Sixers

“Ref, You Suck” – Observations from Sixers 125, Wizards 118 (Game 1)

By Kevin Kinkead

Published: May 24th, 2021 · 8:44 AM EDT

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Ah yes, we have arrived.

The basketball is meaningful, the arena is getting closer to full capacity, and the refs absolutely suck. They’re blind!

That’s according to Sixers fans in attendance on Sunday afternoon, who friggin’ had it with the zebras. They let ’em have it early and often as the home team went on to overcome the 5 vs. 8 disadvantage and ultimately prevail.

The Sixers looked a little flat in the first half. Shots weren’t falling and the defense needed some juice. The Wizards were up to the challenge, and took a lead into halftime, but Philly buckled down and leaned on an elite performance from Tobias Harris, who poured in 28 first-half points and steadied the ship for Joel Embiid to return from foul trouble and put his hands on the figurative wheel and co-captain the vessel.

“Honestly, when he (got the fouls), I looked at it kind of like how we’re looking at it the whole year, when Joel went down with injury, it’s about what I needed to do for our team to win games at that point,”  Harris said after the win. “He goes out with three fouls, and it was just the same mentality of, ‘alright, we got to get this thing rolling.’ Opportunities were there for me to be aggressive and get to my spots and get the shots I want to get. At the same time, I thought as a team we didn’t make as many shots as we wanted to, especially in the first half, but the biggest thing is we had enough mental focus to really come out in the second half and defend, and try to get as many stops as we could and let that fuel our offense. We found a good rhythm, and we know that’s the blueprint to our success and in game two we’ve got to bring even more of that.”

For Harris, 28 first-half points is the most by a Sixer in a playoff game since Allen Iverson did it against NOLA in 2003.

It also helped that Russell Westbrook stepped out of bounds and committed a ridiculous fourth quarter, crunch-time turnover, which will go down as the bonehead play of the game and probably the entire series, regardless of what happens moving forward.

On to the game itself:

Joel Embiid and “fouls”

Alright, so it was a funky first foul on Embiid, who slapped at Alex Len’s off-hand while Len was attempting a short floater/jump hook. The second was possibly justified, since Embiid threw his left elbow pretty hard into Len’s chest. A lot of people were calling for a Doc Rivers challenge there but I personally don’t think he would have won it.

And then the third foul:

"Really?! It's the playoffs!" @marczumoff with the facts after that brutal third foul on Joel: pic.twitter.com/DlwPsNdVQy

— NBC Sports Philadelphia (@NBCSPhilly) May 23, 2021

Now, if Zoo is complaining in that fashion, you know it’s bad. He’s not somebody I’d call a “homer” announcer. Definitely not egregiously. So for him to react that way tells me something.

Doc did use his challenge, but not until the fourth foul, when Bradley Beal met Embiid just outside of the restricted area. I asked him after the game about his challenge use and if he thought about reviewing Embiid’s 2nd or 3rd foul:

“I thought both fouls were fouls, so I’m not gonna waste a challenge if I think it’s one. The last one, the timeout was ours, the next one, anyway. The next dead ball would have been our timeout, so I thought (I’d) take a chance there. And I thought it was a foul; I thought (Beal) fouled him before he went up. They (the refs) actually said it was inconclusive, it was that close. So they couldn’t overturn it.”

There’s your answer. I know people weren’t happy with Doc’s approach with the challenges, and I’d have to agree with you. I think you go ahead and try to challenge early, and that possibly keeps Embiid on the floor and helps him establish a rhythm and tempo. Helps him find the game. They struggled in the first half and needed Tobias to go ham in order to keep pace with the Wizards, and if you can overturn one of those fouls, maybe it doesn’t get to that point in the first place.

Handling Westbrook and Beal

Gotta hand it to Bradley Beal, who went for 33 points  despite having Ben Simmons and Matisse Thybulle draped all over him.

The Sixers started with Simmons handling Beal and Danny Green taking Russell Westbrook, and this is how Beal fared against the various guys who were guarding him:

For Beal, that’s 2-8 in almost 10 minutes against Simmons and Thybulle, but when he was able to get matched up on other players, he shot 11-14. His really impressive third quarter kept the Sixers from extending the lead to double digits.

As for Westbrook, he finished with 16 points on 17 shots, so you’re looking at a situation where he can take as many field goals as he wants. He’s not an efficient player and never has been, so in having Simmons stick with Beal, that’s the right way to approach this defensively.

