April 18, 2022
The Sixers coasted to a Game 2 win over the Raptors behind an excellent Joel Embiid performance and offensive contributions from each of Philly's starters, going up 2-0 in the series with a 112-97 victory.
Here's what I saw.
• After all the talk about the officiating, the physicality of the series, and how they needed to meet the challenge, the Toronto Raptors came out and played with an edge early. It was not all within "the confines of the game" as Nick Nurse noted before the game, but there was a noticeable step up from their Game 1 performance.
The worst thing the Sixers could have done was either back down from that approach or get sucked into a street fight. Instead, I thought the Sixers showed a bit of maturity in the early stages of this game, playing through the early shenanigans and ultimately climbing out of a small early hole.
It certainly helps when you have Joel Embiid in absolute god mode to start the game. Much to the chagrin of everybody in Raptors colors, Embiid was even more effective at drawing fouls than he was in Game 1, punishing the Raptors for their lack of a real option to defend him. He was able to put a quick 19 points on the board in the first quarter without needing to force anything, passing out of double coverage and carving up the Raptors whenever they decided to single cover him.
A lot of that damage didn't come in the halfcourt, though. One thing Embiid's improved fitness has allowed him to do the last two years is present teams with a runaway freight train in transition, daring opponents to get in the way of a gigantic human being. Most guys opt to get out of the way, but they still attempt to play some defense, and it ends up being to their detriment, with Embiid drawing a foul and scoring through the contact with nobody big and bad enough to stop him.
It was a parade to the free-throw line for the big man in the first half — 12 free throws in just 18 minutes of action, Embiid playing around the paint and forcing the officials to make a call one way or another.
The bigger box score line still isn't capturing what I feel Embiid has contributed to this series through two games. The defensive intensity has been there just about every play, Embiid getting up to a higher level after ebbing and flowing during the regular season. He has deferred when pressure comes, avoiding turnovers and joining with Harden to create better looks for teammates. He is, in short, leading. The big man has talked a lot about winning being more important than any award and anything else this year, and with an opportunity to put action to those words, he is living it in round 1.
• I can't say enough about the turnaround Tobias Harris has undergone down the stretch of this season. He was outright bad and ineffective for long stretches of the first half, struggled to find his place right after Harden's arrival, and heard his name in some future-focused rumors around the deadline. He has responded by buying into his new reality and playing with enough pace in the halfcourt to contribute nightly to their offensive success.
When he plays with a bit of pep, the entire team tends to follow suit, and that was a big driver behind their first-half success. Almost all of his trips toward the basket have been with pace, and the result of that has been quality looks for him in the painted area or drive-and-kick opportunities, with Harris hitting guys on the weakside with the Raptors cheating toward the paint as they've tried to all series so far.
The defensive effort has also been there consistently throughout the last two months, and though Harris drew a few whistles while trying to defend Pascal Siakam in isolation, he also managed to rip Raptors players with quick hands in the paint, springing the Sixers for transition opportunities the other way.
• Tyrese Maxey did not get the same opportunity to shine that he had in Game 1, but all by himself, he managed to put together a transition attack that was better than the Raptors as a unit for most of the night. Whenever Maxey got the ball and saw even the slightest bit of daylight on the break, he challenged the Raptors to try to stop him. They were either unwilling or unable to match his pace, and those transition opportunities had a two-pronged impact on the game — they got the Sixers easy buckets on the break, and they brought some of the loudest cheers of the game out of the Philadelphia crowd.
Maxey, as my colleague wrote about some on Monday, is at the intersection of high-level production and youth, which adds a bit of extra juice in the Wells Fargo Center every time he gets on a roll. The feeling that he shouldn't be this good already makes it twice as exciting when he is this good, and outside of Embiid going bonkers, Maxey going on a run is the No. 1 way for the building to pop at the moment.
Even during a "quieter" game for Maxey, he was able to deliver some spectacular plays in a smaller role, drilling sidestep and stepback threes that nearly made the building cave in. He's one of the best entertainers in basketball at this very moment, and he's just being himself.
• There is a saying in cards that goes something like this — if you're sitting at a table and you don't know who the sucker is at the table, it's probably you. It appears James Harden has identified every last sucker in the rotation for Toronto, because whenever he can get one of Fred Van Vleet, Gary Trent Jr., or Malachi Flynn guarding him, he has had them spinning in circles trying to figure out what to do.
The stress Harden has managed to put on the smaller guys through the first two games of the series is one of the biggest reasons Toronto's defense has looked, well, crappy. Their success relies on their ability to create chaos and turn you over, and even when Harden has not managed to generate a lot of traction in isolation, he has at least been a consistently excellent decision-maker. Philadelphia's average shot quality has been great through the first two games, and he's helping to lead the way there.
Harden getting to the second level of Toronto's defense leaves them in a horrible spot. With how Philadelphia has been spaced for most of these two games, the Raptors have had to slide bodies away from other players in order to head off Harden at the rim. For the second consecutive game, that gave Harden the opportunity to fire passes to open shooters all around the floor. Frankly, he was robbed of at least 3-5 assists on looks that the Sixers would take on any possession, shots just not falling for guys they love getting looks for. The tough thing for Toronto is that they can't ignore just how good those looks have been as they self-scout, hoping to find a way to slow down Philadelphia's offensive machine.
That's exactly what the Sixers have been on that end through two games — a machine. And they have managed that against an opponent that many people were worried could throw a wrench in their gears. Harden owns a lot of the credit for that, despite all the concerns I still have about his ability to attack athletic wings in big moments. The work he is doing is taking pressure off of guys all over the floor, and he deserves his praise for it.
