The Sixers scratched and clawed their way back to a 99-96 win over the Knicks, propelled by a game-high 30 points from Tobias Harris.
This is what I saw.
The good
• One man basically kept the Philadelphia attack going during a first half with ugly shootings and a decent amount of sales: Tobias Harris. Harris was their only floor clearance option for most of the first half, and coupled with some aggressive moves towards the basket, provided enough to help the Sixers hang around despite a downright awful execution on the offensive end.
There seemed to be a little bit of personal juice in this game for Harris, who was in competition with Julius Randle for the All-Star Game and seemed to have that fact in mind when the two were combined. Defensively, Harris got low on his stance, forcing Randle to work hard in the postal area where he historically made his money, and he was quickly back on him on the other side, beating his counterpart with some nice off-the-theater. -dribble moves on top of the outdoor shootout.
After scoring a clutch bucket into the post as time ran out in the fourth, Harris let go as the Sixers walked to the bench for a timeout, seemingly stating that he was the man who earned that mid-season bid. Hard to say he was wrong for that – he came up with at least a few monster defenses on top of the crunch-time dominance on attack. And the strategy wasn’t exactly disguised: The Sixers let Harris target the smallest / weakest defender on the floor, which is reminiscent of his recent overtime performance against the Jazz.
Harris is a scoring chameleon, a man who somehow constantly adapts to the current situation, never misguided whether to carry the team or whether Joel Embiid is the center of the universe. That’s a credit not only to his skills, but also to his mental approach, and it’s hard to do the job that offends him from night to night this season.
He was the man for Philly on Tuesday night, and they needed him to use every tool in the set to get it over the line. Now he has to face the Bucks tomorrow night.
• The Dwight Howard Renaissance continues. He was miles better than starter Tony Bradley on Tuesday (not that it’s saying much), and having a better setup game from his running mates on the second unit seemed in the mood to have a much bigger night against New York. As it was, he offered more than enough for a man in his role.
Howard’s resurgence in the game of late has just made me wonder what he would look like playing with a guard who really has juice as a pick and roll player. Even a fully realized version of Tyrese Maxey would be a thing – Maxey loved throwing lobs during his Kentucky days, and those two showed some early chemistry in the pick and roll to start the year. Shake Milton has been quite hit and miss as the bank’s lead handler, and Howard feels like a man who needs some ball handling dynamics alongside him.
• Ben Simmons has been inside actually made a mistake several times this season, but this match felt like one of the rougher whistles he got all year round, even though he was never really in danger. The Knicks made a few cheap ones with really rough calls against Simmons, and they got away with a fair amount of rough stuff on the other side.
I thought he navigated the game skillfully anyway, taking on different responsibilities as the game situation justified. The Sixers needed him to be an on-ball driver, a pick-and-rolls roll-man, the space creator in dribble handoffs, and the man who led the break in transition, and aside from some early sales, he managed to do all of that at a fairly high level.
(Philly probably won’t have a better chance all year round than in the next two weeks trying out different looks with Simmons as the screener. It’s quite a big part of the playbook already, but with a little ball they might need way into the playoffs, it befits them to try out what Rivers is up to until Embiid comes back.)
There were more defensive assets where he got toasted than the average night – he had most of his troubles at the basket / in the post, with guys copying him on the shoulder – but he did a pretty good job of slowing down RJ Barrett.
• Thanks to Furkan Korkmaz and Seth Curry for fighting back in this game after some absolutely rotten first halves, with Curry showing a shooting display after half time after an anonymous first half, we’ll get to below.
The aforementioned variation in Simmons’ play was more in Curry’s favor than anyone else. Philadelphia got him started with a few dribble handoff plays in the early part of the third quarter, and a man who was afraid of shooting for most of the first 24 minutes suddenly took threes from the coach, helping Philadelphia. back into the game.
Korkmaz had the quieter half, but he was most of the assault on the bank during an early fourth-quarter sprint that allowed the Sixers to hang around, and he gave the starters a chance to close the deal in the last minutes.
