The Sixers let a golden chance for an undefeated homestand go in a loss to the Wizards on Wednesday night, falling 106-103 to a team playing without Bradley Beal.
Here's what I saw.
The Good
• Just a couple of days after starring in their win over the Memphis Grizzlies, Tyrese Maxey was back at it again on Wednesday night, carrying the Sixers early while everyone else tried to catch up to the pace of the game. The Wizards must have an outdated scouting report on young Maxey, because they didn't show him enough respect given the growth we have seen from Maxey this year.
One major development this season: the stepback three. Getting Maxey to take threes at all was a challenge last year, and that has still been the case at times this season, but he has been much more aggressive hunting his own shot and trusting the work he puts in at the practice facility. The stepback jumper is a remarkably difficult shot to make a living on, a combination of footwork, touch, and shooting mechanics that limit the pool of players who can pull it off. Maxey already looks like a seasoned vet on that shot, and he uncorked a couple against the Wizards in the first half alone, drawing deserved oohs and aahs from the crowd after nailing the shot.
As a driver and finisher, Maxey continued to show what the coaching staff is asking of him, getting his fingernails on the backboard and getting through contact to finish at the rim, rather than settling for off-balance touch shots after going into a defender's body. There were times where Maxey appeared to get a rough whistle on Wednesday night, but he often blew by Wizards defenders so fast that contact wasn't a problem in the first place, finishing with both hands around the hoop.
Slowly but surely, Maxey is also finding ways to playmake for this group, not always (or even often) in the way we typically expect a "point guard." He's not running pick-and-rolls with Embiid and spraying passes to either corner, but he's making quicker perimeter decisions and finding quality looks for teammates, playing instinctually when a double-team of Embiid leads to a kick out. He's starting to learn how to use the threat of the pass to create his own offense, too, and Maxey used a swing-pass fake to drive for an uncontested dunk early in the first half on Wednesday.
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(There were some traditional "point guard" passing displays, too, mind you. Maxey's kick to the corner for a Georges Niang three in the fourth quarter was one of his plays of the game for my money, and it's the sort of play he has to be able to make all of the time if he's going to be the long-term starter and primary ballcarrier for Philly on the perimeter.)
It has been rare for both Embiid and Maxey to get enough rope to shine in games where they've both played this year, but it feels like things are trending in the right direction. The longer Maxey plays like this, the harder it will be to turn to anyone else on the perimeter, and frankly, you could argue he should have had even more control with how Embiid performed down the stretch.
• It took until the second quarter for Embiid to get into this one, but he was definitely engaged in this game early, even if his teammates were not. The big man was one of the only Sixers players to make a concerted effort in transition defense to start the game, and though he wasn't always rewarded for that effort, it's always good to see him leading by example.
There was more to celebrate when we moved to the second frame, with Embiid imposing his will on the game in a big way. Daniel Gafford just can't seem to do anything other than foul Embiid when they're matched up together, and Embiid punished every lapse in concentration Gafford had, forcing him to take his third foul with almost five minutes left in the second. After spending the early part of the game launching jumpers, Embiid took it right at Gafford's chest and forced him to respond, and it ended with Gafford sitting on the bench.
Gafford's third-quarter reply fell on the other end of the spectrum, with the officials refusing to reward him for a pair of flops early in the second half. When Embiid beat him along the baseline and hammered one to force a Wizards timeout, you got the feeling that the game was turning, that the home team was about to push it into a different gear.
That's not what ended up happening, obviously, with the Sixers locked in a dogfight for a lot of the second half, and Embiid's scoring was a major issue for a lot of the second half, particularly when compared to the exploits of the big man who ended up besting him, Montrezl Harrell.
• Embiid's playmaking for others was a high mark, and the lineup around him helps quite a bit. Second-year player Isaiah Joe had a nice outing for Philadelphia on Wednesday, continuing to build his case for a regular spot in the rotation. When you can put a guy with Joe's touch on Embiid's strong side during a post-up, there's more incentive to pass it out of the double, and the role players have quite an easy time getting clean looks.
• Georges Niang has his issues, but he sure seems to know how play off of Embiid pretty well. Whether he's sitting in the dunker's spot, cutting out of the corner, or simply spotting up from deep to provide him with a bit of spacing, Niang ends up in a lot of favorable positions playing off of the big guy,
The Bad
• The Sixers aren't a great transition defense team even on their best days, and they got off to a horrific start in this game, compounding some struggles they were having at the other end. Rather than trying to make up for what they couldn't do on offense, the Sixers just sort of drifted through the game and hoped it wouldn't matter.
Washington is not exactly short on guys who excel at leaking out, with Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Kyle Kuzma both exploiting the poor early effort to get some quick ones at the basket. In the case of Kuzma, getting the bunnies to go down put a bit of pep in his step, and he was a problem for Philadelphia for the entire first half, torching Tobias Harris or whoever else was in front of him with blow-bys and finesse shots on the move. He would not go away as this game went on, hitting several late-clock prayers that saved Washington possessions.
