April 11, 2021
The Sixers made good use of their size and talent advantage against the Oklahoma City Thunder, earning a 117-93 win behind a balanced effort and a team-high 27 points in 27 minutes from Joel Embiid.
Here's what I saw.
• Mercifully, the Sixers team that showed up in New Orleans on Friday night was nowhere to be found in Oklahoma City. They brought a level of professionalism from the get-go to put away a team that had no business being on the same floor as them, and they did so without the help of two important starters.
That starts with the efforts of the two guys at the very top of the roster. Embiid got off to a bit of a slow start — Thunder big Moses Brown was having himself a good time in the opening five minutes or so — but he would eventually get himself going, dropping hooks, fadeaways, and walk-in layups on the Thunder at the rim, showcasing good touch and the requisite give-a-damn level.
The floodgates were open once Embiid got to go up against former teammate Tony Bradley, and bless the young big man but his time as Embiid's teammate didn't exactly provide him with a blueprint to stop him. Embiid was a wrecking ball in the second quarter, eventually pushing to 21 points, seven rebounds, and three assists by halftime, putting his Pelicans stinker in the rearview quickly. When the Thunder bigs were strong, he showed he could be quicker than them. When the Thunder bigs prepared to dance in space, he hit them with a sledgehammer.
Defense came quickly, too, with Embiid looking lighter on his feet than we've seen him even when he's been at his best this season. Embiid is more of a shot-alterer than a shot-blocker a lot of the time (and that's a good thing), but he got his mitts on three blocks in the first half alone Saturday, punishing some weak attempts around the cup from Oklahoma City.
If anything, that can either make you feel better about Friday's performance (he looks plenty healthy!) or worse about it (all he needed to do was stay mentally locked in). I lean toward the former. Embiid has been so good and so consistent for Philly this season that I'm willing to excuse a rare uninspired night at the office this season. Having him available and ready to dominate in a back-to-back is far from a given, so that alone makes Saturday somewhat of a success.
• Embiid was the guy who eventually took over, but Ben Simmons was the guy leading by example from the opening whistle.
The Thunder are not exactly stocked with big bodies to put in front of him, and Simmons was licking his chops at an early opportunity to attack rookie Aleksej Pokusevski, who has many gifts but slightly resembles Slenderman when he turns sideways. You didn't have to tell Simmons to attack him twice, and he bullied the poor kid on both ends of the floor early. It sounds like a weird thing to say about a guy who lives at the rim, but it was nice to see him going hard at the rim frequently in the opening quarter.
That early success seemed to give Simmons a jolt of confidence, and he let a few jumpers fly on the move in the first half, something we've seen very little of this season. Had he missed them, it still would have been an encouraging sign for a guy who has looked stuck in the mud for most of the games he has played in since returning from the All-Star break.
It didn't last all night, but it didn't really need to.
• Seriously, if the Sixers could get Furkan Korkmaz to play with the same confidence and flair as a bench player that he shows as an infrequent starter, they would have few problems on their second unit. Korkmaz offers a lot of the things the Sixers could use in a fifth starter — secondary creation, catch-and-shoot ability, even some ball-hawking away from the ball — he's just unable to sustain that on a consistent basis.
Korkmaz was rolling on Saturday, though, getting into double digits on the scoreboard before the first quarter had come to a close. And it wasn't all from standstill looks off drive-and-kick plays, with Korkmaz combining nicely with Embiid on a series of dribble handoffs that the Thunder defended with extreme passivity. No worries in the eyes of Korkmaz, who ate up space and hunted his shot instead of returning the passivity in kind.
It's not often that the best player on your team wants to concede shot opportunities to a guy on the level of Korkmaz, but Embiid wanted his running mate to keep the good times rolling. When Korkmaz passed up a decent look from midrange in the second quarter, Embiid yelled, "That's your shot!" loud enough for the broadcast to pick it up, and he wasn't exactly wrong.
Really, his defensive effort may have been the best part of his night. Korkmaz set a new career high with five steals against the Thunder, and even on plays where he couldn't snag the ball outright, Korkmaz used his length to disrupt passing lanes and deflect passes out of bounds. He won't get to play the Thunder in a playoff setting, but passable defense would be a massive development if he can lock in on a regular basis.
(An interesting idea floated by my former colleague Sean O'Connor: Korkmaz as an early sub who takes Tobias Harris' place to allow Philadelphia to stagger. When he isn't asked to be a driving force of the offense, he settles into a nice role. Something to think about, at least.)
• Speaking of lineup juggling, the changes in the lineup on Saturday night forced Doc Rivers to stagger Embiid and Simmons a bit more than he normally does. It will shock you to learn that having one of your better players on the floor at all times is a good thing.
Seriously, I'm not trying to be an ass, but you can make sure there's a high-level player on the floor at all times and still guarantee there's plenty of time Embiid and Simmons can play together. This is a pretty easy thing to figure out and should have happened a while ago, not just in semi-emergency scenarios.
• This was a get-right game for a lot of guys in the rotation, and why not? The Thunder offer little resistance even in their best state, so take advantage of an opportunity like this when it comes up on the schedule. Let's roll through a few of the standouts:
A total team effort after a brutal team effort the night before. Give the Sixers this — they have avoided bad losses ballooning into bad streaks.
• With the Nets getting smacked by the Lakers in a weird game on Saturday night, the Sixers gained back ground in the race for the Eastern Conference's top seed. A Wednesday meeting with Brooklyn looms large in the race for No. 1.
• Dwight Howard has some of the most insane, egregious goaltends of any player I have ever watched. There was a play in the first half where he simply had to know he was swatting a ball that would gift the other team two points, and it's almost like he doesn't care because it feels so satisfying to take the air out of the ball with a big swat.
In fairness, I'm sure it feels cool as hell to be that big and that athletic to the point that you can just eat at someone's soul with blocked shots. Doesn't mean it's excusable, but I get it on a spiritual level.
Hard to come up with many complaints outside of that. Good 'W' for the road team.
• I know the Thunder aren't healthy on top of being in the first year of a downturn, but man that team was rough to watch. Big Process energy. Pokusevsi missed his calling as a Sam Hinkie draft pick that 50 percent of the fanbase thought would be the next big thing and 50 percent of the fanbase couldn't stand the mere thought of.
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