The Sixers gained almost more than a 20-point lead in the second half, but Bradley Beal’s 60 points weren’t enough to stop Philly from winning 141-136 at the Wizards.
This is what I saw.
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The good
• Philadelphia’s offense has just been a delight to see in the season so far. Of course, there are possessions where their inexperience shines through and they look like a team that didn’t get a real training ground. But an average trip down the ground is fun to watch for Philly this season, something I couldn’t have imagined when we watched a team starting four different players who wanted the ball on the post.
While some (okay, many) of their success Wednesday night was the result of Washington being a toxic waste dump on defense, these guys play a great basketball brand. The ball rarely gets stuck, there are far fewer missed regattas and stopped possessions, and even when some guys do, they continue to look to play for the good of the group.
Take for example Seth Curry, who started the game absolutely on fire and never gave up in the first half, dropping 20 points in the first two quarters. Even in the middle of his heater, there were opportunities to call his own number and let him fly that happened to hunt a better shot for Tobias Harris or Danny Green.
(I’m divided on Ben Simmons ’decision to reward Embiid for running the ground in the first half. Curry was very open on the wing and felt it, so anyone who thought he should have gotten the ball won’t argue with him), but you have to keep encouraging the big ones when they run).
They live the mantra of their head coach, who doesn’t care how they score and who scores whenever they put points on the board.
• Curry really deserves a spotlight for his Wednesday work and the crazy numbers he puts in to start the year. It will absolutely go back down to Earth at some point (no one is shooting more than 50% of three on this kind of volume for an entire season), but man is forcing opposing defenses to make really tough decisions.
Wednesday night, he became Philadelphia’s most unlikely in the fourth quarter, shaking a quiet third period to lead the Sixers to points in times of crisis, taking advantage of the visitors ’runaway defense. In any case, the Sixers should make sure to get the ball more, with Curry open to a few passes that never occurred to him.
The only criticism I have for him is the same one I’ve had throughout the opening stretch – it’s okay if he plays a little more selfish. Being a first-team man is a good thing, but no one would be angry if one of the best shooters in the league threw a couple of dubious shots in the middle of a heater.
• Joel Embiid withdrew from what appeared to be a bewilderment of a performance at the start of the game on Wednesday night, losing his first six shots and causing several possessions in an almost comical way. Coming back from the bench, he was given a chance to change things around.
Five consecutive marks later, Embiid was in the area, combining the step he had taken in the first quarter with the killer goal-scoring instinct he has in unique coverage. This mess to Thomas Bryant was simply disrespectful:
Embiid would arrive with 15 points at the end of the first half, and it was a much more typical night for him at both ends once he found his offensive foot.
It was his insertion into the game in cruel times that really brought Philly to the forefront in the end. The Sixers were hanging by a thread after the wizards finally punished them for not killing the game, and Embiid came in to provide some stability at both ends of the floor.
The great physical level of the great appeared when it mattered most, with Embiid dominating in the paint and still summoning the energy for a huge transition block in the final minutes of the game. He wasn’t the only man to produce on Wednesday by any imagination, but tonight there was an echo of games, with Embiid feeling the only thing among the Sixers and a total collapse.
There weren’t many rebounds in one night with this very hot shot, so his line doesn’t look like a typical Embiida night, but it was another dominant effort. The fury continues.
• Shake Milton was arguably the pre-season player (certainly brief) and put on a show on opening night, but has since struggled to shoot the ball. Coming into the game 27.3 percent of the time, Milton bounced off the front of Philly’s back, a welcome sight with his best player fighting early.
The third-year guard followed the path to the old one: to the free-throw line and with the intermediate play, spinning and spinning inside the bow with the help of Dwight Howard to open a path. Milton was the only guy who didn’t completely break away from the bench on Wednesday, which is the nicest thing that can be said of anyone in the second unit.
The bad
• It was interesting that Rivers never seemed interested in having Ben Simmons protector of Bradley Beal.
