If I told you before game two that the combination of Joel Embiid, Ben Simmons, and Tobias Harris would shoot 8-24 while turning the ball over 12 times, you would have said…. what?

Ten point loss?

Twelve point loss?

You’d probably think the Sixers were run off the floor with another poor performance, another instance where Toronto’s stars outplayed Philadelphia’s stars en route to a 2-0 series lead.

But that wasn’t the case on Monday night, and the Sixers built up a double-digit halftime lead before holding on for dear life and making just enough plays down the stretch to dispatch Toronto in their own building for the first time since 2012, stealing a game in Canada as the series shifts to Philadelphia.

It was Jimmy Butler who led the way with 30 points on 9-22 shooting while scoring 12 in the fourth quarter to carry the load for a team that again struggled to execute offensively. And even though the rest of the starters lagged behind, some key individual moments surfaced in that period. Embiid’s second of two field goals in the entire game was a spin move, hesitation, and layup with 24 seconds on the clock to put the Sixers up three. Harris flubbed a pass and rebound attempt moments earlier, but corralled a loose ball before hitting the free throws that iced the victory.

And that was enough, just barely enough offensively to complement a rock solid defensive effort that was helped by the fact that the Raptors couldn’t throw the ball into Lake Ontario last night, finishing 36.3% from the floor and making just 10 of their 37 three-point attempts.

That’s playoff basketball. Sometimes it’s ugly and disjointed and choppy, but if that’s what it takes to even the series and steal a game in Toronto, so be it. The Sixers got the job done with a gritty and resilient effort.

Brett’s adjustments

I’m exhausted with the Brett Brown arguing on social media. Do I think he’s the second coming of Red Auerbach? No, of course not, but as a simple rule, how about we give the guy credit for things he does well and criticize him for things he doesn’t do well? Anything otherwise is vapid horse shit, whether you’re pro-Brett or anti-Brett.

Brett made some tweaks last night, among them:

  1. Embiid opened the game guarding Pascal Siakam while Tobias Harris took Marc Gasol. This upped Gasol’s usage number, which is fine, because you want more of the offense going through a 34-year-old big vs. one of the NBA’s rising stars. Siakam shot 6-17 when guarded by Embiid.
  2. They threw early double teams against Kawhi Leonard on several occasions. This is effective because you’re forcing the ball out of his hands and Kawhi is not an elite playmaker. He logs 2.4 career assists per game and last night he finished with 6. You’re just trying to contain him and limit the damage he does, and they did a much better job of it last night.
  3. Making more shots early in the game allowed the Sixers to set their defense and keep Ben Simmons on Kawhi. Leonard shot 8-16 against him and hit some tough baskets, but Philly did a better job of getting the defensive matchups they wanted in this game overall.
  4. Greg Monroe was first off the bench while Boban and Furkan Korkmaz came out of the rotation. Boban was only called on in a late third quarter emergency situation.
  5. Brett tweaked his sub patterns early, leaving three starters in the game alongside Monroe and James Ennis to match Nick Nurse’s strategy of playing his starting unit for the majority of the first quarter. JJ Redick and Joel Embiid, for instance, came back in at the 2:49 mark in the 1st quarter. In the fourth, Brett opened with four starters against two Raptors starters, which helped push the lead back to double digits.

It was a better approach for those five reasons. Additionally, Brett continued his game one strategy of not having Redick switch on screens and instead hedge and recover. This is helping to avoid mismatches on the perimeter, and as such, JJ’s matchups looked like this in game two:

That’s good. They really avoided putting JJ in too many compromising situations.

If you want to criticize Brett, certainly I’d point to the end of the 3rd quarter, when Monroe left the game with the ankle sprain and we ended up with a Boban, Simmons, Ennis, Redick, and Jonah Bolden unit on the floor. He didn’t have a ton of options with Embiid on a scheduled rest, but there looked to be a lot of confusion on the bench at the time. Harris was also in foul trouble around that point in the game. It was a tricky situation to navigate and Toronto took advantage to cut the lead to one at the 2:50 mark of that period.

You might have found the Amir Johnson appearance strange, but Brett was able to steal a few rest minutes for Embiid with that substitution before bringing him back in to finish the game. Brown also needs to think about how he uses Redick down the stretch, i.e. if he’s only hitting at 25% from deep in the game with three turnovers, how much value does he have in situations where Butler is going to be the preferred closer anyway?

Still, Embiid was hooked to an IV before the game and Mike Scott wasn’t available, so all told I think the coaching staff did probably as well as they could trying to navigate the game two personnel situation. Korkmaz, T.J. McConnell, and Jonathon Simmons were left on the bench.

Really, the bigger concern moving forward is offensive scheme in the half court, and Brett will need to dive into the film and find some ways to help the Sixers with their spacing, which has been really rough in this series. I thought he made the appropriate tweaks with the game plan and his personnel, now he needs to find a way to deal with Toronto packing the paint and being disruptive on the perimeter. If he can do that, this team has a really good shot at going up 2-1 in the series.

