April 17, 2024
Jim Rassol/USA Today
Jimmy Butler will be out for revenge in the Play-In Tournament against his old squad.
The day is here. In mere hours, the Sixers will host the Miami Heat in the first game of the Eastern Conference's Play-In Tournament, with the winner moving on to face the New York Knicks in the first round of the NBA Playoffs. The loser will find themselves on the brink of elimination, with the best case scenario being a first round series against the absolute juggernaut that is the Boston Celtics. There is just about nothing that can induce more pressure than this game.
What makes this an unusual in-conference postseason matchup is that the teams have barely seen optimal versions of each other this season. The teams faced off four times in the regular season, but only in the final game of the season series the each's team respective best player -- Joel Embiid and Jimmy Butler -- participate.
With that being said, there is a bevy of storylines worth following in this one. Let's touch on some of them:
The Heat shooks things up in a major way this winter when they acquired Terry Rozier from the Charlotte Hornets, sending out Kyle Lowry and a future first-round pick. Of course, this led to Lowry being bought out by Charlotte and ultimately signing with the Sixers, where he has since become a regular starter and integral piece of the puzzle in Philadelphia.
Dating back to his time with the Celtics, Rozier has long been a challenging piece for the Sixers to handle. He is a dynamic offensive talent whose combination of ball-handling and shooting gives Miami's offense a bit more versatility. However, that versatility will not be on display Wednesday night: Rozier has been ruled out for this game with a neck injury.
It is certainly possible for the Heat to win without Rozier. they live by the "next man up" mentality, perhaps to a greater degree than any other team in basketball, and have more than enough talent to take down any given team on any given night. But how they adjust without Rozier figures to be a pivotal subplot of this game. Te most logical insertion into the rotation to fill in for Rozier appears to be buyout signing Delon Wright, who gives the Heat some additional defensive versatility but is mostly a liability on the offensive end of the floor -- a far cry from what they expect from Rozier.
Losing a player as good as Rozier already hurts in a vacuum, but it becomes even more problematic when the team losing him lacks any obvious replacement for their key injured piece.
The Sixers are missing a key piece as well, though it is less noteworthy: not only is Melton not as crucial to what the Sixers do as Rozier is to what Miami does, but Melton just missed 39 out of 42 games, so the Sixers are very much used to life without the versatile defensive guard who is set to his unrestricted free agency this summer.
Melton has logged just 15 total minutes of action since returning from the back injury that held him out of action for multiple months, and it seems as if he has suffered a setback of some sort, as Sixers head coach Nick Nurse indicated after Sunday afternoon's season finale that Melton had a "journey" ahead of him towards being cleared for Wednesday's game.
As I wrote about on Tuesday, the most obvious replacement for Melton in the rotation is the man who has filled in for him admirably over the last few months -- though in a different role than the one Melton usually plays -- in Cam Payne. Melton is a stout defensive player who provides little utility offensively outside of his impressive three-point shooting off the catch. Payne is nothing to write home about defensively, but can handle the ball exceptionally well, is a steady scorer who can also distribute the ball at a high level and is a competent three-point shooter off the catch. Nurse values having as many viable ball-handlers on the floor as possible at any given moment, and Payne has been a solid addition for the Sixers after being acquired along with a future second-round pick from the Milwaukee Bucks in exchange for Patrick Beverley.
Other options for Nurse to fill Melton's rotation spot include Ricky Council IV and KJ Martin, whose athleticism and defensive versatility make them possible solutions if the Sixers run into defensive issues on the wing at some point during the postseason, but expect Payne to fill that spot against Miami.
Miami's three-point shooter extraordinaire missed Miami's last four regular season contests due to a back injury, but as of this writing is listed as "probable" to return for the Play-In Tournament opener. Robinson, one of the league's truly elite marksman from beyond the arc, lit up the Sixers in the first two regular season matchups between Philadelphia and Miami, knocking down five threes in each contest, before being shut out entirely from three-point range in the final two meetings between the teams.
The biggest reason for Robinson's recent silence against the Sixers: Nic Batum, who is the Sixers' best perimeter defender in several aspects, one of which being his off-ball defense. Batum is masterful when it comes to navigating screens and chasing around off-ball weapons like Robinson, and he made a concerted effort to shut Robinson down in the last two meetings between the teams.
Batum figures to be one of the most logical choices to see time defending Butler -- and that may happen at various points in the game. But especially with Rozier sidelined, Miami will be seeking to generate offense thanks to the constant movement and shooting of Robinson. Look for the Sixers to once again stick Batum on the sharpshooter in hopes of putting a bottle on one of Miami's most reliable sources of offense.
Butler is at his best when he is forcing scrambled coverages from opposing defenses: drawing double-teams and forcing opposing defenders into foul trouble. Perhaps the single biggest key when it comes to guarding Miami's remarkable big-game player is limiting his ability to force defenses into rotation. Butler loves generating movement and either exploiting it by drawing fouls or finding open shooters on the perimeter.
Containing the former Sixer one-on-one will be key. Even if he scores over the top of his primary defender with mid-range jumpers and tough finishes at the rim -- as he has been known to do -- the Sixers would likely take that trade off if it means Butler is not living at the line and creating open threes for his teammates.
Who spends the majority of the game defending Butler remains somewhat of an unknown: Batum, Kelly Oubre Jr. and Tobias Harris all figure to get cracks at him at some point, while Lowry is a bit of an x-factor in that discussion as someone who thrives defending players bigger than himself. My money is on Oubre drawing the initial assignment, though Nurse has also trusted Harris to take on similar assignments in the past.
Nurse is a creative basketball mind who treasures the chance to throw as many different looks as possible at opposing superstars, though -- just ask Embiid. The Sixers having three or four viable Butler defenders in their regular rotation, not even counting the Councils and Martins of the world, is certainly a strength and something that Nurse will look to take advantage of.