Here’s how Westbrook fared offensively:

Just 3-11 when guarded by Danny Green and George Hill. 0-2 with Thybulle on him.

Pretty simple strategy here to let Westbrook fire away. Take as many shots as he wants to take. Beal will get his, but beyond that, Washington doesn’t have enough offensively.

Transition defense

This was the big topic from the past week, and one of the few tactical wrinkles worth diving into as we previewed this series.

How did the Sixers handle themselves here? Did they communicate and stop the ball and prevent up-court passes?

Rivers on that:

“I didn’t like it at all in the first half. Second half it was great. First half, I’m gonna say 20 of their points came off our mess-ups in transition. Guys running to their own man, guys not loading to the ball. This team, over all of the teams, they’re going to force you to load to the ball, and then get back out to your guy. We didn’t do a good job of that, but second half it was a great. We have a blueprint to watch (on Monday) now and can go over it.”

When Doc says “load to the ball,” it’s more or less about keeping the ball handler on one side of the floor, and the guys who are back can stop penetration while teammates sprint back to the weakside. Oftentimes a big will run back to the top of the paint and try to get ahead of the ball handler. It’s really about addressing the ball and trying to slow the transition and keep the ball handler in a confined space.

They didn’t do it on these plays:

You can’t guard Russell Westbrook like this in transition in general but especially not in the playoffs. pic.twitter.com/tDvm6wkGwY

— Steve Jones Jr. (@stevejones20) May 23, 2021

That’s stuff they’ll look at on film today. Gotta get your head turned, stop the ball, load to one side, and limit the danger. Don’t worry about those trailing guys who aren’t even in the play.

Rotations and lineups

Embiid came out of the game after picking up his second foul, making way for Dwight Howard around the 5:20 mark. Matisse Thybulle was next off the bench, replacing Green during the very next stoppage.

At the 4:04 mark, we got George Hill for Simmons, giving us a lineup looking like this:

1. Hill
2. Curry
3. Thybulle
4. Harris
5. Howard

When the rotation shrinks moving forward, Harris is gonna be the guy who staggers into the second unit and does a lot of initiating. Unfortunately, in this game, he found himself in a lineup with Howard/Shake Milton/Thybulle/Hill that couldn’t do anything on either end and gave up a 10-0 run, which allowed Washington to win the first quarter, 28-27. Doc also went all-bench to start the fourth quarter before bringing Harris back in before the 10-minute mark.

Furkan Korkmaz also got some minutes, entering in the second quarter, and finishing 0-3 Tyreese Maxey entered later in the second quarter to a BIG ovation, and then hit a tough shot, and-1, which got the crowd further pumped. Guess the fans are higher on Maxey than some of us thought. He also got second-half minutes before Milton returned, so that’s something to keep an eye on in this series. Shake has really been struggling lately and might lose playing time to Maxey.

Other notes:

• Dikembe Mutombo was your bell ringer for game one.
• The Len/Robin Lopez/Daniel Gafford trio picked up seven combined fouls at the 9:23 stoppage in the second quarter. They just don’t have anything for Embiid on the interior. Joel finished 12-13 from the line.
• There was grumbling in the crowd when Simmons bodied Hachimura, created some space, and then didn’t shoot from six feet. Kind of a weird sequence there. You can sense that people are still worried about the shooting thing.
• Ben put up 15 assists and 15 rebounds, which is crazy. It’s just hard to square that circle when you see him score six points on 3-9 shooting while going 0-6 from the foul line. They can win without getting offense from him, but in that case Harris is gonna have to continue to fill up the bucket while Danny Green and Seth Curry hit enough of their open looks.
• We had a “fuck you Westbrook” chant going on in the building. We also got “Westbrook sucks.”
• Every Red Sox fan who added to Sports Complex traffic should go right in the bagster. Total violation.
• There’s gotta be a better way to get people in and out of the stadiums. Takes 20 minutes for 10 cars to move trough the parking gates.

Sixers up 1-0. We’ll leave you with this on a Monday morning:

Shaq exposes Charles Barkley for trying to give analysis after falling asleep during first half of Sixers-Wizards game pic.twitter.com/e5Cwxxudc7

— Gifdsports (@gifdsports) May 23, 2021