The Sixers fought the Grizzlies to the limit on Saturday night, but they had to lose 106-104 in front of a back-to-back.
Here’s what I saw.
The good
• One of the most encouraging things you could say about Shake Milton so far this season is that he was able to play an effective sixth man, despite his outward touch sometimes avoiding him. Milton has been a sniper since his amateur days, and that’s where a lot of his value came from before this season.
With time and seasoning, Milton tightened the rest. He had tighter control with his fist this season, aided by a little extra strength / weight he gained during the off-season, which helps him keep defenders on his hips and finish around the basket. The touch has always been there and Milton has arms long enough to score points around people, and now you’re starting to see him tie it all up.
It was Milton, not Ben Simmons or Tobias Harris, who did his best to try to prevent the Sixers from falling into the abyss in the second half. With nothing really working and dividing the ball leading to nothing but twists and turns, Milton set off on a personal scoring race to open the fourth period that gave them one last chance to get back in the game.
The Grizzlies were so frightened that they started to arrest him when he crossed the middle of the court, and Milton made some skillful moves to escape the pressure, including a clean split that led to free throws. And the normally talkative Milton was really vocal out of timeouts, trying to lead his teammates with his actions and words.
Since the camp opened this year, Doc Rivers has left a message for his first off-guard: “Let Shake be Shake”. This gave him an abundance of confidence, and while the Sixers did not win, they are in the process of watching a great escape from one of their youth.
• Consider me a true believer in the Tyrese Maxey floater / runner package right now. I still think that there may be a point where he needs to be trained to get closer to the edge more often so that he gets to the free throw line regularly, but if you can connect in those intermediate looks in an elite clip, probably it’s best not to mess with what you’re doing.
Just trying to score a goal instead of getting stuck in the vortex of the spin allowed Maxey to stand out from some of his teammates on Saturday. I admit it is a low barrier, but you all watched the same game as me. An attempt to kick Maxey’s hands is better than a turn going the other way, and fostering his aggression should be a goal for the team this year.
Maxey and Milton are the best guard combination the Sixers have had on the bench in a long time, and while Seth Curry deserves his place on the starting lineup, I think it’s fair to imagine if one of these guys should take Danny Green’s place on the roster sooner or later. They will still have overlapping minutes, and that spreads dynamism throughout the rotation (in addition to giving you a solid vet off the bench).
• Isaiah Joe taking over from Xavier Tillman is probably the most courageous thing I’ve seen the newcomer do so far in his career. One cannot question the boy’s desire to compete and risk for the team.
• Matisse Thybulle was very good off the bench on Saturday night, with his fouls arriving on calls that I think were questionable at best and his overall positioning as good as it has been all year.
The evil
• I don’t need to say all of this if you went through the Process era, but you simply won’t defeat NBA teams if the turnover margin is as bad as it was in Philadelphia on Saturday night. The Sixers turned the ball with incomparable creativity, in the spectrum of “kicking the ball in the backcourt” to “Dwight Howard trying to run a pick-and-roll.”
Staying around with this one is an indictment of Memphis’ ability to profit from turnover more than proof of anything Philadelphia has done.
• There was a period in the second quarter when Ben Simmons played with a more offensive purpose than what we have seen of him for most of the season. Some of the fouls he forced Memphis to commit were in transition, something he never struggled with, but he made a point of continuing to physically challenge the Grizzlies in attack, a welcome sight after his worst start to the game of the season.
Unfortunately, there was still that beginning for the game and the rest of the game for that matter. Simmons feels like a less decisive player this season, getting 3/4 of the way in moves he has comfortably made in the past and is suddenly reluctant to try. It’s even more confusing Because of this second quarter stretch.
It is within him to attack and impose his will on the game. It is not a difference in how he usually tries to play. But he does not do this, choosing most of the time to rotate the ball to the perimeter. The defenses are anticipating this now, and are taking down Simmons more often than ever.
With an average of 3.9 spins per game arriving at night, Simmons coughed five more at halftime in a wide variety of plays, many in mid-air passes, a coach’s worst nightmare. He rarely had a chance to do so in the final stretch, with the ball (rightly) placed in the hands of Shake Milton. This was one of the most important assets in the game, and he just pissed him off.
He was played almost entirely out of the game in the second half. It was a stark contrast to Embiid’s response against a Heat underman team earlier in the week – Simmons simply let the game go by him and his team in the last 24 minutes, and that was an ending for Philly.
• The Sixers simply needed more from Tobias Harris on Saturday night. He got off to a decent start, leaking out of the transition and punishing Memphis for missed shots and premature turns, looking like the guy who came to live for Doc Rivers this season. Simmons was part of that good start, with hitting passes that found Harris in stride and simplified his decision making.
Unfortunately, the well dried up, and as the Grizzlies increasingly blocked the painting and forced the Sixers to beat them with something more creative than a basic pick-and-roll. In practice, this meant that Harris was asked to create from a stoppage in many winding and / or broken belongings. That was a recipe for disaster.
Harris did his best to take control of the game in the final stretch, ignoring the brutality of the intermediate quarters to invent some big buckets in the middle of the post to give them a chance to win. Awkwardly, he left the field in possession of the ball, forced to the baseline before he was even shot.
• Danny Green is at a point in his career when he won’t have it on some nights and there will be nothing you can really do about it. It felt like one of those games, with Green behind the pace and trying to breathe through the night.
Bearing in mind the chaos of last week, it is quite understandable that he has a night like this against a young team with a lot of energy in their stages. But they will need him to establish some sort of defensive baseline over the course of this season, if he wants to be one of his trusted veterinarians in the playoffs.
• Since we’re talking about Green, the Sixers performed an almost unfathomable number of pick-and-roll with Green and Dwight Howard as the combination at the center of the action. Even one of those moves is probably too much, and it shouldn’t surprise anyone who ended up with several turns, foolish attempts at shooting and generally uninspiring basketball.
I understand that Philadelphia had a very difficult period to open the year for a team with a new coach, with COVID and injuries hindering his rotation and ability to build the manual. But it looked like a team that had never stepped on the ground before Saturday night’s game. No real excuse for that level of sloppiness.
(A note about Howard: you are seeing the difference between a guy who is a good reserve and a guy who can handle a role the size of a beginner. Howard was obviously more than up to the task early in his career, but asked him to be the man in the middle for more than 48 minutes is asking a lot.)
The ugly
• When Joel Embiid was on the ground, the Sixers looked like a very different team from last year, largely because of how he took advantage of the change in personnel around him. When Ben Simmons was on the pitch without Embiid, very little seems different from last season, despite how different the team is and the presence of an entirely new coaching staff.
To be clear, this does not mean that it always seems Good with Embiid on the floor. The Sixers played a tough game with 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.
• You had to know that this scene would be placed here.
Again, in the interest of justice, I will never criticize anyone for choosing an open three, and good for him for finally doing what people have been asking for all this time. But, man, that one was difficult in that place.
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