Joel Embiid stuffed the Sixers in his backpack and carried them to victory on Friday night. He played his first game of 50 points in a 112-105 victory over the Chicago Bulls.
This is what I saw.
The good
• I give kudos to Bull’s great man Wendell Carter Jr. for not showing any fear in his match with Joel Embiid. WCJ matched Embiid shot for shot in the early stages, carrying Chicago’s attack alone with plenty of middle-class fine work.
Unfortunately for the Bulls’ young big man, that got Embiid engaged from the start. Embiid seemed to take those brands personally, and he punished Carter Jr. on the other side of the floor absolutely and forced him into trouble early on with deep catches in the pole and an emphasis on making contact. Embiid would score 14 points in a shorter serve than he normally has to open the game.
The hits just kept coming. Picking up where he left off in the second quarter, Embiid pushed the Sixers back into the lead in grand style, which it accentuated with this ridiculous Euro move and the mistake:
There are so few guys in the history of the league who on both sides have been able to do everything this man can. Embiid is regularly able to perform these types of movements at full speed, and while you’re concerned about a man with his health history sometimes driving into traffic without a plan, it’s remarkable how elegant and graceful he is to a man of his own. length.
Then he comes in forcefully, and you suddenly remember that he is a big man after all. This was one of the more dominant nights Embiid had on the glass in a while, with the big man creating a ton of extra possessions with tightly contested rebounds where he simply decided he wasn’t going to let anyone else come with the ball. It’s a great sign on several levels, especially in what it says about his physical health after some ugly grimaces and back pain earlier in the week.
As the third quarter turned around, Embiid’s help had almost dried up to start halfway, so the big guy continued the attack. By the time he checked out with less than two minutes to play in the third, he had 37 points on 70 percent of the field in just 27 minutes of action. The Bulls couldn’t think of an answer despite every reason to turn all their attention to Embiid. He was that good.
Every time Embiid has this form, the Sixers have a chance to win. Even on a night when there was little help from the supporting cast, that was the case on Friday, although it was closer than it should have been. When all was said and done, Embiid had his first 50-point game of his career and the Sixers were awarded a ‘W’. Well done.
• It will be lost in the sands of time by the time this story is submitted, but held in the last minute of the first half where Embiid and Tobias Harris simply refused to go back on the offensive glass is probably my favorite asset of the seasonI should see the replay again, but they came with 4 or 5 rebounds on a single possession, and when they finally got out of the sea of Bulls players, Embiid made a mistake and grabbed a pair at the charity streak.
The greatest credit I can offer is that it was a moment when Moses Malone would have been proud. Not bad for a mid-February game against a mediocre Eastern Conference team.
Speaking of Harris, he’s one of the few guys who shouldn’t be ashamed of their offensive contributions on Friday night.
The season-long theme of playing with physicality continued against the Bulls, with Harris pretty much anyone the Bulls had the guts to throw him in the middle of the post. A year after we expected the Sixers to play bully, Harris has finally found a way to make that happen. Rookie-wing Patrick Williams – a tall, athletic dude in his own right – had the misfortune of guarding Harris at a few different points during the game.
As ESPN’s Richard Jefferson shouted on the air, Harris found out that his cover didn’t read the scouting report, and he took advantage of Williams skewing too far to the center by blasting left.
If nothing else, Harris’ work in the middle of the post was able to buy Embiid some belongings where he could rest while still on the floor, and with the workload the big man had on Friday night, that was a great blessing.
• Matisse Thybulle’s impact from a box score perspective was minimal, but he had a huge task on Friday night and did a great job with Chicago’s top perimeter assignment. Zach LaVine had some sparkles as he has done so many times throughout the year, but Thybulle was especially excellent at guarding him, even on assets where he didn’t close the game himself.
Lately we’ve seen more “total package” type games from Thybulle on defense, performances where he has been able to combine the chaos of generating revenue with the discipline to force players where he wants to go. Embiid was able to meet LaVine on the edge or discourage him from attempting multiple times due to Thybulle’s positioning, leading the Bulls guard to a place where the big man could enter late.
