With VJ Edgecombe, Dominick Barlow and Quentin Grimes all late scratches due to illness, the Sixers failed to find rhythm on offense against a bad Brooklyn Nets team. Joel Embiid was the lone bright spot. But brutal games from Tyrese Maxey and Jared McCain doomed Philadelphia in a loss.
Here are six thoughts on the game.
The offense never figures it out
The story of the night, by far, was that the Sixers’ offense never found its footing. An Andre Drummond cut for a dunk gave Philadelphia a seven-point lead just two minutes into the second quarter. That was the high point of the night for the Sixers, who shot a tick below 41 percent from the field, a tick below 26 percent from three and had more turnovers than assists in the game.
The shooting variance was an entity by itself, but the Sixers don’t really get to pardon themselves on that, alone. There was not even diversity or creativity in their screening actions. Brooklyn is big and athletic even if the record reflects the team’s skill and power. The Nets had little issue smothering the ball out of the action, sticking a wrench in Philadelphia’s offense all night long.
The Sixers didn’t do enough passing to create shots, either. Too often did they manufacture looks by bumping and using body to create separation.
It felt like Philadelphia relied upon Joel Embiid to simply stay hot, leaving far too much meat on the bone in this game.
Maxey never gets going
Key to the offense stalling out, of course, was Maxey never establishing a rhythm in this game. It was clear early on that Embiid was cooking, so they continued to feed that. But the Sixers never really got the game flowing back toward Maxey. That’s surprising in its own right, given that the Maxey-Embiid two-man game has proven to be absolutely killer over the years.
Credit to Brooklyn for staying very connected on screens for Maxey. He never got separation coming out of the pick, which led to a lot of unproductive, side-to-side movement. As the game went on, it actually appeared as though Maxey lost confidence. He jab-stepped more than usual when the ball hit his hands, but didn’t make an aggressive move after jabbing. Maxey also hesitated quite a bit, shot-faking out of decent looks and moving the ball on to less qualified teammates or driving into contact for low-percentage shots.
Heavy is the head that wears the crown. As the lead guard and a strong All-NBA First Team candidate up to this point in the season, Maxey has the cachet to diagnose problems in real time and call out the next move, whether it be for himself or someone else. He can also go to his coach, if Nick Nurse doesn’t feel the lack of rhythm building up, to draw up the action. But both Maxey and Nurse seemed to just accept that he didn’t have anything going on the ball in this game and there were no noticeable actions to get him advantages off the ball.
Some good, mostly bad for McCain
With Edgecombe and Grimes out, McCain was promoted to the starting lineup. He briefly look good, coming out of the gate with an electric first step and driving well against a physical team without having to even attack wild closeouts. His legs had burst, and he used it to score inside and earn trips to the foul line. It was as healthy as he’s looked maybe all season.
It did not last, and he eventually wore down against the physicality. Much of what he tried on offense came off the dribble and McCain opted for several scoop layups and floaters. On a night when he was very off the mark, those misses sent Brooklyn out in transition against an unbalanced floor.
Maybe the Sixers could’ve survived a bad night from Maxey if McCain was game to carry his weight. They could not survive a combined 6-for-25 shooting night out of their starting guards.
Nurse opting for size burns the offense in the third quarter
When the bottom fell out for Philadelphia late in the third quarter, it felt like one of the big culprits of that was Nurse opting for size over space.
The head coach does get some credit for trying a bunch of different combinations to see if there was something that clicked, but the two-big looks that he threw out spared Brooklyn’s athleticism to help elsewhere.
They were able to shade toward the paint and send help to clog up picks. As the team-wide shooting percentage really began to plummet, the Sixers started to over-index on jump-shooting because there weren’t clear paths to the rim.
A very good Embiid game
Save for an injury scare early in the third quarter, this was an excellent night for Embiid on both ends of the floor. While the Nets scored over him at the rim quite a bit, it wasn’t for a lack of effort. Embiid battled to disrupt shots inside and even had some success as the game went on. Most meaningful was that you could see him break out of his shell to make plays on the perimeter. There were a handful of shots that he rushed out to contest, flying past shooters and landing on his feet. He did not look like he felt good on those landings, but he stayed in the game.
He had an absolute field day in the first quarter, handling the ball pressure and Nic Claxton shading his driving lanes. Embiid knocked down a slew of jumpers, creating rhythm for himself off the dribble. He even tried to poster someone for the first time this season, getting blocked on the way down. He looked like he felt healthy, and didn’t looked all that inhibited when he returned to the game after limping to the locker room early in the third.
The only strike against his rhythm was that it came as the entire offense rather than within the flow of the offense. Philadelphia did not go to the two-man attack enough, instead feeding Embiid at the elbows and watching him go to work.
There’s a time and a place for that, but Maxey was stuck on one field goal attempt for far too long in this game and it might’ve caused this one to pass him by.
Absence of athleticism and length
Nurse will tell you that the Sixers missed three athletes in this game. There’s truth to that. Grimes does have burst and the ability to finish through contact at the rim. But it was evident that Edgecombe and Barlow being absent affected the team quite a bit. The shooting variance aside, there was not enough force going to the rim for Philadelphia. They missed the length on defense, too. Michael Porter Jr. got blistering hot from three in the first quarter and the Nets found rhythm running him off screens all game long.
Nurse relied quite a bit on Justin Edwards, who largely had nothing to offer on either end of the floor. Perhaps you could sum up the game with one possession — Porter Jr. came off a pin-down ready to fire a three and Edwards fouled him on the leg, failing to disrupt the shot and sending Porter Jr. to the line for a four-point play.
That kind of night for the Sixers.