December 11, 2021
The Sixers managed to prevent Steph Curry from setting the three-point record and beat the Warriors on national television, a 102-93 success story that will have everybody in the locker room feeling good.
Here's what I saw.
• A standing ovation for Matisse Thybulle for the work he did against Steph Curry for long stretches in this game, hounding one of the MVP favorites into an uneven night from all areas of the floor. It's one thing for Curry to miss shots and have an off one, but Thybulle's activity often prevented Curry from getting shots up in the first place, beating him to spots or flashing his wingspan at the perfect time to prevent a clean look.
You don't often see a defender blocking a single Steph Curry jumper, mostly because of his fearlessness as a shooter and the speed with which he can get a shot up. But Thybulle didn't just snatch one of his shots once, he got him twice, blocking the Warriors star in each half with trademark style around the arc. And those sort of plays are only momentary snapshots of the work you have to do in order to keep Curry down, with Thybulle jumping around screens and staying light on his feet every single possession.
He was certainly not without his faults, with some cheap fouls leaving him in danger most of the night even if you didn't love how the officials ruled against him. Thybulle's jumpiness got the better of him, and when he tried to tone it down to avoid foul trouble later in the game, it opened up some windows for the Warriors to attack so he could preserve himself to match Curry's minutes.
Still, he held up his end of the bargain in this one, giving the Sixers a chance by keeping the Warriors' top dog relatively in check. When you add on the pair of threes he hit in the second half, this was just about an ideal night for him, and it was a huge statement given his struggles for most of the year.
• Andre Drummond vs. a small-ish backup unit for Golden State had the potential to go a couple of different ways. If Nemanja Bjelica made the open shots Philly allowed him to have as a result of the Sixers pressuring Steph Curry, the bench could have lost control of this game quickly. Instead, the game went the other way, with Drummond taking advantage of a size mismatch and punishing the Warriors around the rim.
There was finesse combined with that power, too. Drummond's passing is like Forrest Gump's quote about a box of chocolates, but it skewed toward good on Saturday night, with the big man finding Sixers cutters and spraying the ball around the floor when necessary.
Although Drummond's defensive effectiveness was tested when the Warriors spaced it out and went five out (admittedly with a questionable shooter or two as part of that five), he did an admirable job of trapping and showing size to Golden State's ballhandlers when the moment demanded it, doing a lot better in space than he has in most games so far this season. Pulling Drummond away from the basket tends to lead to disaster for the bench unit, and that wasn't the case against the Warriors, even if they were lucky to see a few open threes clang off of the rim.
• With the entire arena and television audience expecting a show from Stephen Curry, it was Tyrese Maxey who showed up and showed out early, making a pair of threes from opposite corners to get the party started. The Kentucky product has not been as adventurous as they need him to be beyond the arc recently, so it had to feel good to see those go down, kickstarting his night in a big way.
For the middle portion of this game, you could feel the part of Maxey that is trying to find his footing as a point guard, and he is in some ways the human representation of Philadelphia's offensive struggles. At times, the Sixers have to remind him of who he is and what he can do, barking and waving at him to push or pull back depending on the situation.
When Maxey is at his best, he is fearless, the sort of kid who will go directly at an all-world defender like Draymond Green and feel confident that he's going to win the battle. Let's call it sort of a draw on those attempts Saturday, but if you're drawing with that dude at the summit, you are doing pretty damn well for yourself, and Maxey hit a huge layup through Green in the dying minutes of this one, helping to keep Philly in front against a dangerous opponent.
A cherry on top — Maxey may not have been a defensive ace all game, but he came up with some highlight-reel plays against bigger guys in this one, digging in to do the dirty work in order to get this one over the line.
• Joel Embiid is usually a plus-minus monster for the Sixers, the guy who you remove from the lineup just to watch everything fall apart. And that was far from the case against the Warriors, with Philadelphia's best minutes played without the big guy on the floor. Talk about a rare occurrence.
That being said, Embiid still managed to impact the game in some important ways during his minutes. For one, he made a concerted effort to get the ball on the block and will his way to the line, slowing the tempo of the game down and putting Golden State in early foul trouble. Even if his kick-outs from the post didn't directly create points for the Sixers, he at least attempted to straddle the line between hunting his own looks and exploiting the constant double teams, relying on his perimeter partners to swing the ball to the open guy.
