That was hard to watch. An excruciating viewing experience.
The Sixers looked atrocious for 2.5 quarters on Wednesday night, then clawed all the way back to tie the game late in the fourth, only to lose anyway. They snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.
It was a game they should have won. Miami came to town minus Jimmy Butler, Bam Adebayo, and Tyler Herro, who just so happen to be their top three scorers. Seriously. Between the three of them, it’s more than 61 PPG absent from the lineup. Philly ran out a starting five of Joel Embiid, Tobias Harris, Matisse Thybulle, Seth Curry, and Tyrese Maxey and still couldn’t get the job done, while Gabe Vincent transformed into Ray Allen in a 26-point effort. Duncan Robinson looked like prime Detlef Schrempf at times and Miami even got contributions off the bench from Max Strus and some guy named Omer Yurtseven.
Here’s the final shot:
Blah. You go quick there if you think Miami is gonna foul, but regardless, Doc seems to want to close through Embiid and it’s rough to see Curry standing there in the corner as a bystander. Same with Harris, who hit a big three in the fourth quarter. Sometimes you gotta find the hot hand and scheme to that guy.
Some thoughts, in no real order:
Some quotes for your reading displeasure, first Doc Rivers on how to play against the zone:
“Ball movement and attacks. Like we’ve been very good against zone, and we prepared for it and then tonight like the ball just stayed on the outside. You got to get into the paint, it is no different in the second half when they ran zone and all of a sudden we got everything we wanted, you know. It was just disappointing so that was it. We got every shot we wanted in the second half running the same stuff. We didn’t change the offense, we ran the same stuff. The difference was we didn’t settle, we didn’t hold the ball and we went downhill, and in the first half, I didn’t know what that was, we didn’t do it. And then you also have to post Joel Embiid more and I thought early on we were doing that and then we got away from it.”
Tyrese Maxey on attacking the zone:
“We just had to figure it out and they have a tricky zone, it’s not a traditional two-three it’s a little match-up and they’re just flying around so we’re trying to post the ball a little bit and Coach Doc came in at halftime and kinda in the second quarter and was just saying just drop the zone if you can get into the gap, get into the gap but then spread out for threes and then we can kick out one more from there.”
And Erik Spoelstra, also on playing zone:
“It just depends on what’s needed at the time. You know, we do play a zone, we don’t play it every game, we don’t play it every situation. If it lifts up in the first half we probably wouldn’t have played it as much, but we knew coming into this to not necessarily foul and get put in the bonus and play in retreat mode. But that may be something we have to go through a little bit tactically; we ended up having some success. We wanted to do it a little bit more. Fortunately, we were able to get some stops.”
This isn’t difficult stuff to figure out. You attack the gaps in the zone, try to collapse while playing inside/out. Set some angled ball screens for Tyrese Maxey, and swing the ball faster than they swung it last night. To their credit, they figured it out, but it took too long to get there and so you end up with a bad loss after playing just 1.5 quarters of decent basketball.