Josh Richardson left the first quarter of last night’s game with a strained hamstring, forcing Brett Brown to tweak his rotations further beyond the absence of Joel Embiid. At times last night we saw lineups that featured five starters on the floor, with James Ennis barely playing and Trey Burke left on the bench entirely.

Down two starters and playing on the road against a good team, the Sixers just didn’t have enough juice on either end of the floor. We could probably end the recap right there, but it would make for a pretty short read.

So let’s talk about three pointers. The Sixers took 46 last night, which was a season high. They hit 18, which amounts to 39%, a very good number that sits four percentage points above the league average. If you look at their two pointers, they shot just 14-38, which amounts to just 37%.

Parse those two numbers separately, and the Sixers scored 54 points on 18 three point makes and 28 points on 14 two-point makes, which looks good analytically and explains to you why so many teams favor the three ball in the modern day NBA. It’s just a more efficient shot.

But basketball can’t be parsed down to a spread sheet, and regardless of Embiid’s availability, I personally think 46 three pointers is way too many for the Sixers for the following reasons:

  1. Excess three point shooting typically comes at the expense of Ben Simmons field goal attempts. He only took seven shots last night and could have been more aggressive in the paint, but spent most of the game driving and kicking instead.
  2. The Sixers are 6-5 in games where they shoot 34 or more three pointers.
  3. The Sixers are 10-3 in games where they shoot 26 or fewer three pointers.
  4. In 29 wins, they’re averaging 30 three pointers per game.
  5. In 17 losses, they’re averaging 32 three pointers per game.
  6. They spend more time at the foul line when shooting fewer threes. On the season, they average 25 free throw attempts when shooting 26 or fewer threes and 19 free throw attempts when shooting 34 or more three pointers. When you chuck threes, you’re not drawing contact, not wearing teams down, and not sending opponents to the bench with foul trouble.
  7. It’s typically easier to push in transition off three-point misses. Last night Toronto had 21 fast break points and the Sixers only allow 13 of these per game, so they were poor in that area.
  8. The Sixers only shoot the three ball at 35.4%, which is middle of the pack, 16th overall.
  9. They shoot two pointers at 65%, which is 7th.
  10. They typically have a lot of three-point variation night-in and night-out. Just two weeks ago they followed up a 22% night with a 50% night. They’re a wonky and inconsistent team in this regard.
  11. They are a very good points in the paint team, ranked 12th overall at 48.2 points per game. They were #1 in this PITP category when they started the season 5-0.
  12. Six of the 10 teams shooting the most threes in the NBA have losing records.

Afterward, Brett Brown told reporters that the Sixers shot 46 threes because they were given open looks there. The Raptors played a bit of 2-3 zone, not too much, but enough that it forced Philly to settle a bit instead of attacking the foul and base lines in the half court.

Via Rich Hofmann at The Athletic-

“You can’t make stuff up,” Brown told reporters in Toronto after the game. “Like, the game is going to tell you which shots are open, and those shots were open so we took them.”

Of course that makes sense, but more than anything, this team isn’t really built to play “pace and space” and chuck three pointers the same way you saw with JJ Redick and Dario Saric on the floor. Elton Brand built a hulking “bully ball” team, not a squad of three point snipers. Their strength is always going to be using their size to muscle teams down low, hammer the paint, and turn stifling defense into transition offense. Sprinkle in enough three point shooting to create a well-balanced shot plot, and that’s really been the recipe for success in Sixer wins. Games like Christmas Day against Milwaukee, where the Sixers shot the lights out from downtown, are huge outliers.

To that point, there was a five-minute chunk at the end of the third quarter last night where they fired off nine three pointers, missing eight of them, which resulted in the Raptors starting the 15-1 run that eventually decided the game. Here they are:

What do you see when you watch that clip? On the first play, I see Ben Simmons failing to attack a mismatch against Kyle Lowry in the paint, then kicking out to a rookie for a corner three instead. The corner three is an incredibly efficient shot, but Simmons simply going over the top of Lowry is better in that instance.

On the second play, I see a quick trigger three and not much attempt to attack the 2-3 zone.

On the third play, Simmons has a mismatch again, but feels the double team and fires a cross court bullet for Thybulle, who throws up another brick. He’s shooting 20% from three in January.

On the back half of that video clip, I see some good looks that they simply miss, but that’s a three-guard lineup Nick Nurse is using and there’s no effort to attack Serge Ibaka in the paint. None at all. Philly settled for perimeter shots against a lineup that featured Terence Davis, Fred VanVleet, Norman Powell, and Rondae Hollis-Jefferson. With Marc Gasol and Pascal Siakam off the floor, you should be able to attack Ibaka at least a little bit, especially with both Simmons and Al Horford on the floor.

Here’s the point of the story:

In a vacuum, the Sixers shot well enough from three to justify the amount of attempts on paper. But we don’t play basketball on paper. We look at things like matchups and lineups, identify strengths and weaknesses, and explore the importance of ancillary categories like foul shooting, offensive rebounding, transitional chances, and points in the paint. This team has had some very good three-point shooting games this year, but when you go down the list of box scores, they typically function better when that deep ball number comes down a bit and they employ their size to batter teams down low. It’s that “war of attrition” that Brett Brown mentioned in October, and you aren’t winning the war when Ben Simmons shoots seven field goals and everybody else just jacks up three-pointers.

Philly shot an analytically efficient 39% last night from three and still lost by 12 points.