Instant observations: Sixers blow 24-point lead in backbreaking loss to Bulls

The Sixers opened with a 45-point quarter against the Bulls and still managed to choke away the game in a disappointing 113-111 loss in Chicago. Tyrese Maxey scored 39 points for the 76ers in a losing effort.

Here’s what I saw.

A Joel Embiid meltdown

The first half was perhaps the best example of how the Sixers can lean into their new, up-tempo identity with Joel Embiid blending right in. He had an excellent start to this game, 18 points at halftime to trail only Tyrese Maxey, and he was an asset to every player he shared the floor with.

Although VJ Edgecombe struggled to get going from inside the arc on Tuesday, he was given far more opportunities to initiate offense in actions involving the big man, leveraging Embiid’s size and screen setting to find separation on the perimeter. Rather than leaning almost exclusively on Maxey/Embiid actions that they can run in their sleep, Nick Nurse used Embiid as a connector for a wide variety of perimeter players. And unlike in some other appearances this year, there was little time spent on slow-developing isolations for Embiid. He made quick decisions as both a scorer and passer, keeping the offense flowing in both the halfcourt and transition.

That seemed to influence the rest of the group. In his first minutes since last December, Jared McCain had several noteworthy moments where he could have hunted his own shot and opted to move the ball in pursuit of an even better opportunity. It can be tempting to force a few shots up to find yourself again after a long layoff, but McCain went along with the rest of them, even dropping off an assist to Embiid in a semi-transition the coaches will probably spotlight in a future film session.

It was nowhere near as fluid in the second half, which is to say it was a complete disaster. Embiid helped them give away this game on multiple fronts.

In the third, Embiid played far too loosely, attempting some audacious moves and passes as the Sixers flirted with pushing the lead to 25 points or more, and those lost possessions on turnovers helped Chicago creep back into the game. His well-publicized minute limit also destroyed whatever flow they had left when he came back in the fourth. After Nick Nurse pulled him midway through the third, Embiid effectively sat for an entire quarter’s worth of basketball before he made his return, and the offense was a slow, creaking mess as he tried to beat Vucevic with his face-up game on back-to-back possessions after checking in. It got even worse in crunch time, with Embiid throwing up almost nothing but fadeaway jumpers, unable to move Vucevic on the block.

Frankly, he just has to be better as a decision-maker and scorer to justify anything close to the volume of touches he got in the second half. It’s one thing to offer broader context for issues that have to do with his mobility and explosiveness, products of his body betraying him. But he is too smart a basketball player to make excuses for mechanical decision-making and juvenile turnovers, and they have enough options on the floor that we don’t have to justify force-feeding him during an ice-cold second half.

He was not the only questionable decision-maker for Philadelphia as the game came down to the final minutes. In a three-point game with 90 seconds left, Maxey was, for some unknown reason, trying to push the pace and force contested runners in transition against a Bulls team swarming on his shot. Their perimeter leader took his own head-scratching shots late, including a pull-up jumper that never came close to going in on the game’s most important possession. Elsewhere, VJ Edgecombe had some poor rookie turnovers, Quentin Grimes played headless chicken basketball, and on the bench, I am not sure exactly why Nurse kept feeding Embiid as it became clear he had absolutely nothing going. The offensive rhythm they had as a group basically evaporated after the first half, and I won’t pin all of it on one guy.

(And for whatever it’s worth, he still managed to have a positive plus/minus, which should tell you how much of a collective effort this choke job was.)

Defensively, Embiid appears to be finding himself somewhat, though I remain concerned about his issues in space. He has shown off more noteworthy vertical explosion in recent games and had a couple of blocks in the first half against Chicago, offering resistance around their basket. If Philadelphia gets the defensive buy-in they had from their perimeter players vs. the Bulls and improving backline defense from the big man, look out.

But I think the days of justifying the “spam Joel” offense should be well and truly behind us at this point. It’s not good process, and it was a key cog in their second loss of the year.

