Joel Embiid put the rest of the Sixers in the backpack and led them to a narrow overtime victory against the Heat, with Philly coming out victorious in a 137-134 thriller with 45 points from the center of the franchise, a game that should probably provokes the MVP dialogue.
Here’s what I saw.
Good
• I will not sit here and tell you that it was an effort from Joel Embiid, who shot about a quarter and a half of this game. But with Philly looking like a piece of crap after 24 minutes, the big guy seems to have had enough and asked his colleagues to remember whose team he 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 the double teams a more dangerous proposition for Miami.
Embiid’s work was a huge part of the story. He moved back and forth on the tape, demanding the ball from anyone who happened to have it at the time, and punished Miami’s undersized front line with a series of blinding movements. Fakes, euro steps, blows on the glass, disappeared from the pole, had absolutely everything in motion and even splashed in a great lob finish from Simmons when Miami superimposed their comfortable pick-and-roll set in the corner .
Once Miami tried to start sending him more pressure, Embiid hit their shooters, who came most of the time for the big guy. It was even more amazing as Philadelphia struggled to bring the ball to Embiid in the first half, with Miami sending double and triple teams to the big guy, daring someone else to beat them. Even when Miami knew he was the one to get and make a big hit in a short time, Embiid managed to cash in anyway.
Then there was the defensive effort, Embiid waking up after a lethargic start and absolutely blocking the paint for most of the third quarter. The lobes that were there for early Miami were swallowed by Embiid, even with the Heat defeating Philly’s perimeter defense like an old drum set.
And when the Sixers needed him to dig deep into the second half of a back-to-back, anchoring a line full of players running on smoke, Embiid somehow got back and found the strength to shoot a group of backups until the end of the line, without a guard to initiate offense and with little help at both ends. If the big guy couldn’t do that to Philly, no one else would. When such photos take place, you know it’s your night:
Even an essential stretch of Danny Green in the final minutes of the OT was created by Embiid turning into a human rag doll in paint to turn a comeback and expand the game. This is the kind of game that starts serious MVP discussions in a normal season, even with the lethargic beginning of the night. Embiid absolutely refused to lose this game.
• Turnovers have been absolutely awful and he should never be asked to play as much as he does now, but Danny Green will be a useful basketball player for Philly as long as he has a proper role instead of needing it. to create dribbling in the middle of the yard. His shots finally came on Tuesday night, with Green exploding for nine triples and 29 points after a terrible night in Atlanta.
Green can go through cold stretches, but one thing you can rely on is a consistent approach and a lack of fear when the ball swings. It’s a compound shooter, if up and down and the Sixers needed it a lot to come up with Simmons having a scream and a little something else that goes right outside of Embiid.
The other end of the floor was similarly a mixed bag, but he’s not the type that should be the All-Defense first team. Green came up with the biggest play of the game as time went on in the fourth quarter, dropping the ball after a three by Isaiah Joe and winning Philly’s possession that would eventually allow them to tie the game. He is one of the guys who played the most last season and had every right to fight on the stretch, but he came up with a piece when they had to have it.
• Isaiah Joe is likely to be buried on the bench once the Sixers are healthy again, but I really like what he has shown in the last few games, even with the warts he has on defense. He looks relatively easy in his role in the Philadelphia offense and showed more calm than I thought he would do earlier this year, getting involved in some of Philly’s pick-and-roll offenses 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 floor with Embiid. If you make life easier for the franchise player, there is a way to minutes in rotation. And to Joe’s credit, he didn’t blink once as he played long minutes of crisis, fighting hard on the screens and confidently stepping into the game.
• Dwight Howard was brutal in the first half, like most of the other members of the team, but kept Philly’s energy high in the second half, after Embiid got a well-deserved break and needed to keep the lead, they fought hard for return. When it’s not just guys struggling with offensive recoveries, it creates a lot of second-chance opportunities.
The river
• Ben Simmons had some ugly games with the Sixers uniform, but this is up there with the worst games he has ever had as a professional. It was hard to figure out what he hopes to achieve in possession, and the longer he wears this season, the clearer it will be that he will run into trouble when the playoffs turn around and he has to create something. from nothing.
I feel like a broken record and we’re only a few weeks away from the season. There were several goods in the first half, in which Simmons picked up his dribble without any plan in mind, including an ugly moment when he had a clear shot to the basket, without anyone really guarding it. at the free throw line, I never looked at the rim. This would be ridiculous for a high school basketball player, not to mention a guy with a maximum contract in the NBA:
On a night when they are abbreviated and rely on players on the bench to play big roles, he had only two total shot attempts. This is simply unacceptable. What’s the point of spending part of your game routine before working on midrange photos with Sam Cassell, if you never want to look at the rim during the game?
When he was a beginner and judicious with his selection of shooting, it was easy to say that he was judicious and sought to involve other people. How could you say that with your right face now? Nor is his reluctance to attack balanced by a constant decision. Against Miami, he often tried to play uptempo without anyone joining him, flying at opposing defenders and picking up offensive mistakes, or resetting the offense, instead of just trying to provoke someone on the sidelines.
He can’t provide any defense to cover the holes in the attack, especially not for a team built around a post-up center. And even his defense was a mess on Tuesday, Simmons committed 2-3 horrible fouls that would eventually earn him a place on the bench.
In defense, I can buy “It’s just a game.” On offense, something needs to change and fast. I don’t pay him to be Rajon Rondo and even a young Rondo would have been embarrassed by some of these songs.
• Joel Embiid did not have a significant impact on the game in the first half on Tuesday night, although you could attribute a lot of this role to a secondary role that simply failed or could not get the ball. At first, Joel Embiid struggled to get the job and play in the flow of a crime that did not really keep him involved. Miami dared to defeat Philly’s shooters and that worked in favor of the Sixers for a spell, with Danny Green and Mike Scott going to decent deep starts.
As time went on, however, Miami’s pressure on the big guy inside the bow disappointed his offense and he ran out of answers fairly quickly. This is a team that should at least know how to get the best ball player at almost any time, as they would eventually do in the second half.
• Tyrese Maxey’s defense was horrible for Tuesday’s long stretches of play, the kind of thing you expect from most beginners, but it’s a little more painful when you have to keep one on the floor to keep a credible handhand in the mix.
There are excuses you can attribute to his age – the successful fight will become easier for him as he gets stronger and can eliminate traffic – but there have been misunderstandings of the research report that are hard to excuse. Maxey gave way too much space to boys like Tyler Herro and Duncan Robinson on the perimeter and tried to compensate for the blows made by playing away from the ball, a decision for which he was quickly burned.
Passing Maxey’s entrance (or lack thereof) is another thing to look forward to. He was largely to blame for Philly’s inability to receive Embiid’s touches early, either because he couldn’t or didn’t want to try to feed him while he was under duress. He didn’t seem particularly comfortable in an Embiid-centered environment and had to find ways to avoid sticking the ball when he’s the strong type of Embiid.
(A side note: Embiid was absolutely livid with Maxey because he wasn’t where he was expected to be for a perimeter exit. Watch out for the big guy’s anger, young guy.)
ugly
• When do we see Sixers exposing the same problems to offense, having the same effort losses, problems with less competition, and concluding that there is something wrong with the basics playing together that is hard for anyone to fix?
Maybe not soon, especially since the Sixers were running on steam and the transcript on Tuesday night, but they weren’t exactly against the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls. He shouldn’t have taken this kind of performance from Embiid to pull off an OT victory over an eight-man team.
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