Pros and Cons: Sixers vs. Hawks
Pros and Cons: Sixers vs. Hawks
The team that ended last year’s season was back.
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.
Who doesn’t love a chance for revenge? The Sixers hosted the Atlanta Hawks tonight, their first matchup against the Trae Young-led team since they knocked the Sixers out of the playoffs last season. Here’s what stood out to me tonight:
Pro: Tobias Harris and Tyrese Maxey launching from deep
Ever since Harris arrived in Philadelphia, I have believed that he simply does not shoot three-pointers at a high enough clip. For a shooter as capable and versatile as he is, he frequents the mid-range game a bit too much.
Ditto for Maxey. While he is certainly not the shooter that Harris is, his willingness to fire away is equally important. As the team’s primary pick-and-roll ball-handler, Maxey must convince defenses that they can’t go under every screen.
Tonight, both Harris and Maxey were ready, willing and able to get up more shots from beyond the arc. With Harris, it’s about adding decisiveness and an additional dimension to both starting and second unit lineups. Maxey’s emergence as a shooter would not only change the way teams defend Sixers pick-and-rolls, but also improve the team’s spacing around Joel Embiid in half-court offense.
Con: Sixers get crushed on the glass
It’s hard to even find one negative aspect of this game, as the Sixers looked like their best selves on both ends of the floor.
There was one area, though, where they struggled, and that was in the rebounding column. For a team that plays such a physical brand of basketball and boasts a roster with several good rebounders, it was a bit surprising to see them be dominated on the boards the way they were.
I’m not particularly concerned about this being a trend moving forward, though it did keep the Hawks in the game for a lot longer than they should have been tonight.
Pro: Maxey and co. limit Young
The matchup everyone’s eyes were on was Maxey getting a crack at defending Young, a brilliant, multi-faceted offensive engineer who picks apart defenses with ease. With Ben Simmons not around, there was no obvious defender in the starting lineup. But given Danny Green’s questionable lateral quickness and his difficulty defending Young in last year’s playoffs, Maxey got the nod. When Maxey was off the floor, it was Matisse Thybulle who got the reps against Young. And Thybulle put in a typical Thybulle performance, making several outrageous defensive plays, many of which sparked scores in transition.
All in all, the Sixers did a great job defending Young. Led by Maxey, the Sixers were able to contain him to 5-16 shooting. Aside from a few tough whistles on Maxey, the Sixers did everything they could to keep Atlanta’s heliocentric offense in check.
Tonight was the Sixers’ best defensive performance of the season, and it all started at the head of the snake.