Perhaps Kuzma would have found a way to get it going anyway, because he's good for a hot shooting night every few games or so these days. But we'll never know if that would have been the case because the Sixers made little attempt to slow him down early, and they ended up paying for it throughout all four quarters.
It's a lesson these Sixers should have learned a long time ago and still don't seem to have gotten their minds around — if you let decent players build a head of steam with easy buckets, eventually they're going to start cashing in tougher shots and becoming harder to guard in both halfcourt and transition settings. Chalking it all up to a lack of focus wouldn't be accurate, but it was clear the Sixers took this one less seriously than the game against the Grizzlies on Monday, allowing the Wiz to feel good about themselves and hang around.
• Bad as the defense was to open the game, Philadelphia's offense was often worse, mostly because of the limitations of the guys on the floor not named Embiid, Harris, or Maxey. While Danny Green and Matisse Thybulle have very different ways of contributing on this team, the fact remains that neither guy can dribble, which makes it difficult to play both at the same time.
With Seth Curry a late scratch due to back spasms, Doc Rivers decided to give the duo a shot in the starting lineup anyway, and I'm certainly not going to kill him for that. Those two are some of their only useful defensive players, and it's nice to get them on the floor together at the same time for that reason, but it often leaves the offense stuck in the mud when they need somebody to unclog things late in the clock.
Having shooting around Embiid is a top priority at all times, but shooting needs come alongside some form of self-creation, or teams can neutralize your impact on the game. Or in Thybulle's case, they'll simply leave you alone out there and try to prevent you from getting toward the rim, which is what Washington did most of the game on Wednesday.
• Rebounding has been a sore spot for the Sixers all season, and that trend continued against the Wizards, and while there are personnel concerns that can explain some of that problem, the lack of attention to detail in that area is inexplicable for a group that knows it has a problem. Standstill box outs have gone the way of the dinosaur in the modern NBA, but if you're going to eschew that practice, you have to be ready to go up and go get the ball. There were a lot of possessions Wednesday night where the Sixers all stood flat-footed as the ball came off of the rim, with Wizards players bursting into space to come down with rebounds they never should have had a chance at.
And yeah, there are guys on this team who are simply bad rebounders, too. Niang might be a power forward by name, and you see the first half of that title come through on some of his drives to the basket, but he gets absolutely blown through on the glass at times for reasons that are not immediately clear. When your backcourt is as small as Philly's typically is, you really can't afford to have weak links in the rebounding chain elsewhere.
• Harris got off to a good start to this game on the offensive end, buoying the Sixers from the mid-post with Embiid struggling and the role players struggling to get involved at all. Even if he can have infuriating stretches of play, having a guy who can get his own shot and score a reasonable percentage of the time will always be valuable.
Unfortunately, Harris lost his form in the second quarter, and he reverted to some of the habits the team would like him to avoid throughout the evening. There were a few too many marauding post-ups against the Wizards, with Harris trying to back guys like Kuzma down with spotty results. The matchup with Kuzma and his failure to do much with it as the game wore on is sort of the problem with Harris as a player — Kuzma is both big enough to body him up in the post and fast enough to stop him from going by him, leaving Harris in a spot where he has to make tough shots in order to sustain his offense.
Harris also ended up having one of the worst plays of the game on Wednesday, panicking in transition when the Sixers had a chance to tie the game with the clock running down in the fourth. Passing the ball backward to an out-of-control Embiid nearly cost the Sixers the possession, and put the icing on the cake of a game where his transition playmaking left something to be desired.
• Harrell outplayed Embiid for most of the stretch run on Wednesday night. That doesn't really mean a whole lot in the grand scheme of things, but it was one of the biggest reasons Philadelphia lost to the Wizards. Hard to ignore that in the accounting of this one, and I can't imagine Embiid is going to be happy with himself for allowing Harrell to score in a multitude of ways, around him at the rim and over him with floaters.
And the bad news is Embiid and his guys have no time to sulk after this one — their schedule gets much tougher over the next couple of weeks, so he'll need to channel whatever frustration he has from this loss into better performances in the games ahead.
• Thybulle is an incredible defender, but there were far too many plays where he was either close to getting beat backdoor or got beat altogether on Wednesday.
The Ugly
• Andre Drummond's goaltend in the third quarter is going to go down as one of the most insane goaltends of the season. The shot looked to have no chance of going in, and instead of letting it fall into his arms, he decided he was going to stick a mitt in there and swat it away, ultimately gifting the Wizards two points in a tight ball game. Pretty rough, especially when you consider that the Sixers could have held for the final shot in regulation if not for that boner.
• I watched the vast majority of the games when the Sixers were tanking, and Myles Powell would fit right in with those groups. As great as his career was at Seton Hall, there's nothing he does well at this level. He doesn't know where to be on defense, he's too slow to beat guys off of the dribble, hasn't shot well, it's a total disaster. It's no wonder he's barely playing despite the Sixers being down 100 guards.
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