May 23, 2021
Tobias Harris' 28 first-half points in Sunday's game allowed the Sixers to survive a foul-plagued stretch for Joel Embiid, and the Sixers would eventually emerge victorious in a 125-118 shootout with the Wizards.
Here's what I saw.
• Joel Embiid was mired in foul trouble for most of the first half, leaving the Sixers without their top scorer in their opening playoff game. Leave it to Tobias Harris to pick up the slack — he has been a credible No. 2 next to Embiid all season, and he held down the fort for Philly with their best player on the shelf.
It was almost certainly the best offensive half Harris has played in a Sixers uniform, perhaps the best he has played since jumping to the NBA. He started the game by absolutely roasting Rui Hachimura, who the Sixers put through a maze of screens to create separation for Harris. Attacking closeouts, probing on the baseline, and operating from his favored mid-post area, Harris basically could not miss for most of the half, and it's a good thing he couldn't because the offense was mostly bad outside of his contributions.
By the time it was all said and done, Harris finished the first half with 28 points, a shade under 46 percent of Philadelphia's total scoring. To say he carried them is an understatement — the Sixers would have been getting beaten up and battered if not for his excellent start. It was a one-point game at halftime instead, with Harris giving them an excellent chance to ride the crowd and Joel Embiid in the final 24 minutes.
That has been his responsibility as Philadelphia's No. 2 option this year — pick up the big guy when he fades, succeed in a background role when the world revolves around Embiid. It's a much tougher task than it is given credit for, and he bought the rest of his team the time they needed to get going after a week off from live action.
Harris has been a second-half player for Philly this season, and if they can get two-half Harris for the duration of the postseason, they are going to be a tough out. He ran out of gas (understandably so) in the fourth quarter against Washington, so hopefully they give him a bit more help in Game 2.
• It is not a coincidence that Philadelphia started to make their move as soon as Joel Embiid was back in the game, even playing through foul trouble. This was not the world-consuming opener fans would have hoped for, but he was a per-possession monster against Washington, shredding post coverage and sliding through double and triple teams to create offense in the halfcourt.
Perhaps the most encouraging thing about this game was the instincts Embiid showed off against double teams. Admittedly, Washington is not as good at executing pressure as a lot of other playoff teams, but Embiid showed maturity in how he handled it on Sunday, dribbling out of double teams and making great passes to both the interior and exterior depending on the possession.
Then, of course, there's his ability to go it alone, which has basically never been in question. Embiid had his usual parade to the free-throw line in limited minutes, proving the thesis that the Wizards have nobody who can guard him on an island. That's especially true when Embiid is hitting one-legged fadeaway on the baseline and from the mid-post, and he was busting out all sorts of moves against Daniel Gafford, Robin Lopez, and the rest of the Washington gang.
There was one positive trade-off to Embiid getting in early foul trouble — the big guy had plenty left to give them down the stretch as his teammates faded, and he was the guy who ultimately brought Philadelphia home when it mattered.
• Ben Simmons did not suddenly turn into a different player between the end of the regular season and now. He did not become a big-time scorer in Joel Embiid's foul-plagued absence on Sunday. But he was the best version of himself when the Sixers needed him the most against the Wizards, and his work in the middle of the third quarter completely flipped the momentum of the game.
To that point, the Wizards had managed to hang around in a game that could be characterized as a slog in spite of Washington's breakneck transition speed. Simmons certainly didn't stop Bradley Beal, who began to find his footing in the second half, but he made every single possession a grueling, physical affair.
When the Sixers were able to get stops, Simmons had some of his best transition possessions of the year against Washington, threading passes through traffic that only a small handful of players would even think about trying. He was the beneficiary of some awful Washington decision-making — Russell Westbrook absolutely lost his mind on a gamble or two — but it did not feel like he missed a single opportunity to hit a cutter or open shooter when they managed to get free.
The Sixers played much more composed basketball once they were out in front rather than on the seesaw, and Simmons was a force getting them to that point.
• George Hill will go down as one of the unsung heroes of this game, a guy who somehow managed to add some value despite the rotation being in near chaos throughout the game. The offense felt under control with him at the helm, he canned an open three when the Wizards decided to leave him wide open beyond the arc, and he played credible defense on anybody they stuck him on.
This is damning with faint praise, but Hill had one of the best defensive transition possessions of the season in the fourth quarter, tearing down the floor in order to contest a layup attempt from Ish Smith, one of the quickest guys in the league. Smith missed, Harris collected the defensive rebound, and Westbrook immediately took a silly foul to stop the run out. Those plays make a difference.
And when it counted, Rivers ultimately pulled Seth Curry (who was critical on offense in the second half) in favor of Hill's defensive toughness. Good call, if you're asking me.
• The cross-matching in this series is going to get wild, from the looks of Game 1. Seth Curry ended up covering Davis Bertans down the stretch on Sunday, which is a fascinating matchup if it ends up being a constant. Rivers evidently didn't like it very much, because he would eventually swap in George Hill to close out the game in Curry's place.