Even as a "Embiid should shoot plenty of jumpers" guy, there is always going to be logic to emphasizing bully ball for him and this team the same way there is running the ball in the NFL. If you can force teams to play a slow, grind-it-out style instead of running and running the way the Warriors do when they look their best, you might be able to beat superior teams by simply getting them to play on your terms. And that's exactly what seemed to happen in this one.
Setting aside the offense, Embiid remains an insane rim protector when the Sixers are actually able to keep him back there, rare as those opportunities might be against a team that wants to stretch you out and bomb away like the Warriors. Some possessions featured multiple Embiid denials on the first and second Golden State attempts, with the big man loading back up to prevent second-chance opportunities from paying off.
• It feels like Seth Curry hits an inordinate amount of big shots for a guy who doesn't ever put up a lot of shots for the Sixers. He hit some big ones down the stretch, which has been true in almost every Sixers victory that I can remember this season.
• There is a pretty big part of me that felt this win was fluky, a product of some insanely bad shooting from the Warriors on wide-open looks they created. But the Sixers still had to take advantage of the opportunity to beat one of the league's best teams, and they deserve every bit of this win. This one has to feel good for a team with few signature victories this year.
• The Sixers came out of the gate playing beautiful, free-flowing basketball this season, the ball pinging out of the post and around the perimeter in search of clean looks from deep. It has devolved in a major way recently, too dependent on Embiid to make something happen without doing much to help him out.
Frankly, the problem is simply getting him the ball a lot of the time. The game's first possession belonged to the Sixers, and it took until there were only five seconds on the shot clock for Embiid to get the ball on the block, the big man taking a contested face-up jumper almost immediately after getting it. Then there are the plays where he seals somebody off and can't get the ball at all, as when Georges Niang coughed the ball up on a brutal entry pass during another first-half possession.
With a team that is ostensibly supposed to be built around Embiid's talents, there are so many guys who lack the basic instincts to play around Embiid. There are a lot of poor entry passers and reluctant shooters, and they have a compounding effect by playing alongside one another. Tobias Harris is often the easy target for his ball-stopping tendencies, but he's far from the only culprit and is just the biggest-money guy.
• If Harris is a scapegoat, it's because he has given people plenty of reasons to point the finger at him this season. I'm not totally convinced it is all his fault. He looks like a guy with a lot less burst and explosion than in years past, leaving plays and situations on the table that would have been easy scoring opportunities for him last season.
Stephen Curry might be a much-improved defender compared to his early days in the league, but there's absolutely no way Harris should be struggling to do something against him on a switch. That happened on one particularly ugly first-half play, where Harris tried to move Curry off of his spot around the mid-post area and had absolutely no success, indicative of how things have gone for him a lot of this season.
They need him to get right sooner than later.
• It doesn't have to be their first goal when they make the eventual Ben Simmons trade to change the shape of this team, but the Sixers need to address their rebounding problem rather quickly, because they are just awful on the glass. No matter who they're playing, and no matter how big or small the opponent is, the Sixers end up squandering defensive possessions by allowing second-chance opportunities and points.
The Warriors, to put it lightly, are not the sort of team you want to give extra chances to, even when Steph Curry starts the game in a bit of a funk, as he did on Saturday night. The attention he draws on a possession-to-possession basis sucks players away from their assignments and creates gaps in your defense, and Golden State's role players end up with a ton of open shots as a result.
It never ended up mattering on Saturday, but there are fundamental mistakes being made that could be corrected even without roster changes. A good box out never hurt anybody.
• Danny Green has gotten a lot of grief for his decision-making this season, and rightfully so, because he has not stuck to his role the way you've always expected him to in the past. But Georges Niang is responsible for just as many out-of-control and off-script plays as Green is, and the Sixers really need him to get back to sticking to a role and mastering it.
When Niang occasionally attacks somebody off the bounce because of a hard closeout, that's quite alright. But there are very few possessions where he should take an early clock touch and try to go to work as an individual scorer.
• There was a play in the second quarter where Jordan Poole turned the ball over for Golden State and looked for an official to complain to, jawing with the nearest referee as the Sixers got out on the break. Before Tobias Harris managed to score on the transition possession, Draymond Green was already in the process of lighting into Poole for failing to get back, chastizing his teammate for worrying more about the officiating than his assignment.
I'm not sure Green is the best messenger on that one — he has certainly complained to an official or two over the years — but that is a reflection of the championship-level mentality the Warriors have at the heart of their team. It's something the Sixers' leaders and important players should take to heart facing and watching this team, because it's something they could use.
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