January 28, 2020
There was very little drama in Joel Embiid's first game back in the Sixers lineup since early January, as the Sixers picked up an easy 115-104 victory following a multi-pronged tribute to Kobe Bryant before the game.
Here's what I saw on Tuesday night.
• The Sixers had a couple of days to prepare for their tribute to Kobe Bryant, and I thought the organization did an excellent job of honoring his career. Between the No. 8 and 24 warmup jerseys, the 33-second moment of silence in honor of Bryant's high school number, the nine-bell chimes to honor each of the victims in Sunday's crash, and the abandonment of music for the entire pre-game period, they hit all the right notes.
A pair of Sixers made numeric decisions to honor Kobe in their own ways. Zhaire Smith, who selected No. 8 in part because of Kobe Bryant, switched to No. 7, joining a few players around the league who had done the same. And Joel Embiid, returning to action for the first time since suffering a hand injury in early January, called Sixers great Bobby Jones on Tuesday afternoon in order to get permission to wear his retired No. 24 in honor of Bryant.
Job well done all around. Of course, by the time the first quarter intermission rolled around, the Sixers were back to running silly promotions like the Chick Fil A parachute drop, so you can't win them all.
• The best tribute of all, of course, is just to come out and dominate a game. And to absolutely no one's surprise, Raul Neto was the guy who came ready to drop the hammer on the Warriors in honor of Kobe. Wait, what?
Neto played the best half he has played in a Sixers uniform and probably one of the best halves of his basketball career on Tuesday night, dropping 19 points on 7-for-8 shooting in the first 24 minutes against Golden State. What started as an outside shooting barrage quickly transitioned into quite an all-around effort, with Neto throwing no-look dimes and commandeering the offense in pick-and-roll after pick-and-roll.
(By the way, that they turned to such a heavy dose of middle pick-and-roll in that half is interesting, independent of who was being asked to run it. The Sixers are certainly folding more of that into their gameplan, but when it gets to the point that Neto is running a heavy dose even with Embiid in the game? That's a notable development.)
The best side effect of Neto's bonkers first half? Ben Simmons only had to play nine minutes of the first 24, quite a change of pace from his workload for the rest of the year. It goes to show what a difference it would make if they got consistently good guard minutes off of the bench.
• You could tell Embiid has missed some time recently. He had some ghastly turnovers, some missed rotations he's normally sharper on, and if you were expecting a monster game in tribute to his idol, you were probably left wanting after Tuesday night.
But considering the layoff and the adjustment to wearing something on his left hand while playing, I thought Embiid acquitted himself just fine. The Warriors played a lot of undersized lineups that left him guarded by players like Eric Paschall and Omari Spellman, and he did well to draw fouls by establishing early position and running the floor. He is not always committed to doing the latter, and when he does it is only a matter of time before opponents are in foul trouble.
One thing I'm keeping an eye on as the Sixers reintegrate him is how they use him on offense and how Embiid responds. He certainly wasn't a constant focal point of the offense, spending plenty of time setting screens and spacing the floor for Philly's guards. That has led to lapses in effort/concentration for Embiid in the past, and he needs to live up to his national TV promise over the weekend that he will do what it takes to make life easier on Simmons.
• While we're on the subject of Embiid, Furkan Korkmaz's ascension has opened up some old pages in the playbook for Philadelphia, with Korkmaz stepping into the shoes JJ Redick used to fill. And while most of those actions up to this point have been centered around Simmons, but Korkmaz ran a healthy amount of two-man game with Embiid in the second half Tuesday, and the Sixers got some quality looks out of it.
Korkmaz has a long way to go as a screener compared to Redick, who is sneakily great setting picks, but being able to run inverted pick-and-rolls with that duo is a huge step forward for Korkmaz, and adds some wrinkles to the offense when Embiid is carrying bench-heavy lineups.
• Shake Milton certainly isn't having the season Matisse Thybulle is, and I was surprised he got the starting nod again on Tuesday night, but I think he has been reasonably good in the small role Brown has given him. He has just enough of a handle to run pick-and-rolls and attack closeouts, and Milton came up with a pair of circus finishes at the rim that I wasn't aware he was capable of finishing.
• For a guy who has been in the G-League all season and would have been excused for looking like he has no idea what he's doing out there, it wasn't a terrible performance for Zhaire Smith. With the big club, all he really has to do is focus on cutting hard and taking the odd open three, and he was only a few inches away from some depositing a couple more dunks in traffic.
The opponent was not exactly the '96 Bulls, but I'm sure the Sixers will take flashes of competency.
• It is hard not to notice how in the way Al Horford feels when he shares the floor with Embiid. The more games and minutes that are played with the two separate from one another, the more it feels like this partnership is not going to work in a high-pressure situation since it certainly isn't looking good in a regular-season setting.
During the run without Embiid, it was clear that Horford can still have a big impact on games when playing in the right role. Unfortunately for the Sixers, the right role is one without their franchise center available, where he's able to play all of his minutes at center and do the things he is actually good at. Moving him to power forward on this team is bad for Horford and bad for everybody else, as it amplifies all of their biggest issues.
To the shock of no one, he looked at his best in the fourth quarter stretch without Embiid, getting himself going with shots closer to the basket before expanding out to the three-point line. Not exactly rocket science, this stuff.
• Blaming Embiid's return for Simmons' up and down night on Tuesday would be overly simplistic. He had some of his worst moments with Embiid on the floor, but he wasn't a whole lot better with just Horford out there, as Draymond Green personally made his life miserable by daring him to do something other than finish around the rim.
There was a stretch in the third quarter where the Sixers ran several pick-and-rolls with Milton as the ballhandler and Simmons rolling toward the basket, and Green was absolutely begging Simmons to shoot. When Simmons opted to pass into a doubled Embiid instead of taking an open 10-footer, the home crowd reacted with a smattering of boos, and even after Embiid drew a foul, fans continued yelling at Simmons for not shooting.
I'm not going to be overly critical of Simmons for the uneven game on a night where he was on ice for a lot of the first half, which certainly doesn't help you get into a rhythm. But it was far from the standard he set with Embiid out, which will not make the usual talking points fade away.
• Not sure if the move back to the bench messed with Thybulle's rhythm or what, but it was a sloppy night for the rookie. He didn't get shots to drop, he committed some of the silly, youthful fouls that had started to dissipate from his game, and he never really felt like he could find his footing.
• That Warriors team is rough to watch. Good grief. They badly need to get Steph Curry and Klay Thompson healthy, and for them to stay healthy. Watching Marquese Chriss and D'Angelo Russell defend pick-and-rolls together for 82 games would send me to a mental institution.
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