The bad
• Doc Rivers’ decision to give Philadelphia’s small ball line-up in the first half a chance was sensible enough on the face of it. Tony Bradley didn’t actually give them anything, and the Knicks don’t have any big ones that will really punish you for downsizing a bit.
For the life of me, I just can’t figure out why the Sixers play that lineup with Simmons as the nominal center and never try to turn on the defense. Simmons has shown you time and time again (this year and over the years) that rim protector is not the role it is for. In a nutshell with that lineup on Tuesday, you saw it again – the Knicks had an easy time getting to the edge with Simmons not playing the kind of dizzying defense we’ve come to expect from Joel Embiid.
If the Sixers want to try this, and the coaching staff has indicated that it is, they might as well look into tweaking the defense style to suit it. Lean on what Simmons is doing well in defense and see if that works.
• You should know it was coming sooner or later, but the Philadelphia bank that basically plunged back to Earth all at once was pretty uncomfortable with their plans on Tuesday.
I think Shake Milton had a case of being the worst of the bunch, poor defensive play (one of his worst of the season) on top of a lifeless offense attack. If he’s in such shape, I don’t know how to ask the all-bench group to stop. With all due respect to Randle, who deserves credit for the progress he’s made as an all-round player, your leading bank security guard should lick their chops when they envision him in an isolation situation. Milton stared at it more than once, barely trying to get to him. Tough look.
(Inexplicably, they played good minutes again to open the fourth, as they did against Utah in the team’s big win before the break. I’ll stick with the assessment anyway!)
• Transitional defense has been a focus on the training ground and pre-game coverage in Philadelphia, and while there was some good individual effort against the Knicks, the Sixers remain a work in progress in that division. New York may have been the team from back-to-back in the second half, but they routinely knocked the Sixers over on Tuesday nights, something I’m sure the staff will touch on them at the next movie session.
• Danny Green and Curry were both bad in their own unique way for Tuesday’s first half game, but I think one is a more impactful version of bad than the other. Any suspicion about whose style of offensive ineptitude I don’t like (d) more?
If you had guessed Curry (and probably not) you would be right. I will always, always, always live with one of the guys you pay who you trust to take photos that just lack a decent look. When Green misses a bunch of open or slightly contested jumpers it’s annoying to watch and must be a bit annoying for teammates creating the open looks, but you know he’s not going to flash when the ball swings his way, or is now 9. / 10 or 1/10.
Curry simply can’t be as careful about shooting as he has been this season, and because he was the first half of Tuesday’s game against the Knicks. Teams that paint and challenge the Sixers’ shooters to defeat them was the game plan in big games for pretty much the entire Embiid / Simmons era, and he’s one of the guys who pushed the playoffs. must reduce and capitalize on the attention to his running friends.
Once Curry started flying them in the second half, the Sixers’ attack suddenly looked a lot better. You cannot take pictures if you cannot take them. Crazy concept, I know.
• That part of the above is how I really feel, but there is still no way to dress up Danny Green’s offensive performance. That was a stinker.
The ugly
• Can I nominate most of the first quarter for this section? Heck, I write the articles, I can nominate anything I want if I feel like it.
Both defenses deserve their share of the credit for the rough start, with individual players putting in good shifts in both teams. But Knicks’ defensive style (pack the paint, don’t give up anything easy) combined with a bad Green game led to an absolutely brutal, unattainable game on the frontier. The Sixers constantly had to recycle their belongings, and their only genuinely willing shooter was icy from deep, masonry shot after shot as belongings hurled his way. When that happens, it will be a long night.
Things didn’t get any better with the bench group. They lack penetration by dribble on their best evenings, and it was even uglier against the Knicks, with many possessions forcing Howard to isolate and create for himself. Yes, that Dwight Howard, the 35-year-old backup center that should never really have to create for itself.
I thought this brand of basketball died a long time ago. Please no more.
• As most of you know, I enjoy the musical element of modern basketball. There is absolutely no reason to play two different songs in a row when Dwight Howard scores. If Howard wants to hear “All Gold Everything” by Trinidad James when he scores, that’s fine. Trying to combine that with Superman themed music is just ridiculous.
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