Pros and Cons: Sixers vs. Jazz
But then what about our 6MOY bets?
Adam Aaronson, whose legal name is Sixers Adam (@SixersAdam on Twitter), covers the Sixers for The Rights To Ricky Sanchez. He has been legally banned from covering the team in person, and when that ban was set to be lifted, Covid-19 struck. He believes cantaloupe is the best food in existence, and is brought to you by the Official Realtor of The Process, Adam Ksebe.
Welcome back to the late night Sixers experience. The Sixers kicked off their slate of games on the west coast with a matchup against last year’s best regular season team, the Utah Jazz. Here’s what’s on my mind tonight:
Pro: Tyrese Maxey continues his ascension -- what’s next?
There has been little to enjoy from the Sixers during their extended Joel Embiid-less skid. However, there has been one shining positive, and that is the continued excellent play of Maxey.
Maxey is becoming a very good scorer, period. Not a good scorer for a young guard, not a good scorer for a second-year player, just a good scorer. Considering his lack of experience as a point guard, what he’s doing right now is pretty astounding.
Maxey’s established his signature package of layups and floaters -- no matter where he is relative to the hoop, and no matter what defense is being played, if he gets near the rim, there’s a very good chance the shot is going in. Beyond just his driving ability, Maxey has also continued to flourish in the mid-range game.
The next step for Maxey is gaining more confidence as a three-point shooter. Up until recently, he would only occasionally take a spot-up three. In the last few weeks, he’s become more comfortable letting it fly not only off the catch, but off the dribble. Maxey continuing to make progress from beyond the arc would be massive for his development as a lead guard.Â
Con: Sixers dominated by Utah’s size
The Jazz set the tone early on tonight, dominating the Sixers with their size, strength and physicality. It all starts, of course, with Rudy Gobert, at the center of everything Utah does. But it wasn’t just him -- even his backup, Hassan Whiteside, was especially effective against this small Sixers team.
Andre Drummond gives the Sixers some size down low, enough to at least contend with Gobert, but he had a rough night, and when he isn’t on the floor, the options are pretty grim.Â
Georges Niang was the team’s backup center tonight, as Doc Rivers showed that his faith in Niang against someone nearly half a foot taller than him is greater than his faith in Paul Reed.Â
When Niang at the five clearly was not sustainable defensively, Rivers went to rookie Charles Bassey, who has the size to theoretically contend with Gobert, but not the ability to actually do so.
The Sixers have yet to find an identity without Embiid. That journey continued to be fruitless tonight.
Con: Seth Curry missing Embiid
It goes without saying that every Sixer is negatively impacted by the absence of Embiid. But I would argue nobody experiences more difficulty without the big man than Seth Curry.Â
Over the last handful of games, Curry has had considerable trouble finding good looks. His shooting numbers since Embiid went out have been very poor, and tonight was another rough showing for him.
We always discuss how shooters help enable Embiid, but what we should discuss just as much is how Embiid helps shooters. Having an elite post-up big man, likely the best post-up scorer in the entire NBA, provides so much gravity for players like Curry, Danny Green, and even Tobias Harris, with which they can operate with much less pressure on them.
Curry in particular misses Embiid because of the frequency with which he typically gets good looks thanks to two-man actions with Embiid -- most commonly dribble hand-offs and pick-and-rolls.Â
Curry was always going to regress to the mean at some point -- the blazing rate at which he was making shots was never sustainable -- but he should have a much easier time scoring once Embiid returns.