The Sixers slept through most of the first half against the Pelicans and ended up cruising to victory anyway, riding Tobias Harris and Joel Embiid to a 117-107 victory.
Here's what I saw.
The Good
• Tobias Harris was one of the rare feel-good stories of the first half on Tuesday night, finding his groove on offense to keep them afloat despite the team looking like hot garbage for almost 24 consecutive minutes. And a healthy chunk of those points came in situations where he probably shouldn't have ended up with the ball in the first place — Harris was the guy asked to shoot them out of some tricky late-clock situations, and he ended up coming through.
The quicker trigger he has shown in catch-and-shoot situations lately has been a welcome sight, helping to unclog the offense and take advantage of the space created by double teams sent toward Joel Embiid. Simply getting good shots up is often enough for Harris to have an effective game, and apart from what he offered as a floor-spacer, Harris smelled blood in the water while matched up with a wide variety of smaller Pelicans players, bullying his way toward the basket early and often.
In an absolutely critical stretch to open the fourth quarter, it was Harris who was expected to carry Philadelphia's backups while they bought time for Embiid. And though that has occasionally been a recipe for failure at times in the past — not necessarily because of Harris — he proved up to the task against the shorthanded Pelicans, going on a one-man run to keep pace with a New Orleans team that refused to go away.
There were some failures to connect between Harris and Embiid, but the Sixers continue to try to run hi-lo actions involving that duo, with Embiid using his height to pass over defenders to a waiting Harris around the basket. He is doing good work off-ball lately, which will go a long way toward rediscovering the form he had throughout last season.
Obviously, a player's legacy is mostly defined by what they do in big moments and how they perform against the best of the best. But to win a lot of games and put yourself in a position to play games that matter, you need your leaders to step up and dominate undermanned opponents in the dog days of the regular season. Harris came through for Philly against New Orleans, and you have to say that he has been trending in a positive direction lately, even if he has a long way to go to turn this year around.
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• As checked out as Joel Embiid was on defense to start this game — and believe me, we'll get to that shortly — he continued to show why he has played himself into MVP conversations with the display he put on offensively.
It still feels like the development of his guard skills has been taken for granted, because there are plays he can make regularly now that people would have lost their minds over a season or two ago. The ability to routinely take other players off the dribble to score around the basket is a huge deal for him, because the post-ups and face-up jumper were already functioning at a high level.
Embiid dribbling out of a potential spot-up opportunity from three used to be an adventure, not just because he might commit a foul or turn the ball over, but because those plays with a long runway were often when Embiid put his body in harm's way. With more controlled dribbling, he no longer has to try to take off from far out to try to score, using hesitation moves and the loping Euro step to go around guys and score two. It feels like there's a new way for Embiid to demoralize opponents with each passing week, an extra trick in the bag that would take months for another guy to develop and even have the guts to pull out in a game. He's seven feet tall and busting out behind the back dribble moves in transition after blocking guys at the rim. It's absurd.
Honestly, though, the Sixers pulling away in this game was more about Embiid giving a shit than anything else. On both ends of the floor, the Pelicans felt his physical presence a lot more in the second half, with Embiid turning up the intensity on defense and making winning plays at the other end even on possessions where he didn't touch the ball. There were more attempts to get deep paint touches early in the clock, more tip-outs for offensive rebounds and extra possessions for Philly, and more Pelicans just hanging on for dear life as he barreled his way to the rim, emerging from a tangle of limbs with either a made layup or a foul drawn.
Even while load managing himself through the first half of this game, the big dawg ended up with another monster line and a victory. He is stuck on automatic even when you can tell he's not amped up for the occasion, which says quite a bit about the growth of his skillset over time. We're running out of ways to say, "This guy is freaking good."
• Tyrese Maxey is still looking for a way to be the prime-time player he was without Embiid on the floor, but there are sets involving these two that continue to look better and better over time. One that jumps out above all the rest — Maxey running a pick-and-roll with Embiid where he dribbles right, ultimately making a smooth pass into Embiid's shooting pocket around the free-throw line. It's a play that feels like an automatic two points for the Sixers, perhaps because Embiid's hit rate on free-throw line jumpers is out of sight, but also because Maxey can hit Embiid right where he needs it to rise up and shoot with ease.
The Pelicans were so keyed on that set, in fact, that there was a possession or two in the fourth where they straight up left Maxey to close the passing pocket and prevent the ball from getting to the big man in the first place. Pending changes to the roster between now and season's end, that might end up being a look they have to turn to again and again when it matters, so it's good to see Philadelphia developing a Maxey-Embiid play that already has a high success rate.
The Bad
• The Sixers had an opportunity to stare down a wildly undermanned team on the second half of a back-to-back and break their spirit in the first quarter. It will not shock any of you to learn that they passed on the opportunity altogether and played like a group that expected to win this game without trying very much. Fair enough, given the opponent, but the autopilot approach made this one pretty tough to watch.
