The Sixers fought the Grizzlies to the wire on Saturday night, but came up short in a 106-104 road loss at the front of a back-to-back.
This is what I saw.
The good
• One of the most encouraging things you can say about Shake Milton so far this season is that he has been able to play an effective sixth man, even though his outside touch sometimes eludes him. Milton has been an elite shooter from the outside since his amateur days, and that’s where much of his value comes from ahead of this season.
With time and herbs, Milton has sharpened the rest. He’s had more control with his handle this season, aided by some extra strength / weight he put in during the off-season, which helps him keep defenders on his hip and finish around the basket. The touch has always been there and Milton has arms long enough to score around people, and now you start to see him tie all that together.
It was Milton, not Ben Simmons or Tobias Harris, who did his best to keep the Sixers from falling into the abyss in the second half. With nothing that actually worked and the sharing of the ball led to nothing but turnover, Milton went on a personal scoring run to open the fourth quarter, giving them one last chance to get back into play.
The Grizzlies were so scared they started to trap him when he crossed half the lane, and Milton did a few smooth moves to avoid the pressure, including a clean split that led to free throws. And the usually mild-mannered Milton was even boisterous from timeouts, trying to lead his teammates with both his actions and his words.
Ever since the camp opened this year, Doc Rivers has received a message to his first guard from the bank: “Let Shake be Shake.” It has given him an abundance of confidence, and while the Sixers have not won, they are watching a grand escape from one of their young boys.
• Consider me a true believer in the Tyrese Maxey floater / runner pack right now. I still think there could be a point where he needs to be coached to get closer to the edge more often so that he gets to the free throw line regularly, but if you can hook up with those in-between looks on an elite clip, it’s probably best not to mess too much with what you’re doing.
By simply scoring rather than getting caught up in the turnaround vortex, Maxey was able to stand out from some of his teammates on Saturday. I admit that’s a low bar, but you all watched the same game as I did. A shot attempt from Maxey’s hands is better than a turnover going the other way, and encouraging his aggression should be a team goal this year.
Maxey and Milton are the best guard combo the Sixers have taken off the couch in a long time, and while Seth Curry deserves his spot in the starting lineup, I think it’s fair to wonder if any of these guys take Danny’s spot Green should take over in the starting line-up sooner than later. They still have overlapping minutes, and it spreads the dynamics through the rotation (plus gives you a solid vet from the couch).
• Isaiah Joe taking charge of Xavier Tillman is probably the bravest thing I’ve seen the rookie do so far in his career. I cannot question the child’s desire to compete and put it on the line for his team.
• Matisse Thybulle was very good off the bench on Saturday night, with his mistakes coming on the call I think were questionable at best and his overall positioning as good as all year round.
The bad
• I don’t have to tell you all this if you’ve gotten through the Process era, but you’re just not going to beat the NBA teams if the sales margin is as bad as for Philadelphia on Saturday night. The Sixers turned the ball around with unparalleled creativity, spanning the spectrum from “kicking the ball in the backcourt” to “Dwight Howard trying to pick and roll”.
Hanging around in this is an indictment of Memphis’ ability to cash in on the sales more than evidence of all that Philadelphia did.
• There was a stretch in the second quarter where Ben Simmons played with a more offensive goal than we’ve seen from him most of the season. A few of the mistakes he forced Memphis into were in transition, something he’s never struggled with, but he made it a point to keep challenging the Grizzlies with physicality on the attack, a welcome sight after his worst start of a match all season.
Unfortunately, there was still that start to the game and the rest of the game for that matter. Simmons just feels like a less decisive player this season, getting 3/4 of the games he has comfortably covered in the past and is suddenly reluctant to try. It’s even more confusing because of that second quarter.
It is in him to attack the game and impose his will. It is no different from how he generally tries to play. But he doesn’t and usually chooses to cycle the ball to the outside edge. The defense is now anticipating this, and they are turning Simmons over more than ever.
With an average turnover of 3.9 turnover per game that came into the night, Simmons coughed up five more by half time for a wide variety of plays, many with mid-air passes, a coach’s worst nightmare. He rarely had a chance to do that along the trajectory, with the ball (rightly so) in the hands of Shake Milton. This was one of the game’s most important assets, and he just pissed it off.
He was almost completely eliminated from the game in the second half. It was quite a contrast to Embiid’s reaction to an understaffed Heat team earlier this week – Simmons just let him and his team pass the game for the last 24 minutes, and that was a turning point for Philly.
• The Sixers just needed more from Tobias Harris on Saturday night. He got off to a great start, leaked in the transition and punished Memphis for missed shots and early turnovers, looking like the man who moved in under Doc Rivers this season. Simmons was part of that fine start, with forward passes that found Harris on his feet and simplified his decision-making.
Sadly, the pit ran dry, and as the Grizzlies increasingly walled in the paint and the Sixers forced them to beat them with something more creative than a simple middle pick and roll. In practice, that meant that Harris was asked to create from a standstill on many meandering and / or broken possessions. That was a recipe for disaster.
Harris tried his best to take over the game on the trajectory, shaking off the brutality of the middle quarters to come up with a few big buckets in the center of the post to give them a chance to win it. Unforeseen, he stepped out of reach of the game’s crucial possession, forced to the baseline before ever getting a shot.
• Danny Green is at the point in his career where he won’t have it some nights and there’s nothing you can really do about it. This felt like one of those games, with Green behind the pace and reaching for air all evening.
Considering the chaos of the past week, it is quite understandable that he would have such a night against a young team with a lot of spunk in their stride. But they’ll need him to establish some sort of defensive baseline over the course of this season if he is to be one of their dependable vets in the playoffs.
• On the subject of Green, the Sixers had an almost unfathomable number of pick and rolls with Green and Dwight Howard as the combination at the center of the action. Even one of those plays is probably too many, and it shouldn’t surprise anyone that it ended up with various turnovers, crazy shot attempts, and generally uninspiring basketball.
I understand that Philadelphia has had a really hard time opening the year for a team under a new coach, with COVID and injuries disrupting their rotation and ability to build the playbook. But this looked like a team that had never stepped on the ground together before Saturday night’s game. No real excuse for this level of sloppiness.
(A note on Howard: You can see the difference between a guy who’s a good backup and a guy who can take on a starter role. Howard was clearly more than up for the job at the start of his career, but asked him for the man in the middle for the better part of 48 minutes is asking a lot.)
The ugly
• When Joel Embiid was on the floor, the Sixers looked like a distinctly different team from last year, largely because of how he has benefited from the changing workforce around him. When Ben Simmons lay on the floor without Embiid, it looks little different from last season, despite how different the team is and the presence of an all-new coaching staff.
To be clear, that didn’t mean it always looks good with Embiid on the floor. The Sixers played a clunker of a game this week with Simmons unavailable and Joel Embiid on the floor against Atlanta. But even if only because of the systemic changes, there should have been a noticeable difference for the team this season.
You can decide why this is the case.
• You had to know that this shot would be placed here.
Again, in the interest of fairness, I will never criticize anyone for taking an open three, and I am grateful to him for finally doing what people have been asking for all along. But boy, that was a tough one in that place.
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