After a hairy, one-point win at the Wells Fargo Center on Tuesday night, Brett Brown was asked if he felt like his Sixers were “playing with fire” based on the competitiveness of these early season games.

“It’s a blowtorch and it is violent,” said the head ball coach in response.

That drew a couple of of laughs among reporters, but it’s true and concerning. The Sixers couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn from three point range and stumbled their way to a five-point third quarter deficit that resulted in grumbling and boos from the home crowd. After buckling down in the fourth quarter, they were able to gut out a win on the strength of a well-executed sideline play and some scrappy loose ball scrambles, plus a pivotal jump ball to regain possession with less than 30 seconds on the clock.

A win is a win, and you’ll typically take it any way you can get it on the front side of a November back-to-back, but the Sixers’ offense should worry you. They shot 8-38 from three last night (21%) and turned the ball over 10 times in the second half alone. They only went to the free throw line 13 times and didn’t transform into the “smash mouth, bully ball” team we know they can be until midway through the final stanza, when Joel Embiid starting throwing his body on the floor as the defense and intensity was ratcheted up a few notches.

The final plays

Credit where it’s due; the Sixers really executed on the SLOB play that got them the game-winning bucket.

It was a Josh Richardson and Joel Embiid pick and roll that turned into a pretty pin down and seal from Embiid, who then slipped to the basket and got a little lob over the top from Tobias Harris for a dunk:

Really nice stuff, well-executed, and great patience there from all three guys involved to wait for the second option and let it develop.

This sequence actually began with a missed Embiid look at the rim, which turned into a 50/50 loose ball scramble and a jump ball, which was won by Ben Simmons. That’s where Brett Brown decided to begin his answer when I asked him about the play:

It starts with the jump ball, and I changed the matchup and put Ben on Kevin Love, moved Tobias over to Cedi Osman and sort of reshuffled the deck, trying to get what I hoped to be the best matchups, which ended up, at the other end, them being a bit cross-matched. The shot goes up, we end up producing a jump ball, a favorable sort of a pocket, and Ben got the tap and you could feel, like I didn’t like what I saw. I didn’t think there was any advantage as I’m feeling the gym.

Let’s stop it there.

Here’s what Brown was looking at when he called the timeout:

Easy call, right? 12 seconds on the shot clock, 22 seconds left in the game, use that timeout to reset and dial something up instead of letting your guys freestyle their way to a crappy look.

Brett continues:

Out of the timeout we came in and made a little wrinkle out of a play that we have and I thought the guys executed it well. Joel had a tremendous seal to finish the play.

It was a tremendous seal, and Harris could have tried a contested shot from the foul line but saw the slip into the post and just dropped that ball in very nicely.

Said Richardson on the sequence:

During our last play, I came off, was gonna take what they gave, and I pulled back to look at other options of the play. Tobias was open at the free-throw line and Joel did what he does, got the seal, and that’s all you can ask for. Couldn’t be better execution.

On the other end, Cleveland had the final look, which was very similar to the Bojan Bogdanovic shot in Utah, a slipped screen for a three-point look that went like this:

It’s basically the same play that killed the Sixers at the end of that Jazz game. In this case, Kevin Love does the same thing, but that’s a pretty good recovery from Simmons to get out there and make Love reset himself. James Ennis comes flying across late to try to get a hand on the shot.

Brett Brown on that play:

You would expect that (Love) was going to be involved in some capacity and you try to make sure that you  stay connected when you make that switch. In Utah, we lost Bogdanovic and he made a big three to take (the lead) out to six. When you have those guys that can pick and pop or pick and slip, it’s dangerous. The trick is coming together and making contact. You err on staying with your own instead of lawless switching. He did that and we got back to it late. He lifted us on an upfake, and had that look and it’s not a good feeling when Kevin Love has a fairly open look.

So there you go – good offensive execution on one end, Kevin Love misses on the other end, and the Sixers wrap it up with a loose ball scramble on the ground.

Possessions with purpose

27 points and 16 rebounds for Embiid with just two turnovers in 35 minutes of play.

I felt like he was in a better “rhythm” Tuesday night, hitting a couple of early three pointers and playing with more purpose on the offensive end. When I say “purpose,” I’m talking about those possessions where he isn’t over-thinking things. He’s getting to his spots, reading the defense, and feeling his way through the game instead of forcing it.

To that point, this possession really stood out to me:

Doesn’t seem like much, but he passes on the trailing three, which is always going to be open, and posts up Tristan Thompson instead. Then it’s a turn and face, quick scrape, and burst to the rim for the layup.

That’s assertive and locked-in Joel Embiid, and when he’s playing in an “automatic” fashion like that, he’s really hard to stop.

Tobias Harris

0-11 from three point range before hitting a couple of big buckets in the fourth quarter. Brett Brown told media after the game that Harris was sick:

This is what you don’t know and this is what you should know. For almost the entire day, I didn’t think he was playing. He was ill with a stomach virus, so the whole day I go through my matchups and rotations and none of them had him in the game. When I came into the arena this afternoon, only then did I learn that he was going to play. He said that he wanted to go and he did. I thought his defense was pretty good and he played with good spirit. To his incredible credit and character, he comes in with two huge baskets in the end and a big assist too. He got his hands on some offensive rebounds that we needed to get. That is the Tobias story for tonight.

I guess there two philosophies here. One, if a guy is sick and not playing well, you pull the plug and just sit him down. Or, two, you let them gut it out because you trust them to make a play in crunch time.

Brown has typically subscribed to the latter philosophy, and in this case it worked out, but you also wonder if the game wouldn’t have come down to the final possession if somebody else was in there and actually hitting shots, or if somebody else was taking them instead. Harris’ 11 missed three pointers comprised 12.4% of the Sixers’ shots last night, which is brutal, but the fact of the matter is that people have been asking for more deep balls from him, which is what they got. He wasn’t exactly forcing it either, he was getting decent looks and just not hitting them, so let’s throw this Tobias game in the trash can and move on to the next one.

Other notes

  • Union manager Jim Curtin rang the bell before the game.
  • Al Horford was given a rest day and will be fresh for tonight’s game in Orlando.
  • I saw Furkan Korkmaz drive off a Ben Simmons screen and Euro-step his way to a bucket. There were 3-4 Korkmaz/Simmons pick and rolls in this one, which is something I don’t recall seeing in previous games.
  • Furkan had some really good defensive sequences in the second half. He was responsible for a late shot clock violation on the Cavs and there was another play where he followed a cutter to the rim, held his feet, and altered the shot significantly. He has made significant strides here.
  • Matisse Thybulle found his way back into the rotation, playing 12:43 and ripping off three blocks and two steals. He took and made one three pointer. You see moments where he gets a little overzealous, like the play where and Darius Garland was able to put him on skates and get a layup to fall, but Thybulle has the tools to be a quality 3 and D NBA player.
  • Richardson was 1-8 from three.
  • The Cavs also couldn’t hit anything from deep (5-21 from three)
  • Norvel Pelle is doing a fantastic job as the Frosty Freeze Out hype man this season
  • Shake Milton was available to play last night, coming off injury, but did not get in the game
  • Turnovers were fine in the first half (4) and bad in the second half (10). The fourth quarter Ben Simmons throwaway in transition was the worst of the bunch.