(To be clear, Harden deserves a healthy heaping of blame for how lethargic they looked in the final stages of this game, milking the clock instead of running anything that could be called offense. I still liked the vast majority of what I saw in this game, and he isn't the sole reason things got painfully slow in the fourth.)
• Down the stretch of this season, Danny Green began to look a bit like his older (err, I suppose younger) self, finding his footing in the rotation at the end of a tumultuous season. Despite his shaky shooting in Game 1, Green appears to be carrying that momentum in the playoffs. He found the range in Game 2, and often all that takes is Green seeing one shot go down, because that gives him the confidence to hoist even when defenders are on a beeline toward him in the corners.
Perhaps more importantly, Green looks the part on defense in a series where that matters on multiple fronts. For one, they are going to be without Matisse Thybulle in the road games for this series, which will demand more of Green and the other wing options in the rotation. And Green looking credible against a team filled with guys younger and presently more athletic than him is no small detail, providing hope that he might be able to hang in against better teams down the road.
We don't need to get ahead of ourselves, but positive signs are there. The man threw down a mean dunk in transition to put the exclamation point on this game.
THROW IT DOWN, @DGreen_14!!! pic.twitter.com/O9h11w21Ov
— Philadelphia 76ers (@sixers) April 19, 2022
• I am sure Paul Reed is going to have some low moments during this playoff run, as that's the nature of being a young big in the NBA. But to me, they should just be rolling with him the rest of the way when Embiid sits. He is what playoff basketball looks like in this era — athletic, switchable, and ready to compete.
The crowd rose to its feet when Reed stood chest to chest with Pascal Siakam in isolation during a second quarter possession, roaring when Siakam eventually tossed up a harmless midrange miss, putting the Sixers on a fast break that Tyrese Maxey finished for two points. Yes, as always, Reed committed a couple of fouls during that early run, but at least one of those was what Doc Rivers recently called a, "Paul Reed foul," Fred Van Vleet leaning into the younger player and getting a favorable whistle.
Reed has done what you want from the guy in his spot — blend into the team, understand your role, and play hard. He recycled possessions instead of getting overzealous as an attacker, and no matter what Rivers does as this series winds on, he is getting important postseason reps. This is an invaluable experience that will serve him well later.
• Say what you will about how much series is left and the history behind Doc Rivers getting out to a series lead, but his team has firmly outplayed the team that a lot of people picked to win the series, and they have had a better, more cohesive gameplan to boot. The Raptors have been totally unprepared for the possibility that Philly's stars would share the ball and hit the open man, and it has put Toronto in a 2-0 hole that feels bigger than that.
• This is the first playoff game where Georges Niang's limitations on a defender were put front and center, and his ability to stay solid in isolation against a variety of opponents was something we discussed in this space throughout the year. The Raptors are a particularly thorny matchup for him even though they don't have a ton of great attacking options in the halfcourt — he's at an athleticism disadvantage against most of the roster, and when the game shifts to methodical switch-hunting, he's the guy being circled as a target.
When Niang got his first run of the night on Monday, it was free lunch for Pascal Siakam, and putting Niang on that assignment in the first place was an error in judgment on Philadelphia's part. But they didn't exactly line it up that way for very long. The Sixers moved him off Siakam and tried to avoid the brutality, and the Raptors kept looking for ways to involve him in ball screens, forcing him into the matchup anyway.
To his credit, Niang continued to provide offensive utility for the Sixers, with his ability to can an open three and at least beat a closeout helping them stay steady as the Raptors kept cooking him. But he's going to have to be really good on offense if he can't hold up better on the other end, and the Sixers don't have the depth to simply shuffle through other guys if Niang ends up being unplayable.
• The Sixers got way too conservative on offense and took their foot off of the gas on defense in the fourth quarter, letting the Raptors put pressure on them in a game that should have ended with Philadelphia's starters wrapped in ice on the bench. They did it to themselves, and I'm sure Rivers won't be happy about that part of the game. To their credit, they buckled down just enough to see it out, and the win is what ultimately matters.
• The Sixers come out of this one up 2-0 on the Raptors, which is the most important thing in the short-term, but Joel Embiid limping into the locker room favoring his ankle is the big news as we look forward in this series — and should they win it, the rest of the playoffs. Embiid got caught up in tangle that brought multiple players down under Toronto's basket, and he grabbed at his ankle at that point. After Toronto's ensuing offensive possession, Embiid came down the floor limping, and he stood in the corner until the halftime buzzer sounded, limping into Philadelphia's locker room.
(I wasn't able to see a replay, but I saw some people suggest Harden stepped on the ankle on that transition possession.)
It was hard to make heads or tails of how he felt. Embiid came out of halftime and slammed a Harden lob on the very first possession, but there appeared to be a level of pacing himself in the second half, Embiid not willing to push himself too hard. Then he busted out a Dream Shake to score and, well, we're back to where we were when he threw down an oop.
He has dealt with a variety of bumps and bruises throughout the season, from a cut on his hand to a knee issue that might have loomed larger this season if not for his bout with COVID, which allowed him to get off of his feet for a bit despite the other negative health consequences. But Embiid was happy to enter the postseason with no real issues for the first time ever, and we'll have to see what this latest brief scare means. Maybe nothing!
• Chris Boucher made some absolutely insane decisions in this game. Seeing him sprint at Matisse Thybulle in the corner was almost as funny as watching him attempt a stepback three in the fourth quarter. KYP, including yourself.
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