The Sixers lost their first game out of the All-Star break in a 117-107 battle against the Atlanta Hawks, dropping their third straight game with Joel Embiid on the bench. Tyrese Maxey scored 27 points, and VJ Edgecombe added 20 points and nine rebounds to lead the way for Philly in the loss.

Here’s what I saw.

The Sixers have to make life easier for Maxey

If you were hoping the All-Star break would be a cure-all for Tyrese Maxey and the Sixers, I regret to inform you that a few days off did not change the coverages he’s facing, and the need to get another star on the floor. It is tough sledding for Maxey without Joel Embiid, and he badly needs the big man on the floor to take some pressure off him as their primary option.

It was Maxey’s inside-the-arc struggles that featured in the first half of Thursday’s game, with Maxey 2/8 on twos at halftime and very loudly missing a few of those, tossing one up into the underside of the rim as he struggled to control his pace. The Hawks have some great guard defenders on their roster, most notably Dyson Daniels and Nickeil Alexander-Walker. Still, they also lack the rim protection to consistently bother you around the basket if you can get past that first line of defense. Maxey did well enough to break through the first level, but he didn’t create enough separation for clean looks and struggled to finish under duress at the hoop. Perhaps that will turn into another argument about the whistle he gets, but it felt like the Hawks did a good job of playing physical without fouling him.

Structural issues are holding him back right now that need to be accounted for. The Sixers are playing multiple non-shooters in almost every lineup they put on the floor, with Paul George’s absence looming large there. There are tons of possessions where I think Maxey is making the correct basketball play, and it’s not that the Sixers don’t capitalize so much as they fail to even try.

As much as I like Trendon Watford’s creativity as a passer, a lot of questions remain about his fit within a guard-heavy team that asks him to do a lot of his work off the ball. With the Hawks often trapping Maxey and Watford serving as the release valve from one pass away, Atlanta was able to get Maxey off the ball and slowly slide into place in front of Watford, with Watford record scratching several possessions that should have been pretty easy three-point attempts. This is one of the side effects of deciding that you were comfortable moving McCain at the deadline — if he did nothing else, McCain was willing to fire if an open three came his way.

But the task before Maxey remains the same: Beat whatever coverage you’re facing and find ways to win. He began to come alive in the third quarter, aided by an effort to get him rolling with off-ball actions. The highlight of the third quarter came with Maxey cutting off-ball, receiving a pass from Andre Drummond with enough runway to rise up and punch one on the entire Hawks team at the summit:

In the end, he didn’t have enough, and he doesn’t deserve to be absolved of blame. But it’s tough sledding out there right now.

UGLY first half defense

The story of the first half was inarguably Philadelphia failing to defend without fouling. Half of the rotation was in foul trouble at halftime, with VJ Edgecombe (3), Quentin Grimes (3), Adem Bona (2), Jabari Walker (2), and Kelly Oubre (2) all having to navigate self-created problems.

Many of these fouls were about failures at the point of attack, with the Sixers completely unable to prevent the Hawks from getting into the paint. Their options once the initial coverage broke down were to swarm the ballhandler, leading to a lot of drop-off assists for Johnson, McCollum, and the rest of the game, or for the Sixers to swing wildly at the ball and mostly miss. You could argue the Sixers weren’t punished enough, with Johnson and Hawks head coach Quin Snyder each barking at the officials for missed calls in the first half.

At halftime, the Hawks were 20/25 from three free-throw line. They didn’t play the cleanest game on the other end of the floor, with the Sixers getting 15 charity stripe attempts of their own, but at least they did a slightly better job of distributing their fouls around their rotation.

The more disappointing feature was Philadelphia’s transition defense, because at least their half-court sets featured second efforts and rotations that forced the Hawks to recycle the play here and there. With Tyrese Maxey running cold and Edgecombe parked on the bench late in the first half, the Hawks were able to get out and run with very little resistance, making up for what was otherwise a brutal shooting performance. Atlanta’s 21 fast-break points in the first half are a credit to Johnson’s ability to attack in open spaces and their commitment to running as a group, but the Sixers did a poor job with the fundamentals as usual, often letting Atlanta run right down the middle of the floor with minimal resistance. My kingdom for a team that will stop the ball at the free-throw line.

A wild night for VJ Edgecombe

This had all the makings of a big-time performance for VJ Edgecombe if we were judging only on the first five minutes. He hit a beautiful pull-up two, crossed up Dyson Daniels for a teardrop runner plus the foul, and hit a three to get his early points total up to eight points. But the next two quarters were largely defined by two things: foul trouble and careless play with the basketball.

Oh, and I guess there was this buzzer-beater to close out the first quarter, which was absolutely sick:

Edgecombe had some disastrous giveaways running the Sixers from the point of attack, and one of his worst turnovers of the year on an inbounds pass he threw half-blind into a crowd of players who weren’t paying attention. He has mostly avoided the classic “rookie mistakes” that plague young players in major roles, but you could see in this game why the Sixers wanted to bring on someone like Cam Payne to take a bit of responsibility off of his plate.

His poor decision-making wasn’t limited to on-ball exploits, with Edgecombe watching a good chunk of this game from the bench due to fouls. A couple were genuine 50/50 plays he will feel he deserved better from, but his third foul of the first half was a howler, with Edgecombe offering a two-hand shove to the back of a Hawks player for no good reason.

That said, the upside of games without Embiid and George is that Edgecombe gets to go through all that and still try to fight his way through it as a scorer rather than deferring to the vets. Edgecombe was their most consistent scoring option in the fourth quarter, showing a lot of patience from the midrange as he waited out Alexander-Walker to get a few clean looks off. His effort as a rebounder has been outstanding in recent weeks, with Edgecombe nearly producing a double-double with his active pursuit of the basketball.

I think this is one I’ll live with, as it was a return to form as a scorer with uncharacteristic mistakes made elsewhere. But this is the cost of doing business when a rookie is one of your most important players on the floor.

Other notes

— It’s hard to accept the Sixers’ stated premise that there was no one available to help their team when you watch Jock Landale, who was available for almost free, knocking down threes and forcing Sixers fouls with his activity on the glass. They are within their right to believe the Jared McCain trade made sense on a pure value basis, but I do not buy the idea that they couldn’t do anything to make the team better in the trade market before the deadline. It’s a very silly claim.

— Quentin Grimes’ struggles have depressed Philadelphia’s second unit quite a bit, with his scoring the only reliable punch they’ve gotten from the bench all season. When he’s unable to get it going, the Sixers are in rough shape, to the point that Tyrese Maxey was pushing for Grimes to hunt more shots and get more aggressive heading into the All-Star break. Thursday featured a nice first half for him, with Grimes hitting a couple of tough movement threes to open his account, but foul trouble disrupted his rhythm, and he didn’t offer a ton more from there. The behind-the-back pass turnover he committed from the baseline is up there with any of his silly ass giveaways from this season.

— This may have been the most whistle-happy crew I’ve seen in the league this season. We even got a rare double lane violation to force a jump ball early in the fourth quarter.

— The Sixers have gotten a lot more “bad Kelly” out of Oubre in recent weeks, and I thought his decision-making was particularly awful in this one. Tunnel vision on most of his drives and transition attempts. They have an interesting decision looming with him this summer…