The Sixers lost a 117-115 heartbreaker to the Cavs on Friday night, dropping this one in stunning fashion after it appeared they had it under control early in the fourth quarter. A career night for Jaylon Tyson sparked Cleveland’s victory, with Tyson dropping 39 points on an avalanche of threes with the Sixers helping on nearly ever Donovan Mitchell drive to the basket.
Here’s what I saw.
Not good enough from Tyrese Maxey
Thinking about a potential Sixers-Cavs meeting down the road in the playoffs, it sure looks like this team is built to make Tyrese Maxey miserable. When they can get Joel Embiid rolling to the degree they did on Friday night, it allows that to fade from view a bit, but two straight clunkers on offense are worth noting.
The Cavs have fairly unique personnel, with Evan Mobley basically always able to get into a help position around the rim, closing off driving lanes if Maxey can create them in the first place. Jaylon Tyson has also done a great job of making Maxey work on the perimeter, tracking him through handoffs and screens well when the Cavs weren’t sending two at Maxey on-ball.
Maybe we can set aside some shooting variance. I was stunned to see Maxey miss a wide-open three in transition in the third quarter, even if it was in the midst of a down night, and he had another wide-open corner three that he bricked before Cleveland came all the way back to tie the game. Still, there’s plenty of concerning tape from this miniseries.
On the positive side, Maxey did not use another poor shooting night to mail it in as an all-around contributor. With the Sixers playing aggressively to the point of the occasional overpursuit on defense, Maxey was as disruptive as any player on the roster, jumping passes to Donovan Mitchell throughout the game and coming close to procuring a few more steals. His pocket passing to Embiid was, as usual, right on the money, and he racked up some big-time assists by locking in on that timing and tempo with his longtime partner. Embiid’s midrange bucket with about 4:30 left on the clock came at a critical point in the game, and that bucket came from Maxey throwing a perfectly-placed pass in the pocket so that Embiid could rise quickly and score.
When they needed him to summon something on offense down the stretch of this game, Maxey had just about nothing. After years of complaints about force-feeding the ball to Embiid in crunch time, it felt a bit like the Sixers bogged down trying to default back to Maxey at the end of this one, even though his production hadn’t warranted it up to that point. Maxey and Edgecombe burned probably 12 seconds of one big late-game possession waiting for Maxey to get open, seconds they desparately needed at the end of the game.
And Maxey’s tunnel vision in the final five seconds led to him missing what looked like a good opportunity for VJ Edgecombe on the right wing, a better shot than Maxey managed to muster. It was a tough, likely no-win scenario for the Sixers there, and it’s not clear VJ would have gotten a shot off, but it felt like a missed opportunity in real time.
Let the big man eat
After Wednesday night’s stinkbomb, you had to expect the Sixers would respond with, if nothing else, a more physical effort against Cleveland. The message in the locker room after game one was that the Cavs got into them early and often, and they struggled to generate a response. Good news: Philly hit first in this one.
A piece of that comes down to their tactical approach. The Sixers were a bit more deliberate with their ball screen actions, angling Maxey more middle to make it harder for Cleveland to crowd him on the sidelines or force him to dump the ball into Joel Embiid in the trail spot. They also, frankly, relied less on Embiid and Maxey’s two-man actions, using a good deal of off-ball screens to get Embiid free for clear-outs on either side of the floor.
That shift created some deeper initial catches for Embiid, who was able to get his midrange jumper going with purposeful power moves into the chest of Jarrett Allen, or shoot a face-up jumper over his man with more confidence and fluidity than he has shown from three this season. And credit Embiid for doing less settling in the trail spots beyond the arc, too, moving Allen off of his spots to get off clean middies.
Embiid’s biggest failing in the first game against Cleveland is that it felt like he rarely leveraged his strength against a team with two bigs who can’t come close to matching him there. He marched to the line eight times in the first half alone on Friday, and it featured all the signs of peak physical fitness for the big man. Embiid drew a couple of fouls by running the floor hard and sealing his man early, Mobley stuck in jail as he tried to fight to get around and front Embiid. With the pick-and-roll game working more, Embiid played downhill basketball, earning one trip to the line by following his own missed layup with an offensive rebound, the Cavs bouncing off him as he slithered into the paint. The big man had 19 points in under 17 first-half minutes, leading the way for Philadelphia without notching a single turnover.
(His first turnover, naturally, came on an attempt to throw the ball between his legs to Maxey on a dribble handoff. Embiid evidently forgot to factor in Allen waiting behind him, and he eagerly accepted the pass to spark a Cavs fast break.)
As the Cavs tried to send more doubles and pressure in his direction, the Sixers made a few smart choices along the way to alleviate his stress in the middle. The insertion of Trendon Watford late in the first half provided some middle-of-the-floor passing and secondary ballhandling, leading to a couple of bang-bang sequences where the ball flowed from Embiid to Watford to an open shooter, even if the result wasn’t there on the ensuing attempt. Nearly everything flowed through Embiid one way or another in this game, including on some rare decoy possessions where the ball found him anyway — Embiid served as a corner spacer on a possession led by Paul George, nailing a triple next to the Sixers’ bench to continue to pad his line.
If anything, I would have liked to see the Sixers go to Embiid more and earlier down the stretch, with one of his few attempts a desperate heave from the baseline at the tail end of a busted possession. He wasn’t perfect in the second half, but he had a lot more going than the guy who dominated time and touches in crunch time.
Growing pains with second units
I am interested in seeing where the Sixers go with their bench rotations, because we’re starting to see some interesting combinations come together halfway through the year. VJ Edgecombe and Paul George are increasingly getting time together in bench-heavy lineups, and with a trio of Grimes/Oubre/Bona alongside them, the Sixers can put together a switch-heavy defensive group that generates stops, defensive highlights, and run-outs for easy looks in transition.
Bona may be Philadelphia’s most mercurial player this season, unplayable one night and a force of nature the next, and he was a one-man wrecking crew to open Friday’s second quarter. Their backup center made multiple hellacious blocks as the Sixers pushed the lead to eight points and forced a Cavs timeout, with Paul George handed an open transition three thanks to the work of the younger Bona on the defensive end.
There are natural ups and downs while running so much through Edgecombe, of course, so the fun didn’t last forever. One possession down the floor was a terrific lob entry to Adem Bona that got the big man two points at the rim, and another was a slow-developing play that Edgecombe lost his handle on, allowing the Cavs to waltz in for an uncontested two the other way. But I think the juice is worth the squeeze on this one, even if it requires the Sixers to lose some minutes (and even some games) here and there. Edgecombe’s ability to run the team is going to be critical to winning big games sooner rather than later, and I’d rather get the reps in now than shield him from responsibility and pass on the development.
(For the record, VJ’s unit did the job they needed to do to open the fourth.)
Other notes
— Why is Tyrese Maxey overhelping off of Jaylon Tyson 33 points into a 39-point game? What was the idea there?
— I am once again asking for a decent shot at the end of quarters rather than rushing into a two-for-one and throwing up the biggest piece of garbage pull-up three mankind has ever seen.
— Quentin Grimes is a class of player that has always and will always drive me crazy. There’s almost no way to react to his game logically. I am halfway considering going George Costanza mode while watching Grimes play, expecting the worst out of good situations and expecting him to pull a rabbit out of his hat when you least expect it. Tough stepback jumpers? No problem. Wide-open threes to finish off a beautiful passing possession? Not interested.
Grimes managed to go downhill, dribble the ball into the hands of the Cavs, strip them of the ball immediately, and finish a difficult layup in traffic all in the span of about six seconds early in the fourth quarter. Better to be lucky than good, I guess (although I do think he is both).