December 16, 2016
On Friday night, the Sixers took on the Los Angeles Lakers in their third and final scheduled national television game (well, at least on ESPN and TNT) of the season. On a night when the team honored Allen Iverson for his induction into the Hall of Fame, the current players weren’t able to put together a very good performance.
The Lakers snapped an eight-game losing streak, and the Sixers fell to 6-20 on the season with a 100-89 loss.
• This was the first game of the season that all three of the Sixers primary big men were healthy. Joel Embiid and Nerlens Noel were questionable at different points of the day, but they both suited up. Embiid played with Jahlil Okafor in the starting lineup and Noel came off the bench, primarily playing with Ersan Ilyasova.
In a poor start to the second half, Brown decided to scrap the two bigs look and play one traditional center the rest of the way. The odd man out on this night was Noel, who logged eight minutes all in the first half, collecting five boards, a block, and two points (on 1-4 shooting with three missed bunnies).
"When they started going small, small, small, something had to give," Brown said. "And Nerlens was a casualty to that, as well as his health isn't 100 percent."
And it's safe to say Noel expressed some unhappy words after the game.
• The Sixers were dreadful offensively. The two big men didn’t play well — Embiid wasn’t particularly sharp — but the Sixers’ offensive struggles probably went a little deeper than that roster decision. Sergio Rodriguez, Gerald Henderson, and Dario Saric shot a combined 4-19. An above-average three-point shooting team on the season, the Sixers shot 6-31 from deep.
"Never, from the start to the finish, did you feel like you were in any type of rhythm or flow," Brown said. "I think that it doesn't really surprise me. It saddens me, but it doesn't surprise me. You've got Nerlens coming in and Jahlil and Dario moved over."
Against the second-worst defense in the league, the Sixers finished with a brutal offensive rating of 88.2 points per 100 possessions. They defended well enough to win, but the offense wasn’t nearly good enough in what was a game played closer to the Lakers' preferred pace.
• The Sixers put themselves in a huge hole early, falling into a 13-0 deficit. From there, they were playing catch-up all night.
"We ended up losing by not that many points," Okafor said. "But it felt like we got our ass kicked."
• Embiid hasn’t been in a groove offensively lately, seemingly hesitant to pull the trigger from three and unable to hold onto the ball on the block. “The Process” finished with 15 points on 5-14 field goals (2-4 3P, 3-8 FT), 4 rebounds, 2 assists (3 turnovers), and 2 blocks in 29 minutes.
Follow Rich on Twitter: @rich_hofmann