• I say this to attack the rest of the group, but to commend the subject: Philadelphia’s best Friday night banking violation was to get shots and then pray that Dwight Howard could come up with an offensive rebound. It was the one area of the game that he consistently impressed this season, and they needed every opportunity he’d left against them, as they couldn’t count on anyone else to produce against the Bulls.
If that’s the price of his typical dirty problems, I think they’ll just have to live with it.
The bad
• There has been a lot of discussion about the bank lately, almost all of them bad, and I can understand the concern as someone who has to watch every minute of these games. They’ve offered next to nothing at either end of the floor, and it’s easy to look at this group as currently constructed and think they won’t be good enough to compete in the playoffs.
They were, in fact, the only reason Chicago hung out in this game on Friday night. Rivers tried to buy Embiid some more rest in the first half, and without Tobias Harris to back them up, it was an absolute nightmare for Philly. Tyrese Maxey rattled runner after runner, Mike Scott was basically just jogging back and forth across the track, and Furkan Korkmaz … well, we’ll get to him below.
(Stick with Maxey for a moment, this kind of game is part of why you see rookies struggling to get game time under many coaches including Rivers. It’s one thing to miss shots, especially when asked for a lifeless second unit, but he made that worse by making terrible mental mistakes and making up for them all at once, instead of letting the game come to him. I feel like he might be parked on the couch for a while when Shake is back.)
Here’s a ray of sunshine in a dark period for the second unit – I don’t think they need to panic and I don’t think that’s the drastic issue it feels right now. Shake Milton will return and give them a lift, yes, but a lot of these guys will also just be minimized or completely out of rotation by the time the games matter.
I’m willing to bet a healthy amount that there will be one or two additions / exchanges before the trade deadline, and drawing conclusions about this group one night without Ben Simmons is a bit pointless. When your most versatile player (and high-minute guy) is parked on the sidelines, you will definitely see guys overloaded.
• The bank that stinks is one thing, but this was an ugly game for Seth Curry and Danny Green, who were bad in their own unique (but relatively familiar) ways.
Curry’s night is one you can apologize to an extent for being just out of tune. I still believe he’s way too hesitant to shoot at times, with Curry forcing himself out of several open looks at great Embiid passes, but he’s been a lot better most of the year so I’m ignoring the fight until to some extent.
Green was bad on defense in the loudest possible way, being repeatedly outpaced for lay-ups, and late at close-out after close-out was lucky not to get burned. He’s actually been a streaky player his entire career, but it’s a bit concerning that we’ve seen so few actively helpful games from the veteran this year. If he stays past the deadline, they’ll need a lot more from him to stay in the starting and finishing group.
(I’ll say this – Green got some big momentum threes when they needed them all night. I’m just a little shocked at how badly he’s been on the defensive most of the season.)
• Doc Rivers just has to let Embiid and Harris falter in a game like this so that one of them is always on the ground. The bank hasn’t had it for weeks and it’s an avoidable issue to let the group die with all the banks there.
The ugly
• Furkan Korkmaz had not one, but two of the worst sales of the season in a small portion of the end of the first quarter and the beginning of the second quarter. I have no idea what he thought he saw, but he threw two separate passes at absolutely no one and then looked up in disbelief as other players remained silent where they had been the whole time.
I came into the year with pretty high hopes for Korkmaz, who had a good year last year and appeared to be a man who could benefit from Rivers’s touch with motion shooters. It’s gone the other way, with Korkmaz the obvious person to fall out of rotation to mix things up.
Mike Scott deserves a bit of attention for a completely different version of ineffectiveness. Korkmaz’s mistakes are no doubt louder, but Scott doesn’t actually do any of the little things right. If the stationary shooter occasionally fires an open shot that comes at him, we excuse the rest, but the defensive mistakes are plentiful and there are some times when you think to yourself, “I didn’t expect that from him!” in a positive way.
There are numerous standstill shooters in the world.
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