February 03, 2024
Bill Streicher/USA TODAY Sports
With Joel Embiid sidelined, the spotlight was on Tyrese Maxey and the returning Ben Simmons.
After a difficult five-game road trip, the Sixers returned home Saturday night for a matchup with the Brooklyn Nets. The Sixers, still extremely short-handed, fell at the hands of the Nets, losing this one 136-121. Here is what jumped out from the lopsided loss:
As you may have heard, Joel Embiid is going to miss an undetermined amount of time with a displaced flap in his left meniscus. But the reigning MVP was not the only Sixer unavailable in this one. Three other regular starters — De'Anthony Melton, Nic Batum and Tobias Harris — were out, as well as Robert Covington. Sixers head coach Nick Nurse really has his work cut out for him right now.
The trade deadline is five days away, and the Nets are a team expected to be extremely active in trade talks, potentially as buyers and/or sellers.
If the Nets do end up selling, the Sixers could make sense as a trade partner. The Nets have guards and wings worth calling about — Spencer Dinwiddie has had a rough year, but has a track record as a solid scorer. Lonnie Walker IV, a native of Reading, PA, was terrific in this one, showing he can be a spark plug scorer off the bench for a contender. Dorian Finney-Smith missed this one with an injury, but is an excellent two-way wing. Royce O'Neale is aging, but a viable two-way wing with some sneaky passing chops.
Ben Simmons' basketball life since being dealt to Brooklyn has been tumultuous, to say the least, marred by injury after injury preventing him from playing or looking even close to his best. Simmons shined in his first game back from another lengthy back injury earlier this week, and in his second game back, he was treated to massive boos from the partisan crowd. Simmons was able to block out the noise and keep his momentum going. On each of his first two possessions upon checking into the game, Simmons grabbed a defensive rebound, pushed the pace in transition and found a teammate for an assist. In his first five-minute stint, Simmons grabbed four boards and dished out four assists.
Oubre is an extremely chaotic player, and he exemplified that in the first quarter. Oubre took six shots from the field, and missed every single one — including three tries from beyond the arc. But he also shot eight free throws, and made every single one. For better or worse, the Sixers needed Oubre to act as if he is an elite scorer, because they had nobody else outside of Maxey with much of a chance of creating anything productive on the offensive end of the floor. The issue is that Oubre has not played well at all of late. A catch-22.
The Nets entered this game 18th in the NBA in Defensive Rating, but the short-handed Sixers made them look like the best defenders on the planet. In the first half, the Sixers shot just 18-47 from the field, even after a relatively strong closing few minutes in which Maxey made their only two triples of the half. Not only were the Sixers lacking their leading scorer — and the league's leading scorer, for that matter — in Embiid, but they were missing their third-leading scorer in Harris, possibly their best passer in Batum, and a whole lot of value from behind the three-point line from all of the players sidelined. The Sixers can theoretically survive an extended Embiid absence, but they will need the rest of their roster to get healthy — and do it soon.
Nurse said before this game that, for as long as Embiid is out, his hope is that Paul Reed and Mo Bamba can play well and be consistent enough to lock down the 48 center minutes that must be filled each game. But by the end of the first quarter, KJ Martin supplanted them both, as did Marcus Morris in the second quarter.
Because of the frequency with which Embiid misses time, the Sixers' third string center spot is more important than that of just about any other team in the entire association. And while it is true that the Sixers will not need to rely on that player in the playoffs too much if they have any chance of making a deep run, it is worth asking whether the Sixers need to upgrade from Reed or Bamba as the trade deadline nears. It feels like Reed's spot as Embiid's backup is safe, but Bamba has simply not shown enough to definitively prove that the Sixers cannot do better with a different third-string to man the middle.
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