• One of the primary issues with Philadelphia's team construction is that you basically have to be a high-level shooter in order to stick in the rotation. That's what happens when you have a post-up center and a point guard who can't shoot as the foundational pieces of the team. And because they have to sell out for shooting, the Sixers have to play some guys who are, shall we say, problematic in other areas.
Furkan Korkmaz, for example, is a guy who brings a lot to the table when he's on. But when the Sixers needed him to bust some zone from Washington in the first half, he missed his wide-open attempts badly, and did nothing to make up for it on the other end. It's more problematic than when Matisse Thybule can't knock shots down, because at least Thybulle has his defensive credentials to fall back on.
The Sixers laid brick after brick in the first half, shooting 3/17 from deep even with Harris in the midst of an unbelievable offensive stretch. It's something we're going to have to watch closely in this postseason — relying almost exclusively on role players to help you in the math battle from deep is and always has been a dicey proposition. When they don't have Embiid free throws to make up for it, it's even scarier.
• The Sixers claimed they were going to spend most of their week off from games working on their transition defense. I don't know who they think they were fooling with that claim, but they were as bad and disjointed on the run as they have been all season, gifting the Wizards free buckets on the fast break with poor reads and effort. It turns out bad habits are hard to break after a full season of developing them.
The worst part is they don't seem particularly close to figuring out what's going wrong. After Tyrese Maxey subbed in toward the end of the first half, he immediately gave the crowd a boost with an electric and-one finish at Washington's end. But his teammates were in no mood to celebrate — Maxey, Simmons, and Harris appeared to argue under the basket about miscommunication in transition assignments that allowed Davis Bertans to walk in for a bucket.
I still don't think transition defense can be a thing that unravels a title contender, but the Sixers are putting that theory to the test in a big way. They have to be better defending when they're not set.
• Perhaps the rotation would have looked a lot different if the Sixers had managed to stay out of foul trouble in the first half, but it felt like there were simply too many guys who played for Philly against Washington. Maybe that's even the wrong complaint — some of the guys Rivers chose to play simply weren't good enough, and there have been warning signs surrounding them for some time.
Shake Milton is a perfect example of a guy who won his way into Rivers' rotation and has never really seen his role changed in spite of how hot-and-cold he runs. He was downright awful during his first-half minutes against Washington, flailing like a wild man at Ish Smith hesitation moves and pump fakes, compounding that issue by offering next to nothing on offense. His decision-making has been an issue on both ends for a while, but he's still basically an automatic inclusion for Rivers in the rotation. We'll see if that holds up.
• Bradley Beal had the misfortune of going through the Simmons/Thybulle defensive gauntlet in the third quarter. He got wherever he wanted anyway, scoring 17 points in that stretch alone to keep his team in the ballgame. That's one reason why the Wizards were a team you wanted to avoid in the opening round — he gets as hot as any guy in the league, and not even your best stuff can slow him down.
• For all the good Ben Simmons did in this game, he was absolutely putrid at the free-throw line. It didn't end up mattering in the final result, but this Washington team is not very good and featured the bad end of the Russell Westbrook spectrum. They might not be so fortunate to survive an 0-fer at the line from Simmons on another night, and having to play around his ineptitude at the stripe in crunch time is a complete disaster. He's the damn point guard!
• The officiating to start this game was really something special. Joel Embiid and Seth Curry both ended up with two fouls before the first quarter was over, and they weren't the only victims of a tight whistle. Ben Simmons drew a foul call around halfcourt in what seemed to be an anticipatory call, only the contact the official was looking for never came, with Russell Westbrook appearing to fall down on his own accord.
The second foul on Embiid, while a foul by the letter of the law, was pretty soft for a playoff whistle. It looked for a moment like Doc Rivers would challenge the call, but the head coach opted to give the officials an earful during the TV timeout instead, hanging onto the challenge for later in the game.
Holding onto a challenge for later in the game is an admirable thought, but not challenging Embiid's third foul — a play where he simply stuck his arms in the air against a wild Alex Len drive — was borderline malpractice. You don't get to pick and choose the spots where the challenge is a meaningful use of your resources, and with how shaky things looked without Embiid to clean it up on the back end, Rivers should have pulled the trigger. It has been a sore spot for the head coach all season.
That being said, this officiating crew was flat-out terrible, calling ticky-tack nonsense while missing obvious hard fouls on both teams. Dwight Howard hammered Raul Neto on a jumper near the end of the first half, and not only did they miss it while staring the play down, they whistled Neto for a technical for having the audacity to complain about the obvious missed call.
• Still not quite sure what happened here, but it left Seth Curry down and in pain long enough to scare the bejeezus out of everybody in the arena:
A closer look at what happened to Seth Curry: pic.twitter.com/9UDjDR1IOF
— NBC Sports Philadelphia (@NBCSPhilly) May 23, 2021
Curry would return in the second half, thankfully.
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