Fun day down in Delaware, and nice to see some 5v5, full court, 76ers basketball again.
The Field House played host to this year’s iteration of the Blue X White scrimmage, the casual intra-squad exhibition that has kicked off the Sixers’ season in each of the past two years. This time, the squad was split into one group featuring starters and rotational players, and another with some bench pieces and veteran backup guys:
Brett Brown did not actually “coach” either team, with Ime Udoka and Joseph Blair handling the blue squad and Kevin Young and John Bryant organizing the whites. That squad started Burke, Thybulle, Ennis, Scott, and O’Quinn, which made for a nice defensive test for the Sixers starters.
Let’s just get this one out of the way first.
He was 0-1 on jumpers, that one attempt coming as a fadeaway 10 footer that missed the rim. Most of Ben’s actions on the afternoon were aggressive downhill plays, and he showed some glimpses, in a casual setting, of the All-Star player we saw last year.
I thought he might shoot a three in the second quarter, when a broken 2v1 turned into what looked like an opportunity to fire from the corner, but he pulled the ball down under pressure and then ended up turning it over.
The second opportunity came on a defensive miscue, which left him WIDE OPEN in the corner and WIDE OPEN in his path to the rim. So he did the right thing, drove the ball, and dunked it:
Interesting sequence though, because I thought he might try that shot, considering the fact that this was just a throw-away scrimmage.
Before the game, he did take a bunch of three pointers, some of which I captured here:
He didn’t play too hard or too much, which is exactly what you wanted to see. I honestly thought he looked a little tired and/or uninterested, but whatever. No problem. He didn’t appear in the second half and only played a couple of first half shifts, so he was probably out there for a total of 10-14 minutes.
Not surprisingly, Embiid was the first starter to come off, making way for Furkan Korkmaz. That moved Al Horford down to the five and Tobias Harris to the four.
When Ben Simmons came out, Raul Neto handled the ball, then there was a brief period where they shared the floor together with Neto in an off-ball role while Josh Richardson was also on the floor.
That’s something to keep an eye on Tuesday when the Sixers play against Guangzhou in the preseason opener.
The starters really are massive. It’s something to behold in person.
There was an early sequence where Al Horford got switched onto Trey Burke and successfully pushed him into the corner for a contested shot. In general, the white team just had a lot of trouble getting off clean shots in the paint because of the starting front court’s size and length. It’s going to be very hard for opposing teams to get quality shots at and around the rim this season.
By far, the standout player of the game. At one point in the second half I think he was up to a combined 8 or 9 deflections and steals. He strung together three of them on three straight possessions at one point, resulting in a loud roar of applause from the crowd.
“I hate him on defense,” joked Ben Simmons after the game. “So far he’s been amazing. His length, just the way he plays the game. He can run the floor, makes the right read and he just plays. He’s just long. He had 6 deflections or something like that in the first quarter, something crazy. Defensively, he’s right there.”
Simmons, Al Horford, and Brett Brown all had good things to say about Thybulle post game, which he appreciated.
“It’s a good feeling; that’s what you set out to do when you get here,” Thybulle said. “That was my goal through open gym, to camp and into the scrimmage, was just to establish to the rest of the guys that I fit in. To hear that they’re saying that is a pretty good feeling.”
The deflections are something you’ll probably see a lot of this season, a Robert Covington-esque ability to disrupt offensive flow and start some offense going in the other direction.
It’s something the Sixers have always valued.
“At practice we chart and reward in the way we score games, deflections,” Brett Brown explained “He (Thybulle) shines in that area in practice. There was clear carryover to this game. Oftentimes deflections can produce steals too, and when you chart it, the number of times he got his hands on balls or came up with steals was elite.”
This was probably his best play of the day, a sprint back and swat on Josh Richardson on what looked like a clean transitional look:
The Field House is a fantastic complex, and bigger than I thought it would be. When you walk in, it basically has a corridor running down the middle that splits the basketball court from a full length indoor turf soccer field. There’s a connected balcony on the second floor that gives you a stellar view of both the court and the field, plus a huge weightroom and baseball pitching area: