Kelly Oubre Jr. Going to the Rim Is the One Thing the Sixers Can Count On

While the Sixers just try to cobble together March innings, Oubre's rack-attacking has somehow become their lone source of consistency.

As they tend to do with the Philadelphia 76ers right now, the good vibes lasted for exactly one game. Their feel-good Sunday win in Dallas was followed by the feel-bad news that our number-one boy Tyrese Maxey had been diagnosed with a delayed concussion -- let's definitely not ask any follow-up questions there! -- and then Tuesday night's feel-even-worse collapse in Brooklyn. The Sixers were up eight in the fourth quarter, but their 18th cha-cha-slide foot foul on a three-point attempt of the night swung the game's momentum, and they were subsequently driven to death by a parade of Dennis Schröeder layups. Not the way I would personally choose to go out. 

There's just not a lot the Sixers can count on right now. Not with Joel Embiid still on the don't-call-us-we'll-call-you return-from-injury timeline, not with Maxey's precious little head still ringin' like the Friday soundtrack, not with Tobias Harris ping-ponging between Bad Tobias, Good Tobias and Tobias Tobias. Kyle Lowry and Nic Batum are the adults in the room, but some nights Lowry needs a Flight Squad trampoline to get to the rim and some nights Batum's best chance of seeing the ball go in the basket is if he shoots directly from the sidelines while in-bounding. Buddy Hield looks like rookie Evan Turner any time he tries to get south of the three-point line. Ricky Council IV might've just been a fictional character invented by a listener email. The big man rotation currently consists of inequal amounts of Mo Bamba, BBall Paul, and hey who says we need big men anyway. It's true figuratively as well as literally: Right now, this is a team without a center. 

But as bad as things can get, and as good as things can get, and as strange as things can get, there's one thing both we and the Sixers can be absolutely sure of: Kelly Oubre Jr. is gonna get to the fucking rim. 

I've swung wildly on the Oubre experience from one stretch to another this Sixers season. I couldn't believe how much I loved him the first month -- his athleticism, his tenacity, his defense, his DUNKS. When his hit-and-run incident happened this November, I was about ready to go both full Sixers Twitter Sleuth and full Sixers Twitter Vigilante mode to properly avenge him -- and then once shit got weird there, I was even readier to fully pivot to well who's to say what actually happened really mode. I started souring on him in January -- the bad habits piled up in the midst of Joel's 30 and 10 run, as Oubre began getting a little lax on defense and bricking an entire Boathouse Row on offense. And as the Hospital Sixers fully took over at the turn of February, and Oubre started playing 40 minutes a night, I was losing my patience with him faster than any Sixer since Playoff DeAndre Jordan. I could not take any more of the tunnel vision offense, the miscommunication defense, the feeling of absolutely nothing being offered beyond his already paltry box score numbers. 

And yet throughout it all, Oubre got to the rim. As bad as things were looking for him on offense, as many shots as he missed from the perimeter, as many opportunities for other, better shooters he ignored in favor of his own single-minded pursuits, he always got to the goddamn rim. He'd be in the midst of the most hopeless-looking drive you've ever seen -- with the Sixers down 24 in the third, looking sure to be down 26 one transition possession later -- and then all of a sudden, he'd get that lefty scoop up and in. Then next time, an even uglier drive, and a whistle: two free throws, he'd make one. Then next time, he'd come crashing in and just fucking dunk it, to the thunderous approval of Mike Guys everywhere. This all probably cut the Sixers' deficit from 24 to about 21, and then the next time down he'd clang an open three and begin a 7-0 run the other way in the next 60 seconds. But for a brief minute, order was restored. The Sixers had a plan. They had a bread-and-butter offense. They had an innings eater, a long man. They had a guy we could count on. 

I still hated it a lot of the time. It was hideous business, with absolutely none of the grace of an Embiid elbow pull-up, the electricity of a Maxey step-back three, even the satisfaction of a Tobias Daddy Touch Time mid-ranger. It was effective in its brute force, but it did not seem to be the sort of effectiveness that winning basketball was ever actually built on. But as the Sixers have played more competitive ball again the past few weeks, I must admit, I have come to appreciate how as inert as the Sixers' half-court attack can get -- and that thing can really get damn near paralytic, especially without Joel -- there's always the Break Offense in Case of Emergency option of giving Oubre the ball and just pointing at the big round orange steel rod. It might've very well saved the game against Dallas; without Oubre breaking the Sixers out of their scoreless slump with his dunk and two short jumpers in the third, there's no way we coulda gotten enough separation to keep the Mavs at bay during our inevitable late-game collapse. 

Even on Tuesday, Kelly's relentlessness as an attacker nearly carried us in Brooklyn without Embiid or Maxey, keeping the Nets at arm's length for most of the second half and nearly getting us back in the game in the final minute after we'd started letting go of the rope. He's even gotten -- dare we say it -- a little bit better as a playmaker, serving as a connector on some absolutely enormous buckets late in Dallas, and getting his fourth assist in Brooklyn with nine minutes left on a feed to KJ Martin wide open under the basket. He got stuck on four from there of course, because apparently the only way we will ever see a five-assist Oubre game is as a plot device on Season Five of Stranger Things. But combine that with 30 total points, with decent 2-5 shooting from deep, 6-8 from the line and just one turnover, and it all resulted in maybe the most well-rounded offensive game of Oubre's Sixers tenure. 

Is Tyrese Maxey Becoming a Good Defender?

I'm not counting on that to happen again too often, though. I'm not really counting on much of anything with Oubre, except for him to do the thing that he was put on God's green hardwood to do: Lock in on that fucker sitting 10 feet above the baseline, and then attack it like it was a second straight veteran's minimum contract offer. His defensive effort will come and go, his kiss-blowing will oscillate between funny and insufferable, even his new Cowboy Kelly thing will inevitably lose its charm at some point. But as long as he goes to the rim in a way that no defense ever seems equipped to properly deny, he will have utility for a team in desperate need of anything even remotely resembling consistency. It may not lead to much winning, or even much watchable ball, but it'll get us through the sixth and seventh innings of this endless regular season until the real relief is finally ready to come out of the bullpen. 

Andrew Unterberger writes for The Rights To Ricky Sanchez, as part of the 'If Not, Pick Will Convey As Two Second-Rounders' section of the site. You can follow Andrew on Twitter @AUGetoffmygold and can also read him at Billboard. 

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