Tobias Harris disasterclass looms large in Sixers loss to Knicks

The Sixers nearly climbed out of a giant hole but left themselves with too much work to do in the second half, falling 110-96 to the Knicks in their first game following the All-Star break.

Here’s what I saw.

The Good

— Tyrese Maxey had a better excuse than any of these guys to come out flat out of the All-Star break. He was dragged around Indianapolis all weekend, participated in the Skills Challenge, played in the All-Star Game, and got less downtime than any other guy on the roster. But unlike his buddies who kicked their feet up and/or sought warmer weather, Maxey was ready for battle against the Knicks.

He had just about everything working against New York, no matter what they threw at him to try to slow him down. Bigger, athletic defenders like Josh Hart got put on Maxey at their own peril, with No. 0 putting on a driving clinic in this game. At times over the last month or two, Maxey has copped to looking for whistles too much instead of playing through the contact and having a foul serve as a bonus. Philadelphia got the committed, downhill version of Maxey in this game, as he took on all comers at New York’s rim. With flip shots, floaters, and some grown-man finishes at the cup, Maxey kept the offense afloat as the rest of the team tried to get their minds out of their trips to Mexico.

(I don’t know if anyone actually went to Mexico, to be clear.)

Maxey knocking down some threes certainly didn’t hurt his ability to get to the basket. He played a cat-and-mouse game with defenders all night, and especially when the Knicks switched players like Precious Achiuwa onto him with space to cut through. With speed advantages against basically every player who tried to stop him, Maxey gave the Knicks fits, pulling from deep when they expected the drive and vice versa.

His ability to play and succeed as an off-ball guy opened up some different possibilities in Kyle Lowry’s debut, which is a good segue to our next point…

— Welcome back to Philadelphia, Kyle Lowry. In his time away from his hometown team, Lowry has turned into the sort of player Philadelphia idolizes — a professional irritant who you love having on your team and can’t stand playing against. And unlike the backup point guard he replaced, Lowry has a ton of offensive skill to juice up backup units, whether he’s the guy running point or operating as a secondary decisionmaker.

We got to see some of both in Lowry’s debut, despite him missing a good chunk of the first half after catching an elbow to the face. Rocking a giant bandage and a fresh set of stitches, Lowry gave the Sixers everything they’ve been missing in a backcourt partner for Maxey. He freed Maxey up to fill lanes in transition and attack as a catch-and-shoot threat, and when Lowry was used off-ball, he did a great job of attacking closeouts with speed. A lot of his connective passing was for naught as a result of Tobias Harris’ butterfingers, but you can already see the outline of a really useful player.

Plus, he picked a Meek Mill song for his song that plays when he scores. Hometown hero.

— Nick Nurse’s best decision in this game was to abandon his bigs and play small. The Knicks were shorthanded in the frontcourt and couldn’t throw the usual amount of size and athleticism at Philly down low. And in any case, the bigs weren’t helping the Sixers with defense, rebounding, or offense, so why bother playing them?

KJ Martin had some “What would you say you do here?” vibes for the first couple of months, with his brief cameos producing nothing of note. To his credit, he has found a groove as of late, with Nurse shifting him into something closer to a big man’s role. Martin’s nuclear verticality — not hard to see his father’s genetics! — has allowed him to compete for rebounds, succeed as a roller, and operate from the dunker spot.

Unfortunately, Nurse went away from Martin late, and the alternative left a little to be desired.

The Bad

— You all watched the game, right?

— Bad shooting night for Buddy Hield. Thought he forced too many shots and chased the game, which was not the case during his pre-break minutes. Hopefully not the start of a trend.

— The Sixers finally got Nic Batum back, and he looked every bit like a guy in his mid-30s who hadn’t played in a while. Need him to be much better or “getting reinforcements” is in theory only.

— Kyle Lowry is already mad at the Sixers’ defensive rotations, understanding of who the low man is, and general effort on that end. I’m with you, pal. I just don’t yell about it on press row.

The Ugly

— Two guys do not seem prepared to do what they must to make this version of the Sixers as good as it can be. One is a guy on a minimum contract with a history of playing like a complete maniac at any given time. The other is a guy making $40 million on the expectation that he can be a leader for the team on and off the floor.