Monroe and Ennis

The Sixers bench outscored the Toronto bench 26-5, which is insane to me. Toronto really misses OG Anunoby and they’re getting absolutely nothing out of Serge Ibaka, Fred VanVleet, and Norman Powell. You’ll recall they lost Delon Wright, Jonas Valanciunas, and CJ Miles in the Gasol trade.

Greg Monroe was… excellent last night? Seriously. Ten points and five rebounds in 11:41 of play time. He was a really nice surprise. And James Ennis gave the Sixers a ton of energy off the pine, hitting a couple of three pointers, drawing a charge, and getting an and-1 bucket at the rim. Even Bolden looked better defensively, even if he only hit that one shot on the offensive end.

Turns out this is an advantage for the Sixers in this series, depth. Who knew? Not me. I think if Mike Scott comes back at some point in the near future, you can throw him into the mix and build a second unit like this:

  1. point guard Jimmy Butler
  2. Ennis
  3. Scott
  4. Harris (secondary ball handling)
  5. Monroe

If Boban is unplayable in this series, swap Monroe into that successful Brooklyn series lineup and give this a go, with Jonah Bolden being a 9th man available to come in if necessary.

Peripheral stats

I might as well just do this entry for every playoff game, similar to how I do it on the Eagles recaps.

Notable:

  • 38 points in the paint for the Sixers. This is really low. Toronto is packing it in, cutting off Ben Simmons, and making life difficult on the perimeter for Redick. They are willing to let Embiid shoot the three all night long.
  • Philly crushed Toronto on the boards, 53-36. They did get burned by those 9 offensive rebounds though, with Kawhi sneaking in for three of them.
  • 24 of 26 free throw shooting for the Sixers is 92.3%. Phenomenal. The starting unit went 19-19 from the stripe while Toronto finished 13-15. This was a huge part of the game.
  • Philly only contested 29 Toronto shots in game one, with the Raptors hitting 18 of those looks, which is insane. That’s 62%. Last night the Sixers were able to contest 37 shots, only 14 of which went in the basket for a 37.8% mark.
  • Jimmy Butler’s touches increased from 59 to 76 in this game. He played 43 minutes.
  • Sixers again lost in fast break points, 18-13.
  • Toronto turned the ball over 12 times but only allowed 3 points off those mistakes. Philly went 20/24 in this area, which is horrible.
  • Nine offensive rebounds resulted in 7 second chance points. Toronto went 9/7 here.
  • 14 of Butler’s 22 shots were contested. He hit five of them. He was 4-8 in uncontested looks.

It’s also worth pointing out that Ben Simmons finished with a team-high 6 deflections while spending most of the night guarding Kawhi. Joel, for his struggles offensively, had a pair of screen assists, contested 16 shots, recovered a loose ball and was credited with 7 box outs. If they can get him healthy and rolling at any point in this series, it’ll be a huge boon.

Offensive spacing and making the right reads

Let’s go over a couple of poor offensive possessions and look for themes. Here’s one you’ve seen a billion times this year:

This is the ‘ole, “Ben Simmons picks up his dribble at the nail and dumps it off to Embiid instead.”

It turns into a half-hearted high pick and roll with Ben not actually rolling at all. He has to either continue the play or demand the ball back, bring it out, and reset the offense. These are things a point guard needs to learn, especially if he isn’t going to shoot, and Embiid can’t be sitting there on the perimeter trying to dribble-drive. It worked one single time last night, on the final Sixers’ possession.

Another clip:

I didn’t understand this decision after the offensive rebound. Simmons has Redick WIDE open standing right next to him, and he instead throws a cross-court pass to Ennis instead. Redick’s reaction says it all.

One more clip:

Yeah, again, low percentage stuff there. Toronto will take that on every rushed trip down the floor.

This is the same inside/out problem Brett has been trying to figure out since Embiid and Simmons stepped foot on the court together, because the point guard can’t shoot, the center thinks he’s a three-point shooter, and it results in low-efficiency looks like the Embiid trailing three as a result of Ben collapsing the paint. Play the second side there, move the ball, make the extra pass, and work the offense. Bring Redick around.

That’s the next adjustment to make. If the Sixers play defense like they did Monday night, a couple of offensive tweaks and some more ball movement and patience puts them ahead in this series. The path forward is very clear. Toronto is not at all scary when Kawhi is off the floor, so if Philly can oil the gears offensively, they can win this series.

Other notes:

  • I hate the in-game interview.
  • Kyle Lowry tries to be James Harden with the way he initiates contact while looking for fouls, but he only gets about half as many whistles.
  • Lowry tried a nutmeg on the Raptors final possession. How ridiculous is that? I don’t care if he pulled one off earlier on a pass in the paint, it’s just an outrageous effort in that situation and if he was a Philly player he’d be blasted into the high heavens.
  • There was a ridiculous uncalled moving screen that Lowry got away with on that second quarter turnover and Kawhi bucket. Butler threw a couple of bad passes on two straight possessions.
  • I dislike Drake’s music.