The Sixers were never in the game against the Denver Nuggets in a 124-96 loss that successfully convinced most Philadelphia sports fans to go to bed before halftime.
Here’s what I saw.
Why are you the way that you are?
Nick Nurse does not have a roster that he can win with against good teams right now, and any sane person would look at a matchup with Denver and come to that conclusion. I would also argue that most people would look at a league that is aggressively hunting corner threes and wonder why I was still playing a defense hellbent on selling out to defend the middle of the floor at the cost of conceding that exact corner three to every team and every player imaginable. And it’s not like those shots are the only threes the Sixers give up as a result of their help principles, either. When the Sixers can go through the proper rotations to cover the corner, most teams typically find a way to swing the ball to a shooter in space.
Denver doesn’t exactly need anyone’s help to brutalize you with their offense. The Nuggets boast the league’s No. 1 offense with a savant passer as the hub of the team, and with a much smaller roster than usual and Jokic able to pass out of basically any situation, the Sixers nonetheless decided to crash the middle and pray that they wouldn’t be punished for it. It will shock you to learn that even with foul trouble in the first half, Jokic had 10 assists without breaking a sweat in his first 15 minutes of action. They routinely sent a player to help on Jokic from one pass away in the strong corner, and I can’t imagine a more useless defensive strategy if you were trying to get your doors blown off.
The entire sales pitch for Nurse’s hiring rested on two things: championship pedigree and inventiveness. Here was a coach, it was said, who would bring in fresh ideas and experiment frequently and adapt as the moment warranted. Early on, I actually think that was true in Philly, but the deeper we get and the more they’ve actually needed flexibility, the less it appears we’ve seen it. The Sixers mostly set up the same way on defense, or otherwise shift to a zone if they need a change of pace. I know it seems dramatic to ask the team to shift basic fundamental principles, but the thing that sets you off is that they went through this exact nightmare last season. Dying the same way over and over again in a system that doesn’t suit the strengths of the remaining players is, well, a choice.
Not that the Sixers are doing well at the execution part of defense right now. Even their good defenders completely mailed it in for stretches of this one against Denver — VJ Edgecombe completely fell asleep on a second-quarter play that forced him to scramble on his closeout to the corner, fouling Cam Johnson for a four-point play opportunity. These guys had completely given up by the middle point of the second quarter, and there’s no scheme I’m aware of that would change the fact that Cam Payne will struggle to contribute in a three-guard look,
But perhaps it’s worth considering anything that could help the guys actually on the floor and not the theoretical reinforcements on the way in future games. A couple of wins against the destitute Nets and a middling Blazers team are not evidence in support of anything they’re trying to do (or not trying to do) schematically.
At least the offense is also bad!
In the shock of all shocks, the Sixers’ shooting-starved roster did not make a lot of threes and bogged down in half-court offense over and over again. Without supreme shotmaking from the guards (and Justin Edwards, to a lesser extent), they just have no hope of building a capable offense at the moment. Not enough shooting, not enough passing, not enough of almost anything.
The Sixers were going to need a hell of a VJ Edgecombe performance to keep pace with Denver’s offense, and they got a total stinkbomb on offense. He was 0/3 from deep at halftime and almost exclusively forced to settle for midrange jumpers and floaters otherwise, with almost none of those shots coming on “good process” possessions. Edgecombe took a lot of shots falling in one direction or another, to his side, toward the rim, or occasionally away from the basket. His best moments came, unsurprisingly, when he was able to square his shoulders and rise into a straight up and down jumper, bursting toward a spot and not waiting for the defense to get caught up.
I think his struggles were driven partly by his own hesitation. There were a handful of possessions where Edgecombe walked his way out of a decent look and then was forced to take a much tougher shot with someone draped all over him. Asking a rookie who seeks to play “the right way” to power through for what might have ultimately gone from a 3/12 night to a 4/22 performance isn’t easy, but by trying to keep passing options open, I think he only ended up hurting his chances to score. And you can’t really argue that foul trouble slowed him down, because Nurse left Edgecombe in this game to pick up four first-half fouls and only pulled him after his fifth with the game effectively over in the third quarter.
His poor night came within, you guessed it, adverse circumstances. The Nuggets barely pretended to guard two of the Sixers’ five guys on the floor for most of the game, with Jokic playing what was essentially basketball DH as Andre Drummond and Adem Bona were ignored whether they were in the dunker spot or the corner. Dominick Barlow’s presence on the floor had a similar effect, and the Nuggets embraced every jumper he and Trendon Watford took with open arms. Edgecombe didn’t get much of a lift from the expected contributors, either, with Edwards and Grimes combining to go 3/11 from deep, doing nothing to draw help away from the middle of the floor.
The trouble with failing to score against Denver’s pretty bad defense is that they will absolutely run you over on the break, with Jokic capable of hitting any outlet you’d like if you give him streaking targets against a scrambling defense. And that was exactly what happened, with the Nuggets running it up early and never looking back.
Other notes
— I am going to have to go back and watch the individual plays, but Cam Payne dribbled out of bounds and threw a ball out of bounds for effectively no reason on two different turnovers. He was 2/11 and submitted an absolutely mystifying performance.
— Pretty good Marjon Beauchamp game, all things considered.
— Joel Embiid never playing in Denver again would be very bad for the Sixers, and very bad for a cool individual battle with Jokic, but very funny to me personally.
