It took the Sixers 48 minutes to survive a bad Pistons team, but they would eventually wrap up a 114-110 victory on the road thanks to another 30+ points from Joel Embiid.
This is what I saw.
The good
• The Pistons spent much of the night enjoying playing single reportage against Embiid. I don’t know what their advanced scouts have been looking at this season (maybe not many!), But it clearly wasn’t the best strategy for slowing down Philly’s MVP candidate.
Embiid occasionally ran through Pistons players on Saturday night, forcing smaller defenders to pack, hack, or flap him on his shot attempts as he made his way to the free-throw line. He made easy work of Mason Plumlee, former Sixers big man Jahlil Okafor, and took another 20+ points in another first half, bullying Detroit while barely sweating.
In the past, it felt like the best games had to come from Embiid when the Sixers did almost nothing but play through him. He and his teammates have found a better way, hammering favorable matchups when Embiid has them, but not living or dying with him to create anything from the post.
I’m in the camp that thinks it doesn’t really matter how well Embiid plays or doesn’t play when he’s available for back-to-backs because those games will never take place in the playoffs. That said, it’s a testament to the improved form he’s in so he could come out and dominate like he did on Saturday night. The shots didn’t fall for him along the stretch, but Embiid made up for that by putting in a scandalous defense on the edge in the final minutes and putting out several potential buckets for Detroit.
Even putting that aside, 30+ is a light job for Embiid right now, and that’s not something you should ever take for granted.
• Was a great quarter enough for Ben Simmons to get his season started? He looked like a very different player in the first half against Detroit after the strong finish against Boston, and finally cashed in on the looks the Sixers forced him all season long.
Nowhere was that more evident than in the low block, where Simmons made smaller Pistons defenders absolutely brutal at every opportunity. Moves we hadn’t seen him try, like fakes and running hooks, were suddenly pulled from the toolbox.
And this was a team effort – Embiid seemed hyper aware of the need to keep Simmons going and clearing up space in the paint several times for Simmons to get to work. Even when Detroit tried to pick up Simmons in the backcourt to keep him from building a cup of steam, his running mate was ready to release him:
That’s why it’s frustrating to see people happy that he barely exceeds the metric thresholds to fetch triple-doubles. Simmons is absolutely capable of filling the box score while playing with the ball in his hands with an offensive mindset. In fact, it becomes easier for him to find open teammates when teams have to respect him as a goalscorer.
As has often been the case in the past two seasons, it was also Simmons who was at the forefront of the effort division, breaking his butt on defense with many other players dragging a road back-to-back the second night. Rivers still seems reluctant to use him as the “ best player-stopper, ” perhaps because he doesn’t try to beat Simmons every night with the No. 1 counter assignment, but once he unleashed him on Detroit’s Jerami Grant, it was basically shawl. for Grant’s night. Simmons was just bullying him on the floor.
(And hey, big free throws in crunch time for Simmons, who’s always had trouble at the line. Good to see him calm and collected when it comes down to it.)
• Seth Curry not making a single three-point shot was shocking to watch, but he has such a calming influence on the floor that it’s easy to see why lineups are cooking with him this season. I suppose that’s the tradeoff of his occasional reluctance to let it rip from deep – Curry is measured at all times, almost exclusively high-quality shots and rarely misses an opportunity for a teammate to look better.
His skill level certainly helps. As the big boys clear a path for him with fencing, Curry gets to the basket just enough and threatens just enough from the center to keep everyone fair. Very pleasant player to watch for fouls.
• I mean this mainly as a compliment – the Sixers only gave about half of this game, but they now have the ability to win it over even if they don’t have their best gear. This felt like the kind of victory that a younger Sixers team never seemed to close the deal on, especially since they were an all-or-nothing outfit.
During a long season, a loss here or there against a lesser opponent will not kill you. But Philly made it a habit to give away way too many of these games in the past, struggling to find the mid-intensity between ‘National TV Match vs. a contender ‘and’ Saturday night back-to-back against the Pistons on the backup NBC Sports channel. “You don’t need your best gear to beat Detroit. But you have to make a professional effort, and Embiid and Simmons are finally starting to see how they can do that.
(On the downside, not great that the stars had to play deep into crunch time in the second half of a back-to-back.)
The bad
• Okay, so you can’t actively care about parts of the game and avoid criticism altogether. There were some ugly stretches to this match for Philly, with defenders in the perimeter allowing far too easy penetration in the first half of the match, and it would be nice to see the Sixers blow out a team like this early to let guys rest In the second half. Oh well.
• Doc Rivers will have to figure out exactly what he wants to do with his sofa, as the pieces look rather disjointed at the moment. Between the reintroduction of Furkan Korkmaz and some natural volatility for backup players, the Sixers bench was an absolute mess for the first 24 minutes against Detroit.
If Rivers has decided he wants to stick with the original starting lineup, the bench’s first two perimeter players should almost certainly be Shake Milton and Tyrese Maxey. The latter appears to have lost his spot to Korkmaz, a man who confessed to Rivers that he dates back to the camp, and that will be an up and down experience based on Korkmaz’s play so far this year. Maxey hasn’t really burned the nets lately, but he was the only player on the bench to score in the first half, a dazzling statistic that shows just how bad they were.
I’m not a huge Mike Scott fan, but the combinations were a bit shaky as Rivers works around the absence of their backup four. For example, lineups with Dwight Howard, Matisse Thybulle and Simmons are a nightmare, even if you can convince yourself in their defensive power.
Embiid focused a little too much on trying to win the game for foul draws in the second half, and Pistons rookie Isaiah Stewart played well-disciplined defense when Plumlee dropped out of the game, leading to some ugly tries by Mr. Embiid in crunch time. Hard to argue with a guy who routinely catches defenders with their hand in the cookie jar, but he can’t let that be his only way of attacking at big moments.
• If the Sixers are looking for an upgrade in the playoffs / second half of the season, a fifth starter replacing Danny Green or putting him in a bench role is the most obvious move. He knows what to do out there and he usually stays in that role, but his body seems to be catching up with his mind right now. Even if it’s like a pump fake on a jersey or attempted layup after a smart cut, Green just looks out of pace.
You could sell me the idea that things are going well, and he’s a guy who is particularly prone to back-to-back second night dips as he was part of consistent deep playoff runs in his career. But there have been ugly nights this season.
• Doc Rivers told reporters before the game that the three-man Embiid / Harris / Simmons group were reluctant to play, and Tobias Harris played like a man who probably could have used a night off. He has tightened up his decision-making this season and continued to fight in defense on Saturday, but he had three or four headscratchers against the Pistons, a turnover cut from his game in the early stages of this year.
No reason to make a fuss about it, but a difficult one nonetheless.
• On the subject of staggering plays, Matisse Thybulle was a one-man demolition crew on Saturday in the absolute worst possible way. There was first half possession where he had several chances to move the ball to an open teammate who might be able to do something with it, and instead kept dribbling the air out of the ball before finally attempting a wild lay-up which hit. nothing but glass. Know your role, young man.
The ugly
• Dwight Howard was called up for an offense in a play where a piece of his shorts was torn off. Picking up a technical foul after complaining about it seems pretty silly to me, so I have to complain about it to the officials.
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