Perhaps I’m not at the “acceptance” stage with Kelly Oubre, because he still drives me up a wall with his nonsense. He takes far too many contested, early-clock threes for a guy who hits threes at the rate he does, so unlike with guys like Buddy Hield or Tyrese Maxey, you want him to show some discretion. This is not a dig at his intellect, but if he knows the definition of the word discretion, he has not shown that in months. As the team has gotten thinner due to injuries and illness, Oubre has hijacked the offense more and more, leading to some decent counting stats but little else.

At least he is offering something on that end. Save for an inspired defensive effort in Cleveland before the break, he has been a complete trainwreck there for a while. Oubre gets beat off-the-dribble consistently even when he has length and athleticism advantages over his man, and he’s been about as valuable as a Titanic deck chair away from the ball. And while he has had some excellent games as an offensive rebounder, he is contributing to very real problems this team has on the defensive glass. He got banged on by a hard-charging Jericho Sims in the first half as he stood and waited for a rebound to drop into his hands without effort.

But along with the contract point, you could say that Oubre adheres to the principle of wrong and strong. Most of the time, at least he commits to a decision. It might be a wrong or bad one, but it gets made.

You could certainly argue we could be at the acceptance stage with Tobias Harris, too, this deep into his Sixers career and this deep into a massive contract. He is certainly capable of the odd 30-ball and a relatively consistent 16-18 points as part of a very good team, but more often than not, he’s going to frustrate you. A lot of it comes down to what we call “processing speed” in quarterbacks — Harris doesn’t lack the mechanical skill to be a high-impact guy, but he does lack the quick decision-making you need to beat good-to-great teams.

Without Joel Embiid to bail them out late in the shot clock, the Sixers have to capitalize on damn near any good look they can create. Too often, Harris turns what should be a good, mid-clock shot into wasted seconds and a tougher shot deeper into the clock. Even his mid-post game was off against the Knicks. The Sixers got him the ball on the right elbow with a favorable matchup on one first-half possession, with the right side mostly clear to attack. Rather than attacking that space, he tried to go back to the left into a crowd of Knicks defenders. He was forced to kick the ball out and reset the possession, effectively ending the threat.

Embiid gets a lot more attention for his second-round struggles, but even with that roadblock in place, he has a fair amount of good games in round two (including in last year’s crushing defeat to Boston while injured). Harris wilting against better teams has been about as certain as death and taxes, and when they badly needed him against a banged-up Knicks team, he still couldn’t find a way to help them. Forget about processing speed, they were lucky if he could catch a bounce pass on Thursday night. I’m not sure the stats can accurately reflect how harmful he was to their chances to win.

I am sympathetic to Harris’ plight as a guy who gets asked to toggle between roles and juggle responsibilities depending on who is available. But I also understand why so many Sixers fans were upset about the trade deadline simply because they were hoping to see someone else in Harris’ spot following a trade. We’ve seen this movie enough times to let someone else borrow the DVD.

— I would rather watch Ricky Council IV play center than go through the rest of this season expecting Mo Bamba can hold down the backup spot. Darius Bazley should get a real look during his 10-day contract because it almost literally can’t get worse.

— For the first few minutes of this game, you could have convinced me we were going to get a hard-fought, defensive-minded battle. The Sixers mixed it up for rebounds and kept the Knicks from completely kicking their teeth in even with a poor offensive start. Well, they stopped them from doing that for a couple of minutes or so, anyway.

The Sixers have some flaws that are hard to work around right now. They are a horrendous rebounding team, which is at least partly a function of who they have to play to get creation skills on the floor. When you play lineups with Lowry-Maxey-Payne on the floor together and Kelly Oubre as the biggest guy, you’re going to struggle to outrebound a good college team, let alone the Knicks.

The problem extends to their bigs. Paul Reed at least wants to be a good rebounder, but there are too many plays where he has a rebound lined up and mistimes his jump or positioning, allowing someone to snatch a possession out of his hands.

Their athletes aren’t good rebounders, and you can’t expect their smaller guys to make up for that. So I’m not really sure what the solution is if that’s the case.