Sixers build house of bricks in loss to Lakers

The Sixers shot a combined 33/96 in another offensive strugglefest, falling to 0-2 on their road trip in a 101-94 loss to the Lakers.

Here’s what I saw.

The Good

— The Sixers are finally playing consistent, dialed-in defense, a month and a half after their lynchpin went down. It’s hard to say what exactly has clicked, but it starts with playing hard and playing for one another, knowing that you have to keep the chain connected to succeed.

There have been some unlikely heroes here.

Kelly Oubre continues to play inspired basketball, and we can certainly praise him for what he’s done on offense. Oubre’s rim attacks are the best entertainment we get on a night-to-night basis following this team, and the best part is that he has started to use them to find others, too. Sure, you’re going to get some sick dunks like this one:

But Paul Reed was also the recipient of a drop-off from Oubre in the first half, with Oubre sucking in Anthony Davis before pivoting to the short pass to his center. He’s no Magic Johnson, but looking for these opportunities is half of the battle.

His play on defense has shown a level of self-awareness he has lacked throughout his career. Oubre recently copped to struggling with off-ball defense, a subject he has discussed and reviewed film over with the coaching staff. He is trending up in a big way there, and against the Lakers, Oubre offered a ton of well-timed help in addition to on-ball toughness. When he is putting it all together like this, he is an absolute thrill to watch, and Oubre has come alive during a part of the season when they need him most.

Elsewhere in the unlikely heroes department, Mo Bamba had some moments on Friday! The book on Bamba has been that his motor is inconsistent and that smaller man can kill him in space, but he held up well on a few isolation possessions in L.A., including one where Austin Reaves thought he had him beat and found out otherwise on the ensuing midrange jumper. Far from perfect, but certainly playing better, and I’m not going to tear him up for getting outplayed by Anthony Davis.

Of course, it takes more than a couple of guys to put together a solid defense with all of Philadelphia’s current limitations. You have lots of timely help from Kyle Lowry, Buddy Hield snatching steals in transition, Nic Batum putting out fires, and so on. The Sixers look a lot closer to the team that was flying around to open the season, and that offers real hope.

The Bad

— Is Tyrese Maxey incapable of playing well west of the Mississippi River? Does let lag hit him much harder than most? I am simply looking for an explanation for the horrid first halves the Sixers have gotten out of him to open this trip.

This is a somewhat challenging matchup for him because of the Anthony Davis factor around the rim. The Lakers don’t necessarily have the guys to stop Maxey one-on-one, but they’re good at guiding drivers toward the spots where they have help, and Maxey played like a man painfully aware of how good Davis is at vacuuming shots near the paint, and he settled for some difficult stepback threes and midrange jumpers as a result.

(I am certainly not opposed to using the midrange here and there to punish sagging defenses, but there’s a balance to be struck that Maxey struggled with here. Davis has beefed up over time and isn’t someone you can just bowl over as a driver, but Maxey’s best games feature purposeful driving, with his shoulder burrowing into the chest of opposing bigs.)

The good news for Philadelphia is that Maxey (and certainly, his coaches) must have picked up on what went wrong at halftime because adjustments were made in the second half. Taking advantage of some chaotic possessions in transition and early offense, Maxey did a better job of taking the fight to L.A. at the rim, and wouldn’t you know it, he went from toothless to impactful as a scorer. He was one of the only guys who had it going, and the lack of production from the others ultimately sunk the Sixers.

— Paul Reed sent this tweet after Wednesday’s loss in Phoenix:

I thought it was more appropriate for this game.

— Buddy Hield’s role is getting smaller and smaller, and while I think Nick Nurse has gone a bit too far minimizing him, he could help his case by consistently hitting threes. The man of the post-trade period feels like a distant memory.

Kyle Lowry has been the beneficiary of Hield’s shrinking role, and I get why Nurse likes him. But if he’s going to get minutes under the pretext of “high IQ basketball” he can’t be fouling guys 94 feet from the basket in a close game with two-and-a-half minutes left.

Also, good god, he cannot attack the basket anymore.

— The Sixers shot like absolute garbage from every area of the floor. Not much more to analyze on that front.

The Ugly

— Was LeBron point-shaving in this game? A bizarre performance.

— Tobias Harris had a short layoff to get his mind and body right, following one of the worst stretches of basketball he has had in Philadelphia. He returned and immediately got back to stinking it up.

(By the way, this is not a dig at Kate Scott, but this has been etched in my brain since she said it: after Harris hit his first shot, we got a “Good start for Tobias Harris!” out of Kate, even though he had just committed one of the most egregious goaltends in history a possession prior.)

Nick Nurse was forced to call a timeout early in the second quarter, with the Sixers having just turned in their worst defensive stretch of the game. Playing with KJ Martin as the nominal center, a downsized Sixers team gave up three straight baskets to the Lakers on cuts where they stayed nowhere close to their matchup. The final straw was Tobias Harris standing in quicksand as LeBron James somehow escaped his vision, with the King waltzing in for two more points.

The head coach decided Harris needed a brief time on the bench with him after that, and it was hard to argue. But two minutes later, Harris was back in the game, and whatever was said in the huddle and on the sideline sparked improvement.

Well…improvement if you don’t care about scoring. One of the issues with Harris is that the Sixers continue to use him as a featured player regardless of how well he is or isn’t playing. Nick Nurse appears to be trying to get him going, and while I’m sure Harris appreciates the vote of confidence, it leads to a lot of empty possessions and wasted seconds. Watching him get stonewalled in the post by Spencer Dinwiddie of all people is one of the saddest things I have seen watching this team.

To give him some credit, his focus on everything else was roughly 15x better following that second-quarter benching. He bodied up Austin Reaves and nearly forced a steal in isolation; he attacked the ball as a rebounder to end Lakers possessions; and he played perhaps the best transition defense I’ve ever seen him play in the second half. Harris blew up a lob to Anthony Davis on one possession, just moments after he blocked Davis from behind on another transition possession, turning what should have been easy Laker points into fast breaks in the other direction. Frankly, that sort of determination is all anyone has asked for from Harris.

But you do have to make a damn shot, my guy. Oubre being an inefficient volume scorer is one thing. You are not afforded that luxury.

— I am not counting Tobias Harris getting run into from behind by Austin Reaves as “taking a charge” no matter what it is ruled as officially. You can’t trick me!

(I’m not sure if they actually ruled this a charge, I’m just saying.)