Nobody was a bigger/better example of that phenomenon than Joel Embiid. He looked mostly comfy as always on offense, save for a gruesome turnover that sent the Pelicans running in transition, but he appeared to want to do anything other than play defense early in this game. Embiid's half-hearted attempts to protect the rim were only topped by his total disinterest in guarding Willy Hernangomez, who absolutely feasted around the basket in the first half.
You give some share of the credit to Hernangomez for rising to the occasion, I suppose, but realistically he should have no chance to get rolling against Embiid. The effort level on display was downright embarrassing at times early in this one, and it went a long way toward explaining the early lead for New Orleans. The capper was the final real moment of the half, where Hernangomez was able to score on a putback after a missed free throw to send the Sixers in the half on another sour note.
(I sort of fall in the middle on caring about Embiid's slow start to this one on defense. It was pretty awful to watch and far below the standard he has set this year, but I also wouldn't advise him playing full speed/100 miles an hour against this version of the Pelicans in a late January game. Ratchet the effort up from 50 percent to 75 percent in the first half, and you stay out of harm's way while probably killing this version of the Pelicans. Oh well.)
As we've seen all season, this group tends to take their cues from the man in the middle, and the lethargic start from Embiid bled into everything else they were doing. Their offense moved at a snail's pace, with Tobias Harris trying (and sometimes succeeding) to bail them out of some ugly late-clock situations. When Embiid won a jump ball against Jose Alvarado, the small guard who didn't even bother to jump, the Sixers somehow ended up losing the ball and the possession anyway. That kind of first half.
That applied to coaching decisions, too. I get that the Sixers don't have anything close to a full lineup right now, but playing a Furkan Korkmaz and four bench guys lineup for several minutes in a row is an interesting decision no matter how bad you thought Tuesday's opponent was. This was a tough watch.
• Prior to the game, Doc Rivers made note of the fact that the Sixers don't really have a player who can organize the offense and tell players where to go from the perimeter, noting that it would be unfair to ask that out of second-year guard Tyrese Maxey. That looked pretty accurate against the Pelicans, with the Sixers adrift for a lot of this game and Maxey looking for a way to get involved with rare moments of success.
While pace is Maxey's biggest asset and a factor opponents always need to be aware of, this was a rare game where he almost seemed to be going too fast on offense at times, getting himself in deep against the Pelicans defense without seeing or noticing what was around him. That led to him getting his shot punched a couple of times, though Maxey seemed convinced there were uncalled fouls on those trips, gesturing toward the officials to call something. It wasn't all bad for him — there were patient moments as a playmaker that hint at the progress we've seen lately — but the overall picture was pretty bad, including some really rough defensive possessions in both halves.
In a roundabout way, it probably says a lot about Maxey that there hasn't been a lot of games like this all season, considering his age and the fact that he's effectively learning how to play point guard on the fly this year. And in the second half of this game, Maxey made enough plays to factor in the victory and ultimately bring this one home. Can never count him out.
• We can give Matisse Thybulle a bit of a break considering it was first game back after a layoff (and a brutal fall to the floor for that matter), but he was kind of a mess in this one. Thybulle picked up some cheap fouls on defense, bit hard on a few pump fakes, clanged some wide-open looks from three, and even missed a golden opportunity around the basket after catching a pass around the dunker spot. Nothing overly concerning, but a good reminder that doing cardio is not the same as playing basketball games.
• There are a lot of fans who seem convinced that Doc Rivers is making an egregious error playing Furkan Korkmaz over Isaiah Joe at the moment, and I'm here to tell you that this is one of those concerns that feels real and meaningful but makes very little difference. There was very little separating them in the Pelicans game, and both have disappointed in their primary role (shooting) this season. I have called for Joe this season when Korkmaz has been in his worst slumps, but neither is a reliable rotation player right now. It is what it is.
The Ugly
• The malaise inspired by this game was so real that it bled into everything in the arena, including game ops, where the "big head race" was erroneously ruled in favor of the wrong row of fans before a correction was issued. Nobody was on their A-game to start this one.
• Jose Alvarado is listed at six-feet-tall. I'm going to start telling people I'm 6'8" and wait until someone tries to call me on it.
• Unrelated to the game being discussed elsewhere in this recap, I offer my largest eye roll possible to the BBWA, who decided the story of baseball could be told without *checks notes* Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, two of the greatest players in the history of the sport. It's funny in a perverse way that they fall off the ballot the same day David Ortiz — who tested positive for steroids in 2003 — went into the Hall of Fame as a first-ballot entrant, for reasons that aren't especially clear to me.
I've always found the sanctimoniousness of a certain type of baseball writer/media member obnoxious, and the Ortiz entry only highlights the contradictions and absurdity that make up the Hall of Fame. Some of the biggest names in the game's history compiled their numbers when they didn't have to play against anyone who wasn't a white guy, so you'll have to spare me your concern over what certain numbers mean within the sport's history. If steroids mattered as much as the voting suggests, the sports would be much less boring to watch.
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