It took the Sixers 48 minutes to survive a bad Pistons team, but they would end up winning a 114-110 victory on the road thanks to another 30 points from Joel Embiid.
Here’s what I saw.
The good
• The Pistons decided for most of the night that they were happy to play unique coverage against Embiid. I don’t know what his advanced scouts have been watching this season (maybe not much!), But it clearly wasn’t the best strategy to delay Philly’s MVP contender.
Embiid was only passing Pistons players on Saturday nights, forcing minor defenders to involve him, hack him or struggle with his attempts to kick while he launched himself into the free throw line. He facilitated the work of Mason Plumlee, ex-Sixers great man Jahlil Okafor, and added another 20 casual points in another first half, intimidating Detroit while barely sweating.
In the past, it seemed that the best Embiid games had to come when the Sixers did almost nothing except play through it. He and his companions found a better way, hammering out favorable fights when Embiid has them, but not living or living with him creating anything outside the post.
I’m on the field who thinks it doesn’t really matter how well Embiid plays or doesn’t play when he’s available for both sides, because those games will never happen in the playoffs. That said, it is proof of the best way he is, that he can go out and dominate the way he did on Saturday night. The shots did not fall for him in the final stretch, but Embiid made up for it by throwing an outrageous defense on the edge in the final minutes, extinguishing several possible buckets for Detroit.
Even if we leave that aside, putting more than 30 is a light job for Embiid at the moment, and this is not something you should ever take for granted.
• Was it enough for Ben Simmons to start his season in attack? He looked like a completely different player in the first half against Detroit, after a strong submission against Boston, finally profiting from the looks that the Sixers have been feeding him throughout the season.
Nowhere was this more evident than in the lower block, where Simmons absolutely brutalized the smaller Pistons defenders at every opportunity. Movements that we hadn’t seen him try, like fakes and hooks running, were suddenly removed from the toolbox.
And this was a team effort – Embiid seemed hyperconscious about the need to keep Simmons moving, clearing space in the painting on several occasions so that Simmons could work. Even when Detroit tried to catch Simmons in the backcourt to stop him from increasing his strength, his running mate was ready to release him:
That is why it is frustrating to see people happy for him to barely cross the limits of statistics to get triple-double. Simmons is absolutely capable of filling the scoreboard while playing with an attack mentality with the ball in his hands. In fact, it is easier for him to find open teammates if the teams need to respect him as a top scorer.
As has always been the case for the past two seasons, it was also Simmons leading the effort department, hitting his butt in defense with many other players crawling on the second night of a consecutive road. Rivers still seems reluctant to use him as the “best player to stop”, perhaps because he’s not trying to take Simmons down with opposing mission number 1 every night, but as soon as he released him on Detroit’s Jerami Grant, it was basically a wrap for Grant’s night. Simmons was just hitting him up and down.
(And hey, great free throws at the time of squeeze for Simmons, who has always had stripe problems. It’s nice to see you calm and collected when it matters.)
• Seth Curry not making a single three-point shot was shocking to watch, but he’s such a calming influence on the ground that it’s easy to see why lineups that include him are cooking this season. I suppose that is the downside of your occasional reluctance to let the depths rip – Curry is measured at all times, taking high-quality photos almost exclusively and rarely missing a teammate’s chance to see better.
Your skill level certainly helps. With the big boys making their way to him with screens, Curry reaches the basket just enough and makes medium-level threats just enough to keep everyone honest. Very nice player to watch in the attack.
• I say this mainly as a compliment – the Sixers really gave a shit about half of this game, but now they have the ability to push the limits, even when they don’t have their best material. It seemed like the kind of victory that a younger Sixers team never seemed to close the deal with, mostly because they were all or nothing.
During a long season, a defeat here or there against a smaller opponent will not kill you. But Philly has gotten into the habit of offering many of these games in the past, struggling to find a happy medium between “National TV game against a contender” and “Consecutive Saturday night against the Pistons on the NBC Sports backup channel.” You don’t need your best to beat Detroit. But you have to offer a professional effort, and Embiid and Simmons are finally starting to see how to make that happen.
(On the other hand, it’s not great that the stars have to play deeply in the time of crisis in the second half of a back-to-back.)
The evil
• Okay, so you can’t help but actively care about parts of the game and avoid criticism entirely. There were some ugly stretches in this game for Philly, with perimeter defenders allowing very easy penetration in the first half of the game, and it would be nice to see the Sixers blow up a team like this earlier to rest guys in the second half. Oh well.
• Doc Rivers is going to have to find out exactly what he wants to do with his bank because the pieces seem a little disjointed at the moment. Between the reintroduction of Furkan Korkmaz and some natural volatility for reserve players, the Sixers’ bench was an absolute mess in the first 24 minutes against Detroit.
If Rivers has decided that he wants to stick with the original starting lineup, the first two perimeter players off the bench must be Shake Milton and Tyrese Maxey. The latter seems to have lost his place to Korkmaz, a guy Rivers confessed his confidence in dating at camp, and this will be an experience of ups and downs based on Korkmaz’s game so far this year. Maxey hasn’t exactly burned the net recently, but he was the only player on the bench to score in the first half, an eye-popping statistic that shows how bad they were.
I’m not a big fan of Mike Scott, but the combinations have been a little unstable, as Rivers bypasses the absence of his four reservations. Lineups with Dwight Howard, Matisse Thybulle and Simmons, for example, are a space nightmare, even if you can talk about your defensive strength.
• Embiid focused a little too much on trying to win the draw in the second half, and Pistons rookie Isaiah Stewart did a good job of playing a disciplined defense after Plumlee left the game, leading to some ugly attempts by Mr. Embiid in times of crisis. It’s hard to argue with a guy who routinely catches defenders with his hand in the cookie jar, but he can’t allow this to be his only way of attacking at great times.
• If the Sixers are eyeing an upgrade in the playoffs / second half of the season, a fifth starter, who replaces Danny Green or puts him on a bench, is the most obvious move to make. He knows what is there to do and most of the time remains within that role, but his body seems to be trying to catch up with his mind right now. Even when it’s something like a bomb simulation in a jump or a layup attempt after a smart cut, Green just seems out of step.
You could convince me that he will be fine, and he is a particularly susceptible guy to crashes for the second night in a row, having participated in consistent playoff races in his career. But there have been some ugly nights this season.
• Doc Rivers told reporters before the game that the three-man group Embiid / Harris / Simmons was in doubt to play, and Tobias Harris played as a guy who probably could have taken a night off. He tightened his decision making this season and continued to compete in defense on Saturday, but had three or four headscratchers against the Pistons, spins that were cut from his game in the early stages of this year.
There is no reason to worry about it, but it is difficult anyway.
• Since we’re talking about scratching heads, Matisse Thybulle was a one-man demolition team in the worst possible way on Saturday. There was a possession of the ball in the first half when he had several opportunities to move the ball to an open teammate who might have a chance to do something with it and instead continued to dribble out of the ball before to finally try a wild tray that hit nothing but glass. Know your role, young man.
The ugly
• Dwight Howard was accused of a foul in a play in which he had a piece of his shorts ripped off. Catching a technical foul after complaining seems very serious to me, so I have to send a complaint to the officials about it.
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