What a game.

I guess the most simple takeaway is to credit Paul George for hitting the game-winner and move on to the next one, but that wouldn’t make for much of a recap, would it?

On a micro-level, there were some really interesting late-game situations that took place, situations that come with their respective quotes.

That’s a good starting point, and we can probably work backwards from the game’s final play, a sequence where Ben Simmons had to drive down the court with five seconds left and no timeouts. He paused at the three point line and handed the ball off to Jimmy Butler, which resulted in this:

That’s a tough shot, and Simmons doesn’t do Butler any help by picking up his dribble early and allowing Paul George to double team.

Here’s Simmons on the play:

I saw Adams to my left, and it was assuming he was going to help in and sort of create a road block, so I saw that and wanted to come to Jimmy, give him a hand off and see if he could get an and-1 or a shot off.

I was about to (pull-up and shoot) but at the end of the play I saw Jimmy’s man sag a little bit more so that was the hand-off.

It was kind of similar to the Boston game, wasn’t it? Ben just doesn’t get much of a body on Terrance Ferguson there, kind of like how he wasn’t able to put a body on Gordon Hayward in that two-man game with JJ Redick.

Here’s Brown’s take on the final play:

You know I thought we were trying to create an environment where Ben could attack as best he could, keep the court spread, cut the driving line off, and run a dribble hand off to Jimmy. We were out of timeouts at that stage. Really at that point, you’re begging, like you know, five seconds left, no timeouts, you’re trying to get whatever you can. I’m backing Ben Simmons on the fly. I wish we got it out of bounds quicker to create more of an environment that was moving and a little bit more disorganized, but there’s a lot of stuff that went on before that.

Yeah. I mean, it’s honestly pretty good defense. And Ben had more time on the clock to maybe get in a little deeper to pull George out of the way and get Butler a more clean look. But the lack of a jump shot makes Simmons one-dimensional in these late-game scenarios, which results in complications when you’re trying to get other guys involved. He had an open look there but was never going to take it.

One option is to just take the ball out of his hands entirely on the final play of the game, because at this point you’re just sort of handicapping yourself. But even if you stick him in the corner, then what? Defenders will leave him because he’s not a shooting threat. The other option is to take him off the floor and the third option is to just keep allowing Ben to handle these late-game situations until he figures it out. How much of this is a personnel issue vs. a coaching issue?

Some people criticized Brett Brown for that, and I get it. Maybe he has to re-think Ben’s usage in these scenarios, but the Sixers wouldn’t have gotten to that point if not for a really nice call from the head coach a few seconds earlier.

It was the decision to throw a full-court trap out of a timeout that got them a steal and go-ahead bucket:

If you criticize Brett for the final play, you have to give him credit for this one. Those are the rules.

Brown:

We were out of timeouts. You know, you never feel comfortable, I don’t, letting someone just dribble down a clock and them getting the last shot. I don’t like doing that. And so you have choices. You can either hit it while it’s static and they can see you coming, or you can do it sooner and try to take advantage of doing stuff early so you have the clock to use from our end. We just decided to do it sooner, the concept I would keep, then you have decisions on what level do you do it. We decided to do it in full court and it’s a little bit easier after a free throw.

Correct. Teams are dialing up plays in the timeout, and when you meet them with pressure it junks up their ability to get up the floor and get into their set and run what they want to run. In this case, it resulted in a turnover that gave the Sixers the lead.

There were a couple of other key situations towards the end of the game. The Steven Adams offensive rebound was huge. There’s not much to analyze there, honestly. He always does a nice job of kind of moving his defender underneath the rim, so that when OKC gets a decent bounce, he’s in better position to detach and jump. Adams had seven offensive boards last night.

The George three sort of is what it is. Nice execution, great shot, and Adams gets enough of Butler on a pin-down screen to steer him off course:

That’s the type of contact you’d like to see Simmons get in those late game scenarios I mentioned above.

The Joel Embiid free-throws at the end were huge as well. Joel hit three in a row to tie the game, and up to that point he was only 5-9 from the stripe. For him to go up there and sink three straight showed a lot of mettle, I thought.

Brett Brown on that sequence:

I think that he just is looking forward to beating them. We’ve had tough games with them here in Philadelphia and I feel like he was probably anxious to get that first half, there were things we could have done probably differently, and I thought that the way he responded, especially in the fourth period and in that environment, I thought it showed a lot of character stepping up to the line and making those shots.

Good game between two good teams.

Where’s the beef?

Of course there was going to be some Embiid and Russell Westbrook issue in this game.

The conflict happened on a sequence where Westbrook was running down the court and appeared to lose his dribble, which caused Embiid to up for a block and come down on top of him:

Embiid responded to the assertion from Westbrook that there was a bit of a shove as the pair were going to ground:

I don’t have to explain myself but I was in the air and I guess I went for the block and I just almost fell on him and even went to the other side, so I have no idea what he’s talking about.

The shove is clearly there. You can see it in every angle of the play. Joel could justify it by saying he was trying to push him away in order to avoid landing directly on top of him, but Embiid extends both arms as they are hitting the floor.

Other notes:

  • Jimmy Butler shot 5-18 last night. He couldn’t get anything to fall early and said he was just missing shots.
  • I didn’t expect to encounter bandwagon Thunder fans in the Center. Lakers? Sure. Warriors? Absolutely. But I didn’t realize people were OKC front-runner types.
  • Wilson Chandler got Adams in the face with a high shoulder and later hit him square in the privates while diving for a ball.
  • Chandler hit the floor twice for loose balls. Not sure I can remember much of that happening earlier in the season.
  • Couple of brutal foul calls against the Sixers. The Muscala non-foul on Dennis Schroder was particularly egregious. The Butler foul on George at the 20 second mark was equally ‘meh.’ I also thought the late Redick turnover probably warranted a whistle.
  • Furkan Korkmaz didn’t play yesterday. He played one minute in the Indiana win.
  • The Sixers were 28 for 39 from the free throw line for a 71.8% mark. That didn’t help.
  • T.J. McConnell was 1-5 with 5 rebounds and 5 assists. He’s a liability against athletic teams with depth, which I think we already knew.