Now that we’ve come up for air following last night’s loss and the ensuing Brett Brown firestorm, there are a couple of things I want to touch on from earlier in the game.

Both revolve around Joel Embiid and how his physicality and presence affect things at both ends of the court.

Let’s start with…

…pick and roll defense

Embiid got himself into early foul trouble Wednesday night, picking up his third with 0:53 left in the first quarter. The Sixers went to Amir Johnson, who had a lot of defensive trouble in the second quarter. The Rockets went at Johnson and Jerryd Bayless on a series of pick and rolls that resulted in alley-oop dunks.

On the first sequence, Eric Gordon comes off the high pick and Johnson is caught in no man’s land:

He’s not hedging or showing or doing much of anything. Gordon isn’t attacked at the point of the screen or forced horizontally. It’s just a soft backpedal towards the rim.

On the second sequence, James Harden is the ball handler and the result is similar:

Johnson isn’t really in a position to make a play on either guy.

In the third quarter, Houston tried it again with Embiid in the game. It was defended a bit better, but Robert Covington ended up taking a foul down low. For as good of a perimeter defender as Covington is, he’s been committing a lot of fouls around the rim early in the season and has had some foul issues. Last night he was a lot better in that department, but this wasn’t great:

When the screen is set, Embiid sags to the foul line, a good two or three feet further than Johnson’s starting points. He’s usually quick enough to allow the switch and defend smaller players, as we’ve seen in the past. He’s good in the “zone up” pick and roll defensive concept, where you basically meet up with the guard and allow that low percentage mid-range jump shot in exchange for rim protection:

When you watch it again, notice how Covington isn’t even touched on the screen. He’s slow to react and hooks Capela with the right arm, then gets a late nudge in there to draw the foul.

Similarly, Embiid was hung out to dry in the first quarter when Justin Anderson had a slow recovery after being picked out of the play:

https://youtu.be/jPtznMjFRG4?t=2m32s

With Embiid switching to Harden, Anderson should be taking away Tarik Black there but instead doubles up on Harden and gives away the easy finish. Dario Saric doesn’t see it but probably isn’t going to do much in rotation anyway. Harden wasn’t going anywhere before Anderson’s mistake, as he was nicely tracked by Embiid right at the edge of the paint in that same zonal concept.

There’s a big defensive dropoff when Embiid leaves the floor, but last night nobody was great in defending that pick and roll. If Johnson continues to struggles in this department, does Jahlil Okafor do any better? It’s doubtful. I think the return of Richaun Holmes will help patch things up. Assuming Joel is sitting down on back-to-backs, they’re gonna need meaningful defensive minutes out of one of their bigs, and we all saw what happened in Toronto.

 

Getting the most out of your contact

Watching Joel Embiid in 1v1 situations, I feel like he goes a great job at straddling the line between selling and embellishing. He’s excellent at receiving contact and amplifying it to make it look worse than it really is.

One of the ways he does that is by continuing his motion to the basket. Whereas some floppers will stop the play early, throw their hands up, or try some kind of goofy recoil motion, Embiid does it while moving towards the rim, which probably forces officials to think more about the play:

Even as he runs out of room there, he tries to shove the ball up with his right hand while falling out of bounds.

There were two plays that took place a bit later, one where he got a whistle and one where he didn’t.

He had a good battle with former Kansas teammate Black, losing out early on a blocked shot before turning it over in a 1v1 sequence.

But he bested him on this one, where I think the ref sees Black’s left arm wrapping Embiid, who pushed through contact from the right arm:

It’s telling that most opponents look demonstrative and perturbed when Embiid draws a whistle against them. You see black showing the ref there that he felt like Joel leveraged him with the right elbow while turning the corner.

Later, Embiid got a mismatch with Ryan Anderson and tried to power through and draw the foul, but he didn’t get the call.

A lot of people complained about this one, but Anderson’s arms are low and somewhat static, at least from the backside replay. There was no slap down or flailing motion, just a little bit of a forearm for position holding. The ref was about two feet away and decided to just hold the whistle:

I don’t know. I don’t have too much of a problem with that non-call. Joel isn’t going to get that when he has an obvious size advantage. The contact is always going to look a bit more severe when he’s going against an equally physical guy like Capela or Black. That big vs. big matchup is another way that the amplification occurs, because it’s more believable that Capela will out-muscle Embiid, rather than a lesser interior defender like Anderson.