The Sixers battled the Grizzlies Saturday night, but fell short in a 106-104 road loss to the front of a back-to-back.
This is what I saw.
The good
• One of the most encouraging things that could be said about Shake Milton this season is that he has been able to play an effective sixth man despite his outside touch sometimes preventing him. Milton has been 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 seasoning, Milton has hardened the rest. This season he has had tighter control with his handle, aided by some extra strength / weight he picked up during the offseason, which helps keep defenders at the hip and finish around the basket. The touch has always been there and Milton has his arms long enough to mark around people, and now you start to see him tying it all up.
It was Milton, not Ben Simmons or Tobias Harris, who did their best to try to keep the Sixers from rushing into the abyss in the second half. With nothing really working and sharing the ball that led to nothing but rotations, Milton started a personal scoring race to open the fourth quarter which gave them one last chance to get back into the game.
The Grizzlies were so frightened that they started catching him when he crossed midfield, and Milton made some moves to avoid pressure, including a clean split that resulted in free throws. And the soft-spoken general Milton was even vocal out of the dead, trying to lead his teammates with both his actions and his words.
From the moment the field opened this year, Doc Rivers has received a message for his first guard off the bench: “Let Shake be Shake.” It has given him a lot of confidence and even though the Sixers didn’t get any wins, they are in the process of noticing a big break from one of their youngsters.
• Right now, consider me a true believer in the Tyrese Maxey float / runner package. I still think there may be a time when you have to train to get closer to the edge more often so that you regularly get to the free throw line, but if you can connect in those in between it is fixed in an elite clip, it’s probably best not to get involved with what you’re doing too much.
Simply trying to score instead of getting stuck in the rotating vortex allowed Maxey to stand out on Saturday from some of his teammates. I admit it’s a low bar, but you’ve all seen the same game as me. It’s better to try a shot at Maxey’s hands than to make an investment in another direction and encourage his aggression should be a team goal this year.
Maxey and Milton are the best guard team 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 guys should take Danny Green’s place in early training sooner rather than later. They will still have a few minutes superimposed and extend the dynamism throughout the rotation (in addition to giving you a solid vet off the bench).
• Isaiah Joe taking on a Xavier Tillman post is probably the bravest I’ve seen the rookie make so far in his career. I can’t question the kid’s desire to compete and put him on the line of his team.
• Matisse Thybulle was very well off the bench on Saturday night, with his fouls on calls which I think were dubious and his overall positioning as good as it has been all year.
The bad
• I don’t have to tell you all this if you’ve been through the Process era, but you just won’t beat the NBA teams if the turnover margin is as bad as Saturday night in Philadelphia. The Sixers turned the ball around with unparalleled creativity, from “kicking the ball in the backyard” to “Dwight Howard trying to make a pick-and-roll.”
Staying there is an indictment of Memphis ’ability to earn more from turnover than is a testament to all that Philadelphia did.
• There was a stretch in the second quarter, where Ben Simmons played with a more offensive purpose than we’ve seen all season. A couple of fouls that forced Memphis to be in transition, something he has never had a hard time with, but has managed to continue to challenge the Grizzlies with physique on offense, a welcome sight after his worst game start all season.
Unfortunately, there was still that beginning of play and the rest of the game. Simmons only feels like a less decisive player this season, getting 3/4 of the plays he has comfortably achieved in the past and suddenly resists trying. It’s even more confusing because of that stretch of the second quarter.
It is within him to attack and impose his will on the game. He doesn’t stray from how he tries to play in general. But he does not, more often choosing the exit of the ball to the perimeter. The defenses anticipate it now and are turning Simmons around more often than ever.
Simmons, who already had an average of 3.9 turnovers per game per night, coughed up five more at the break in a wide variety of plays, many on air passes, a coach’s worst nightmare. Rarely did he even get a chance to do so along the stretch, with the ball (rightly so) in the hands of Shake Milton. This was one of the most important possessions in the game, and it ended up making him angry.
It was played out of the game almost entirely in the second half. It was a stark contrast to Embiid’s response against a poorly supplied Heat team earlier in the week: Simmons let the game go for him and his team in the last 24 minutes, and that meant a wrap-up for Philly .
• The Sixers simply needed more of Tobias Harris on Saturday night. He started off well, leaking into the transition and punishing Memphis for missed shots and initial changes, similar to the guy who has come to live under Doc Rivers this season. Simmons was part of that good start, with forward passes that found Harris calm and simplified decision making.
Unfortunately, the well dried up and as the Grizzlies increasingly soaked the paint and forced the Sixers to win them over with something more creative than a basic medium. In practice, this meant that Harris was asked to create from scratch in many meandering and / or broken possessions. That was a recipe for disaster.
Harris went out of his way to take the game along the stretch and set aside the brutality of the quarterfinals to reach some big buckets in the middle of the post to give them a chance to win it. Unfortunately, he went out of bounds in the fundamental possession of the game, forced to the baseline before getting a shot.
• Danny Green is at the point of his career where he won’t have it some nights and you won’t be able to really do anything about it. It seemed like one of those games, with Green behind the pace and getting air all night.
Bearing in mind the chaos of last week, it is quite understandable that he had a night like this against a young team with a lot of intensity in his path. But they will need him to establish some sort of defensive base throughout this season if he wants to be one of his trusted veterans when he reaches the playoffs.
• As we talk about Green, the Sixers did an almost unfathomable number of pick-and-rolls with Green and Dwight Howard as a combination at the center of the action. Even one of those plays is probably too much, and it shouldn’t surprise anyone that they end up with several business losses, silly shooting attempts, and uninspired basketball.
I get that Philadelphia has had a very tough stretch to open the year for a team with a new coach, with VOCID and injuries that disrupt their rotation and their ability to build the playbook. But it looked like a team that had never stepped on the ground before Saturday night’s game. There is no real excuse for this level of carelessness.
(A note on Howard: You see the difference between a guy with good support and a guy who can play a top-notch role. Howard obviously lived up to the task at the start of his career, but he asked to be the middle man for most 48 minutes asks a lot).
The ugly
• When Joel Embiid has been on the ground, the Sixers have looked like a markedly different team from last year, in large part because of how he has taken advantage of the changing staff around him. When Ben Simmons has been on the ground without Embiid, he looks very little different from last season despite the difference in the team and the presence of a completely new coaching staff.
To be clear, that hasn’t meant it always seems like it well with Embiid on the floor. The Sixers played a one-game clunker with Simmons unavailable and Joel Embiid on the floor against Atlanta this week. But even just through systemic changes, this season should have been a noticeable difference for the team.
You can decide for yourself why this is so.
• You should have known that this plan would be placed here.
Again, for reasons of fairness, I will never criticize anyone for having opened three, and it will be worth it for them to finally have done what people have been asking for all this time. But boy, that was tough in that place.
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