Five years ago, you saw that you wanted to hook him up with a guy like Russell Westbrook, when he was an athletic monster who could compromise your defense. Currently, the former vice president is more than a paper tiger, a guy who still hurts but is often more likely to shoot his team. out of a game.
He could even understand the initial decision to have Danny Green with him in a similar confrontation. But it quickly became apparent that the Green-Thybulle combination offered very little resistance, and what better use for your first-team All-Defense type than to have a guy who shoots lights track you?
Despite Beal’s 32 points in the first half, Rivers didn’t move and Beal continued to cook in the second half, reaching the 50 mark with just a few minutes left in the third quarter. He did it in every way possible, getting traction shots, scoring cuts, stopping some free throws; it was a pretty offensive show for a guy whose team was outscored most of the night.
Philly still comfortably outscored the Wiz for a while, but the strategy seemed especially pointless because Washington had nothing (or anyone) at stake, and the Sixers would seem to have a solution already prepared for the problem. Wouldn’t you rather risk saying Rui Hachimura hits you, a guy Simmons sometimes watched on Wednesdays?
The Sixers did nothing to stop the attack, and if it weren’t for the combination of hot shots and Washington’s terrible defense, they might have paid for it. Washington re-entered a game in which they had no business, and the decision not to hinder Beal’s life will be a big point of discussion after the game. At least he finally got cold in the fourth quarter and, if you’re charitable, maybe Rivers was trying to tire him out in the first 36 minutes.
(By the way, sticking to your guns is kind of Doc Rivers MO, for better or for worse. Get used to your kind of stuff.)
• All that said on the allocation issue, Simmons didn’t do much exactly to change the game in the second half as he started to get out of control. Rivers keeping him out of Beal’s task is one thing, but his offensive limitations increased his ugly header after a first half in which he was really quite effective as a striker.
In the first 24 minutes (and in the final eight or so with Embiid), Simmons was able to control the tempo in both midfield and transition, responding to several Washington deposits with quick scores on the other side. . He was active on and off the ball, creating for himself and for others. Then he touched the break and the openings there were closed a bit, and Simmons’ lack of ingenuity halfway with the ball in his hands slowed Philly’s offense to the brim.
I give him credit for that: he helped Philly reunite him in times of crisis with a great combination of games with Embiid, rediscovering his form when they needed it most. But again, I thought I was a passenger for too much of the game.
• Defending Philadelphia as a team wasn’t that good, aside from Beal’s performance, and it was the first night where I think it could be said that the effort really impacted them. Late rotations, hesitations to fight through a screen, and, worst of all, some plays in which the wizards overtake them in transition and get easy scores for their problems.
At the front of a back-to-back and against a team, they seem to know clearly how to run against in times of crisis, I won’t read too much into it. But I’ve been slightly interested in how they’ll deal with high-level guards when they get to the hardest part of their schedule, and that wasn’t exactly a good data point in that regard.
• The big culprits of the lost leadership were almost all on the bench. Outside of Milton, almost everyone else in the second unit was lost at sea against the wizards. Dwight Howard was ineffective on defense, Tyrese Maxey never had the ball enough to do much, and Matisse Thybulle was the unfortunate victim of the Beal show, trying his hardest and arriving anyway.
And that was it with Rivers staggering their alignments a bit more due to rotation injuries. Tobias Harris and Simmons were the bench-looking boys who spent time, and neither was enough to prop them up. Ugly night for the secondary cast.
The ugly
• Fair Warning: I wrote the following paragraphs before the Sixers drowned most of the wizards, so yes, there are certainly more negatives than this after this abysmal defensive effort.
When the only real complaint that can be made about a team during its first eight games is that you want to prove them against some “real” competition, you know they start off really well.
Tests will be held next week. Thursday’s game against Brooklyn isn’t as exciting with Kevin Durant out, but that game is followed by a meeting with Denver and Nikola Jokic, the Atlanta Hawks pair, and a pair against Jimmy Butler’s Miami Heat. Things are about to become a little more interesting and he welcomes the possibility of judging this team against higher level opponents.
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