The Sixers battled the Grizzlies to the wire on Saturday night, but soon fell 106-104 on the front end of a back-to-back.
Here’s what I saw.
Good
• One of the most encouraging things you could say about Shake Milton so far this season is that he managed to play an effective sixth man, despite the fact that his outside touch sometimes prevented him. Milton was an elite outside shooter, dating back to his amateur days, and that’s where much of his value came from before this season.
With time and spice, Milton hardened the rest. He had tighter control with his handle this season, helped by some extra power / weight he put on during the season, which helps keep the defenders on his hips and finish around the basket. The touch has always been there and Milton has arms long enough to score around people, and now you’re starting to see him tying it all together.
Milton, not Ben Simmons or Tobias Harris, did their best to try to stop the Sixers from falling into the abyss in the second half. Nothing really works and shares the ball leading only to turnover, Milton continued a personal scoring run to open the fourth quarter, which gave them one last chance to get back into the game.
The Grizzlies were so scary that they started to catch him when he crossed the middle of the field, and Milton made a few simple moves to evade the pressure, including a clean break that led to free throws. And Milton, usually gentle, was even vocal coming out of the timeout, trying to lead his teammates with both his actions and his words.
From the moment the camp opened this year, Doc Rivers received a message for his first guard on the bench: “Shake be Shake.” It has given them a lot of confidence and, although the Sixers have not made any gains, they are in the process of pursuing a major exit from one of their youngsters.
• Consider me a true believer in the Tyrese Maxey floating / running pack right now. I still think there might be a point where you need to be trained to approach the rim more often so that you regularly get to the free throw line, but if you can connect to the middlemen, look at a clip of elite, it’s probably best not to mess with what you do too much.
Simply trying to score instead of being caught in the whirlwind of turnover allowed Maxey to stand out on Saturday from some of his teammates. I admit it’s a low bar, but you all watched the same game I did. A blow attempt from Maxey’s hands is better than a turnover going in the opposite direction, and promoting his aggression should be a goal of the team this year.
Maxey and Milton are the best guard combos Sixers have taken off the bench in a long time, and while Seth Curry deserves his place on the starting line, I think it’s fair to wonder if one of these guys should take Danny Green’s place in the starting line sooner rather than later. They will still have overlapping minutes and spread the dynamism throughout the rotation (in addition to giving you a solid vet on the bench).
• Isaiah Joe taking an accusation from Xavier Tillman is probably the bravest thing I’ve ever seen a rookie in his career. I can’t doubt the child’s desire to compete and put it on the line of his team.
• Matisse Thybulle was very good on the bench on Saturday night, with his mistakes coming to the calls, I think they were the most debatable and his overall position as good as throughout the year.
The river
• I don’t have to tell you all this if you’ve been through the Trial era, but you just won’t beat the NBA teams if the turnover margin is as bad as it was for Philadelphia on Saturday night. Sixers turned the ball with unparalleled creativity, from the spectrum of “hitting the ball in the backfield” to “Dwight Howard trying to run.”
Settling into it is an indictment of Memphis’ ability to collect more revenue than is proof of everything Philadelphia has done.
• It was a stretch in the second quarter where Ben Simmons played with a more offensive goal than we saw from him most of the season. A few fouls that forced Memphis to be in transition, something he never struggled with, but made it a point to continue to physically challenge the Grizzlies on offense, a welcome sight after the worst start of the season. its all season.
Unfortunately, there was still that beginning of the game and the rest of the game, even that. Simmons feels only a less decisive player this season, getting 3/4 of the way through the games he has managed comfortably in the past and is suddenly reluctant to try. It’s even more confusing because from that stretch of the second quarter.
It is up to him to attack and impose his will on the game. It’s not a deviation from the way he tries to play in general. But he does not, most often choosing to take the ball into the perimeter. The defenses anticipate this now and transform Simmons more often than ever.
Simmons has already coughed five more until the break in a wide variety of games, many in the middle passes, a coach’s worst nightmare. He rarely even had a chance to do so on the stretch, with the ball (rightly) in the hands of Shake Milton. This was one of the most important assets of the game and only upset him.
It was played out of play almost entirely in the second half. It was a stark contrast to Embiid’s response against a team under the control of the Heat earlier this week.
• The Sixers simply needed more from Tobias Harris on Saturday night. He got off to a decent start, went out in transition and punished Memphis for missed shots and early turnovers, showing that the guy who came to live under Doc Rivers this season. Simmons was a part of this nice start, with kicks that found Harris in step and made it easier for him to make decisions.
Unfortunately, the fountain dried up, and as the Grizzlies increasingly blocked the paint and forced the Sixers to beat them with something more creative than a basic medium pick-and-roll. In practice, this meant that Harris was asked to create a lot of winding and / or broken properties from a stop. That was a recipe for disaster.
Harris did his best to take over the game, raising the brutality of the middle quarters to come up with some big buckets in the middle of the post, to give them a chance to win it. Unintentionally, he went beyond the essential possession of the game, forced to the baseline before ever getting a shot.
• Danny Green is in the middle of his career when he’s not going to have him some nights and you won’t be able to really do anything about it. This felt like one of those games, with Green behind the rhythm and searching the air throughout the evening.
Given the chaos of last week, it is quite understandable that he would have a night like this against a young team, with a lot of pep in step. But they will need him to establish some sort of defensive line throughout this season if he is to be one of their trusted veterinarians coming into the playoffs.
• As far as Green is concerned, Sixers have made an almost incomprehensible number of pick-and-rolls, with Green and Dwight Howard as the combination at the center of the action. Even one of those pieces is probably too many, and it shouldn’t surprise anyone that it ended with multiple turnovers, stupid shooting attempts, and generally uninspired basketball.
I found out that Philadelphia had a very difficult stretch to open the year for a team under a new coach, with COVID and injuries that confuse their rotation and ability to build the playing card. But it looked like a team that had never set foot on the floor together before Saturday night’s game. No real excuse for this level of negligence.
(A note on Howard: you see the difference between a guy who is a good backup and a guy who can handle a rookie role. Howard obviously was more than handy at the beginning of his career, but he asked him to be the man in the middle for most 48 minutes asks a lot.)
ugly
• When Joel Embiid was on the floor, the Sixers looked like a significantly different team than last year, largely due to the way they took advantage of the changing staff around them. When Ben Simmons was on the floor without Embiid, he looks very different from last season, despite how different the team is and the presence of a completely new coaching staff.
To be clear, that didn’t mean he always looked good with Embiid on the floor. Sixers played a clunker of a game with the Simmons unavailable and Joel Embiid on the floor against Atlanta this week. But even if only through systemic changes, there should have been a noticeable difference for the team this season.
You can decide for yourself why this is.
• You should have known that this photo will be placed here.
Again, in the interest of fairness, I will never criticize anyone because he took three open ones and I am glad of him because he finally did what people asked for all this time. But boy, there was a tough one in that place.
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