Jaylen Brown’s big rematch against Jayson Tatum and the Boston Celtics was a false start, dead before it ever had a chance to pick up any real steam.
Brown picked up two personal fouls in the first five minutes and change of play. After Brown nearly picked up his third foul with an off-arm to the face of Jordan Walsh on the very next possession, head coach Nick Nurse’s hand was forced, and Brown went to the bench with the Sixers down 23-16, and Brown himself shooting just 1-3 with two turnovers during his limited first quarter run.
“Foul trouble kinda took me out of my rhythm a little bit. I had to sit for a while,” Brown said after finishing with just 13 points on 4-9 shooting. “We didn’t execute as well as they did, and that was the story of the game.
“Credit to Jayson [Tatum], he played well tonight. Credit to the Celtics, they executed and shot the hell out of the ball. They were the better team tonight,” Brown concluded.
After the game, Jaylen Brown said that the emotions of the night didn’t get to him. “I didn’t have any emotion. I was locked in. I was ready to go,” Brown said after the game. I’m not sure the tape necessarily agrees with that assessment.
That Brown’s counterpart in the trade, Paul George, went off for 36 points on 14-22 shooting certainly doesn’t help the narrative. George was excellent, propelling the Celtics through longrange sniping and off-ball defensive playmaking.
“What I’ve learned is I’m a little bit better with more usage,” George said after the game. “That’s no knock to my opportunities here in Philly. Quite frankly, I wasn’t healthy to take on the workload that I feel I’m at my best at. But here in Boston they gave me an opportunity to come out here and play and be myself.”
But while the brewing Brown vs Tatum rivalry, and the controversial trade that saw the Celtics flip Brown for George, will undoubtedly be the primary narratives to come out of last night’s game, it was only a small part of the reason for why the Sixers came up short.
And from the Sixers’ perspective, regardless of the outcome of last night’s game Brown has been a steadying force for a team looking to tread water while Joel Embiid works through his struggles and LeBron James figures out when to pick his spots. We just came off a stretch of games where Brown dropped 30 points on 11-19 shooting to lift the Sixers to a win in Detroit, then added 29 points on 11-22 shooting in a victory over Chicago this past weekend.
For a 9-3 team that’s just a half game out of the top spot in the Eastern Conference, the Sixers have their share or problems, chief among them a middling (to put it kindly) offensive attack and a starting lineup that has yet to gel on that end of the floor. Brown, for the most part, has not been particularly high on that list of concerns.
Much of the chatter today, and over the next few days, will look at the results of Tuesday night’s beatdown by the Celtics and use it as a lens to judge the Paul George for Jaylen Brown swap through.
That would be a touch too reactionary. That’s too reactionary because success in November means little when it comes to figuring out who will succeed in April and May, as the Sixers showed last year when they came back from 3-1 down in the first round to end Boston’s season, despite the Celtics winning 56 games and riding high with the return of Jayson Tatum to reinforce their expected long playoff run.
But it’s also too reactionary because this wasn’t a trade that either team made just to bolster their chances for this year alone. Both teams made the move believing that the swap positioned themselves better for long-term success: the Sixers because they believed Jaylen Brown would be a building block for them over the next 3-5 years, and the Celtics because they believed they would be better positioned by not having Brown’s 35% max contract on the books during that same timeframe.
It will take years to prove which team is ultimately correct in their assessment.
Big Takeaway
The big takeaway on the season is that the Sixers’ offense has just not been nearly good enough, as the Sixers have the league’s 21st ranked offensive attack, per CleaningTheGlass. The starting lineup, filled with All-Stars and future Hall of Famers, is averaging just 104.1 points per 100 possessions, which ranks in just the 7th percentile of lineups across the league.
There is perhaps not a more disappointing lineup in the league than the Tyrese Maxey, VJ Edgecombe, Jaylen Brown, LeBron James and Joel Embiid group has been in the early going, who have actually been outscored — 278-285 — in the 120 minutes that they’ve shared the court.
“It’s a little different, man. It’s different for everybody,” Tyrese Maxey said of the team’s offensive struggles. “Everybody, [all] five starters that we have are playing a different role than they played last year, some of them probably ever.”
“I think we’re all trying to adapt and figure it out. It’s going to take time,” Maxey continued. “Thankfully, our defense has been pretty good to compensate for that.”
Unfortunately, over the last few games the defense has started to buckle under the strain the offense has placed upon it.
After allowing just 105.3 points per 100 possessions over the first nine games of the season, which ranked as the second best defense in the league through that point, the Sixers have allowed 124.5 points per 100 possessions in the three games since. In fact, the Sixers’ worst three defensive performances of the season have come in the last three games.
| Period | Def Rtg | Rank |
|---|---|---|
| First 9 games | 105.3 | 2nd |
| Last 3 games | 124.5 | 23rd |
The knockout punch from Boston came late in the third quarter, right after the Sixers had just come all the way back from 16 points down to tie the game at 76 each with 4:02 left in the third. The Celtics would go on to outscore the Sixers 29-6 over the next eight minutes of play, shooting 10-12 from the field and a staggering 8-9 from 3-point range.
8 minutes of play, 12 shots, 29 points, zero turnovers.
It was a haymaker the Sixers have not yet had to deal with this year, and one in which very few teams outside of the Boston Celtics are even capable of delivering. Both Payton Pritchard (12 points during the run) and Paul George (8) outscored the Sixers singlehandedly during the decisive stretch of the game.
Watching the Celtics expertly disguise their double teams to keep the Sixers off balance, changing up the timing and location of where they sent the help from, and then contrasting that with the Sixers routinely leaving lights-out 3-point shooters open one pass away on the strong side, was a wildly frustrating experience in a game that you hoped the Sixers would be locked in on.
“Obviously, that was a huge factor in the game, and obviously a point of emphasis that we didn’t handle very well,” Nick Nurse said of the team’s struggles defending the perimeter. “We didn’t make them reload very much, I didn’t think we got strong enough contests on them, and I think there was quite a variety of [their 3s].
“They made a lot of open ones,” Nurse concluded.
On the night, the Celtics attempted 24 “wide-open” 3s, per NBA.com’s tracking data, which is defined as there being 6+ feet of space between the shooter and the nearest defend. The Sixers, by contrast, attempted just 15.
The offense is still far and away the biggest concern surrounding this team and their ability to reach their expected upside. It just hasn’t been good enough, really at any point this season. But the defense, for most of the season, has been able to pick up the slack, helping the Sixers not only bank wins, but stay atop the Eastern Conference as they figure out how to stop getting in each other’s way.
The last week we’ve started to see the Sixers’ defense struggle to fully overcome the stunning ineffectiveness of the team’s offensive attack.
Stat of the game
Stat: 126.3 points per 100 possessions by Boston’s half-court offense.
The Celtics averaged 126.3 points per 100 plays in the half-court last night, which was not only the most effective that Boston’s half-court offense has been all year (their previous best was just 110.1 points per 100 plays), but it was the most effective half-court offense in any game so far this season in the NBA.
For context, the Sixers’ best half-court offensive showing was when they put up 105.8 points per 100 plays in the half-court in their win against Charlotte. League average is 95.4 points per 100 plays in the half-court.
