embiid’s reaction to an undermining Heat team earlier this week – Simmons let the game go in the last 24 minutes just by him and his team, and it was a speech for Philly.
• The Sixers simply needed more from Tobias Harris on Saturday night. He started decent, he leaked in the transition and punished Memphis for missed shots and early turnover, like the man who came to live under Doc Rivers this season. Simmons was part of the fun start, with striking strokes that Harris found in his pace and simplified his decision-making.
Unfortunately, the pit ran dry, and because the Grizzlies increasingly walled in the paint and forced the Sixers to beat them with something more creative than a basic middle choice. In practice, this means that Harris is asked to create many tortuous and / or broken possessions of stagnation. It was a recipe for disaster.
Harris did his best to take over the game and take down the cruelty of the midfielders to come up with some big buckets in the midfield to give them a chance to win it. Unexpectedly, he stepped out of bounds on the core possession of the game, forced to the baseline before ever getting a shot.
• Danny Green is at the point in his career that he is not going to keep it some nights and can do nothing about it. It felt like one of those games, with Green behind the pass and ripped into the air all night.
Given the chaos of the past week, it’s pretty understandable that he would keep an evening like this against a young team with a lot of pepper in their stride. But they will need him to establish a line of defense over the course of this season if he is to be one of their trusted veterinarians.
• While we were working on Green, the Sixers offered an almost unfathomable number of pick-and-rolls with Green and Dwight Howard as the combination in the middle of the action. Even one of the plays is probably too much, and it should come as no surprise to anyone that it ended up with some turnover, stupid shot attempts, and generally uninspiring basketball.
I understand that Philadelphia had a very difficult time opening the year for a team under a new coach, with COVID and injuries hampering their rotation and ability to expand the playbook. But it looks like a team that has never stepped on the floor before the game on Saturday night. No real excuse for this level of sloppiness.
(A comment about Howard: you see the difference between a guy who is a good backup and a man who can handle a role in the appetizer. Howard was obviously more than fit early in his career, but asked him to be the guy in the middle for most of 48 minutes takes a lot.)
The Ugly
• When Joel Embiid was on the floor, the Sixers looked like a distinctly different team than last year, especially as he took advantage of the changing staff around him. When Ben Simmons was on the floor without Embiid, very little resembles the previous season, despite how different the team is and the presence of a new coaching staff.
To be clear, this does not mean that it always seems well with Embiid on the floor. The Sixers had a game this week with Simmons unavailable and Joel Embiid playing on the floor against Atlanta. But even if it was only through the systemic changes, there should have been a noticeable difference for the team this season.
You can decide for yourself why it is.
• You should have known that this shot will be placed here.
Again, in the interest of fairness, I would never criticize anyone for taking an open try, and it’s good that he’s finally doing what people have been asking for all along. But boy, that was a rough one in that place.
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