An unbelievable first quarter

The first quarter of Tuesday night’s game is one of the best quarters of Sixers basketball I can remember watching, and I have watched a ton of these bad boys over the years. Matched up with another 5-1 team in the middle of their brief road trip, it sure felt like they wanted to prove a point against a team currently battling them for the top spot in the Eastern Conference. Too bad the rest of the game happened!

It was a particularly dominant quarter from beyond, with the Sixers knocking down eight threes before the first-quarter horn sounded, but the process behind those makes was just as exciting. After Philadelphia got off to a hot start, the Bulls briefly tried to throw a zone look to get them out of rhythm. They tore that apart in an instant — Quentin Grimes threw the ball to Embiid in the middle of the zone, Embiid fired a pass out of the double to Grimes, and Grimes hit a quick swing pass to Tyrese Maxey, who canned a shot so open he could have been in an empty gym. For anyone who has suffered through years of brutal zone offense in Philadelphia, it was a sight to behold, and a sign of how their personnel has changed for the better.

Even without the high-level shotmaking, I would have been encouraged by their start on nothing more than pure energy. Bolstered by McCain’s return to the floor, it felt like each individual player played just a little bit harder than normal on defense. The Sixers made second and third rotations on a lot of possessions, so even when the Bulls ended up scoring the ball, you felt better about how hard they had to work to get to that moment. Kelly Oubre lived a bit too dangerously and found himself in early foul trouble, but his activity as an off-ball disruptor felt worth that trade-off, as Oubre forced a couple of Bulls turnovers to get Philadelphia out and running.

The star of the show, of course, was Tyrese Maxey. The birthday boy turned 25 years old on Tuesday, and in a season already filled with electric offensive moments, he turned in perhaps his best half of the year. Chicago had no idea how to cope with Maxey’s combination of speed and shooting, and it has almost felt like Maxey is getting faster and faster with each passing game, torching closeouts and punishing leaning defenders for thinking they can overplay him as a shooter. The problem for opposing teams is that they have to overplay him as a shooter because Maxey is a threat to shoot from any spot after he crosses the half-court line. The Bulls found that out the hard way.

While Maxey is largely taking the same shots as he always has, they have done a good job of manufacturing those attempts with off-ball movement. At least two or three times in Tuesday’s game, Maxey converted runners that only required one or two dribbles after he caught the ball at the top of the arc, coming off of screens already a step or two ahead of his man. I like the average runner for Maxey, but I love those shots, where you get all the benefits of his spectacular touch while easing how difficult it is to create the shot.

Developing defensive chemistry

This group is not going to challenge for any defensive records regardless of how Embiid looks, but I thought Tuesday showed the outline of a team that can be good enough defensively to make real noise in the playoffs. They had more second-effort and third-effort rotations in a single half against the Bulls than I think they had in the previous six games combined.

You can also see sequences where they are learning how to play with one another and executing on-the-fly communication that can take a while to develop. Near the end of the first half, Edgecombe ended up on Nikola Vucevic as the veteran big man rolled to the hoop out of a ball screen, and before the Bulls had a chance to hit the mismatch, Trendon Watford had stepped in for a “scram” switch that passed Edgecombe off to his man in the corner. From there, the other Sixers made the proper rotations and eventually forced a contested jumper for Chicago, a big win out of that spot.

Other notes

— Eventually, the Sixers are going to have to play good third quarters.

— VJ Edgecombe could not buy a call to save his life in this game, and he appeared to be visibly frustrated about it as the game got tight early in the fourth quarter. I loved that he was able to channel that frustration into some awesome effort plays, including one notable sequence where he dove to the floor for a loose ball that turned into a Kelly Oubre dunk on the fast break.

He looked a lot more like a rookie in this game, and credit to the Bulls for getting him sped up during his attempts to score inside the arc. And yet Edgecombe still made a big impact on this game, earning his first double-digit rebound game with a maniacal approach to the glass. Heck of a player.

— Being able to sit Quentin Grimes down and stop him from doing whatever he was up to for most of the second half will be a terrific benefit of getting Paul George back in the lineup. Instant offense guards aren’t going to have it every night, and Grimes was way too wild against the Bulls.

— Pretty rough start for Jared McCain, but understandable in the circumstances. We’ll see if he gets a chance to play in the back-to-back.