The Blueprint: How The Sixers Can Survive Without Embiid Vs. The Heat

Beating the Miami Heat was never going to be an easy task with a fully healthy Embiid. With a partially absent, partially hampered Embiid, you’re going to need a hell of a game plan in order to compete.

Mike O’Connor is the best O’Connor in basketball writing. Previously of The Athletic, you can find Mike on Twitter @MOConnor_NBA. Mike’s writing is brought to you by Body Bio, supplements based on science, focusing on your gut and brain health. Get 20% off E-Lyte and all Body Bio products with promo code RTRS20 at Body Bio’s website.

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With the Sixers’ second round series against the Miami Heat tipping off tomorrow, there is still so much we don’t know in terms of what to expect. Will Joel Embiid be back at any point in this series? If he does return, how much can he realistically give them, with a masked-up face, a wrapped thumb, and an inevitable loss of rhythm that comes with missing a week of games?

Beating the Miami Heat was never going to be an easy task with a fully healthy Embiid. With a partially absent, partially hampered Embiid, you’re going to need a hell of a game plan in order to compete. 

The good news: Doc Rivers has done some of his best coaching this year while missing his best players. The Sixers bested this same Heat team last month while missing Embiid and James Harden, and also pulled off a stunning upset of the Grizzlies in January without Embiid.

The Sixers are most certainly underdogs here, but the series is far from an afterthought. If they can luck into one scrappy win in Miami, and can get a mostly healthy Embiid back in Game 3, the series will have life. 

Here are a few key things that they’ll need to rely on in order to steal a game or two without Embiid. 

Let Harden attack in pick and roll more so than isolation

One way of the many similarities between this Miami team and the Raptors is that both teams allow quite a few 3-point attempts. The Heat, in fact, lead the league in opponent 3-point attempt frequency, whereas the Raptors are only ninth. The Raptors allow the most corner 3s in the league, and Miami allows the 3rd most.

Point being: this is another ultra-aggressive defense that is going to send quite a bit of help off the ball. For that reason, if I’m Doc Rivers, I don’t want the offense relying solely on the Harden mismatch-hunting show. I want to involve Harden in pick and rolls with bigs, and let him get downhill to fling cross-court passes to shooters like he did in the first few games against Toronto. Whenever any Sixer gets downhill, the Heat will be sending help from the corners quite aggressively, and Harden will be well-equipped to punish that.

The Sixers cannot fall into the trap of thinking that this needs to now become the Harden mismatch-hunting show, like in his later Houston days. The Heat just absolutely tortured Trae Young as he tried to play that style against them. There are no good answers against this defense, but your best chance at beating them is to get downhill, get them rotating, and trust shooters to hit shots – it is the only thing that they willingly give up. 

It is possible that Miami dials back its help a bit for the exact reason that they saw Harden carving up that coverage against Toronto. But as we saw against Toronto, these types of teams will never fully divert from their schemes, and the key is to take advantage of the openings they allow.

If the Heat do go all-in on making Harden beat them as a scorer, expect him to hunt Tyler Herro, Duncan Robinson, or Dewayne Dedmon whenever they are in the game. Even in that scenario, though, I’d expect quite a bit of off-ball help to come in whenever Harden gets past them, and the plan should remain the same – find the open shooters, as they did against Toronto, and trust them to make shots. 

Make Georges Niang the backup center (behind Paul Reed)

Look, before you laugh, you got any better ideas? 

Here is my rationale: as I mentioned above, this Miami team is ultra-aggressive at sending help off the ball. Having Niang in the game at backup center would allow the Sixers to stretch that defense to its limits, run pick and pops for Harden and Maxey, and take advantage of the one thing Miami allows – open 3s. 

Whereas you could never have gotten away with this against Toronto, as they’re an excellent offensive rebounding team, the Heat are merely average on the offensive boards, so it becomes somewhat tenable. The defense will be atrocious, and Niang will get cooked on switches, but ask yourself: how much worse can he be than Deandre Jordan?

Any time you are undermanned and going up against a superior opponent, you’re going to have to get a bit gimmicky. If Reed can stay out of foul trouble long enough to play 30+ minutes*, they should match Niang’s center minutes with whoever Miami has out there when Adebayo is off the floor – Dedmon or P.J. Tucker.

It’s this simple: you can only play the guys who are playable, and Jordan and Paul Millsap are unplayable. Full stop.

*I cannot believe that is a sentence I just wrote about a second round playoff series.

Keep Matisse Thybulle on a short leash, with Furkan Korkmaz waiting in the wings

Thybulle is the worst offensive player in the league, and his defensive play style worries me in the playoffs – especially against the likes of Jimmy Butler, who is an expert at drawing ticky-tack fouls. I would be extremely cautious about giving Thybulle extended minutes against this team.

Getting a good Thybulle stretch would be incredible; they could sure use it given that they’re missing their defensive anchor. But everything that I’ve laid out in terms of what Miami’s defensive schemes are does not bode well for Thybulle being able to hide comfortably on offense. Thybulle will single-handedly crunch the spacing, and will make it difficult for Harden and Maxey to get to the rim in downhill situations. 

In his stead, I would give Korkmaz and Shake Milton plenty of run. Both of those guys have gravity as shooters, and Milton in particular can provide a bit of additional pop off the dribble. 

A good Matisse Thybulle stretch can swing the tide of a game, but a bad Matisse Thybulle stretch can do so in the opposite direction. With the way he’s been playing, plus the matchup dynamics at play, I would be hesitant to use him as anything other than a break-in-case-of-emergency for a Butler explosion. 

Do not hesitate to break out the zone defense 

As I mentioned, you can’t hesitate to get gimmicky in this series, though I’m not sure you could call the zone a gimmick any longer. It was legitimately useful against the Raptors, and could prove the same against the Heat.

The Heat have more shooting than Toronto, but I would use the zone to force the Heat to play their strong shooting lineups in order to get favorable defensive matchups. That would likely entail Herro and Duncan Robinson being out there together, and P.J. Tucker likely to the bench. 

In their series against the Hawks, the Heat’s most-used lineup was their starters – Kyle Lowry, Max Strus, Butler, Tucker, and Adebayo. That’s a lineup with one non-shooter (Adebayo), one extremely iffy shooter (Butler), and one good, but hesitant shooter (Tucker). That lineup was excellent offensively against Atlanta, but would have a tougher time against a decent zone. If I’m Doc Rivers, I would lean on that zone pretty heavily if Butler and Herro get going, or if Miami’s pick and roll attack proves to be too much for Reed and the other centers.

My pick

If Embiid were fully healthy, I would feel extremely confident picking Sixers in six. I said as much on last Wednesday’s Ricky prior to finding out about Embiid’s thumb injury. I still don’t totally fear Miami, but with Embiid’s injuries, I’m going to make the inverse pick – Heat in six. I struggle to see the Sixers stealing one in Miami, even with the gimmicks I outlined, and even if the big fella returns in Game 3, winning four out of five games with an out-of-rhythm and already limited Embiid just feels impossible. 

If they split in Miami, they’ll have a chance. I simply do not believe in the Heat at the level that the national media appears to – they don’t have enough shot creation, they ranked only 11th in half court offense this season, they have some injuries themselves, and the Sixers have the playmaking and shooting to counter their defensive schemes. I’m not ready to write this one off, but I have to lean Miami in hopes of being proven wrong.