Not much to say about Thursday night’s Sixers game.

The Jazz hit a bunch of shots. The Sixers couldn’t put the ball in a 10-foot wide hoop. Utah had their stars on the floor and Philly looked tired while once again playing without the $33 million dollar All Star, who continues to hold out.

Doc Rivers’ big takeaway from this one is that they escaped without injury:

“Get out healthy,” said Rivers after the 118-96 home loss. “Really, I mean, I just thought we had great looks, and couldn’t make a shot. Every 50/50 ball, you saw in the first half, and then it kind of got over, but every loose ball, any ball that it took energy to get to they got to. You could see how the game was going. The only thing I was kicking myself, I actually thought about not playing Joel (Embiid) in the second half. I didn’t see the energy, but the game was close enough to keep going and so it was easy to second-guess it now, but we’ve got to get some rest, we’ve got a game on Saturday.”

Indeed, the Sixers couldn’t make a shot. They finished 43% from the floor (38-88) and 18% from three (6-33). And the looks were decent enough. According to the NBA Stats data, the Sixers shot just 26-64 on field goals deemed “uncontested,” which amounts to barely over 40%. Utah shot 15-40 from three, which comes in right around the league average of 37.5%.

I’ve always liked this Utah team because the tend to compile shot charts that the analytics folks love. Last night they did shoot some midrange stuff, but they typically bomb from three and work the paint. They try to avoid the yellow area here:

Out of 91 shots, they only took five that were clearly in that midrange area. They added a few looks right on the edge of the paint, but not a ton.

“We couldn’t get into any rhythm out there, any flow of how we are going to play,” said Tobias Harris. “I think a big part of it was on the defensive end, not enough stops for us to get out into transition. Tough to win a game against a good team that’s playing well and makes shots when we didn’t have anything to come up with on the other end.”

“They made a lot of shots and we missed a lot,” Embiid added. “It was a rough night shooting the ball especially from three. When you play against a team like that you really don’t have any room for error and we missed a lot of shots tonight.”

The sky is certainly not falling, because the Sixers had major COVID issues and remain 7th in the Eastern Conference with a 14-12 record. They are two games out of third, so it’s clumpy in the east.

But the super-annoying thing is watching this team go out there, game after game, playing $33 million below the cap because Simmo the Savage continues his hold out, and Daryl Morey has yet to move him. It’s wearing a little thin, knowing that you’re playing without an All-Star and just trying to keep the ship steady until the best trade becomes available. It doesn’t mean Morey is playing this wrong, because he’s not, but good God is it annoying. It’s almost one of those things where you’re like “wake me up when they move Simmons,” and then all of the casuals who moved on to other stuff will come back around and rightfully return their attention to the Sixers.

It’s the regular season, it’s December, and it is what it is. Hopefully Morey decides to #DoTheDeal sooner rather than later, whatever deal that may be.