Sixers lay down and quit in 32-point loss to Bulls

The Sixers looked at their horrid recent stretch and decided they could raise the bar on ineptitude, losing 142-110 to the Bulls in what can only be described as a complete teamwide failure.

Here’s what I saw.

The Good

— The game ended.

The Bad

— The game didn’t end quickly enough.

The Ugly

— You could call me a crazy person for continuing to seriously analyze games that the Sixers don’t appear interested in winning. You might even be right in that assessment. It doesn’t make it any less deflating to watch this team attempt to play defense.

The Sixers have to play small when Joel Embiid isn’t available to play. Fine. You’ll need to live with a lack of rim protection and rebounding in a small-ball setup, but at least you’ll be able to get faster, more athletic, and more dangerous as a switching team, right? Well, also no. The smaller Sixers lineups constantly get beat on back cuts in addition to being awful at the point of attack. It’s a hot fudge sundae of pure dookie.

Monday’s game against the Bulls should show you exactly how bad and lifeless this team is on defense. The Bulls had no available size, and Zach Collins was in constant foul trouble throughout the first half. Instead of allowing Collins to try to play through it, Billy Donovan opted to play ultra-small and run off of all of Philadelphia’s makes and misses. That turned out to be a winning gambit — although the Bulls got hammered at the rim and allowed Paul George to get rolling in the first half, they were putting the ball in Philly’s basket before they even had a chance to celebrate a successful offensive trip. This should be impossible, but the Bulls broke Philadelphia’s spirit with their offense. Josh Giddey was made to look like Magic Johnson. Zach Collins was a rim-running machine. Pets heads probably fell off.

Every guy who played on Monday night owns a piece of the blame. Guerschon Yabusele is clearly out of his depth as a full-time center, with the Bulls driving right into his grill and scoring over him whenever they wanted to. Andre Drummond’s backup minutes were just as bad, with the former Bulls center moving like Groot in space. Tyrese Maxey is regressing back to bad habits away from the play, not that I blame him for being checked out as they limp toward the finish line. Kelly Oubre is a bad foul machine. Quentin Grimes is trying hard, but perhaps a little too hard, careening into players for unnecessary fouls instead of sliding his feet and keeping someone in front of him.

They’re not good at getting stops in the halfcourt. They’re not good at running back and getting set in transition. They’re not good at communicating, rotating, or forcing the shots you “want” to give up. They’re not even good at reading a scouting report unless their scouting reports are simply wrong — they concede wide-open threes to guys who can only really shoot and play up on guards who want to use pressure against you to drive. There is no organization to speak of, and they don’t make up for that problem with effort.

(And for the love of god, this team can take their zone defense and just toss it in the dumpster with the unused Kansas City Chiefs threepeat merch. If I have to watch them stumble through 48 minutes of basketball every night, they could at least pretend to do something other than hand their opponent open three after open three.)

Perhaps the most disappointing thing about this loss is that the Sixers were down 20+ points when Maxey and George were playing well on offense. But they reached a point where both guys essentially did their version of Ricky Watters wondering out loud for who and for what he was playing for. Maxey took just 10 shot attempts in close to 29 minutes, deferring to others with his shooting hand wrapped in tape. George was a tad more aggressive and had an okay box score game, but he showed once again that he is not going to be a leader that pulls this thing out of the fire. While he was busy flexing and pining for a call that never came on offense, the Bulls backcut him on the other end for two more points.

The last two weeks have shown that being bad and undermanned is far from the only problem. Chicago scratched Nic Vucevic before tip-off while down a few more rotation players and then lost Lonzo Ball to a laceration at halftime. Yet they still played with a ton of pop, just as the Nets did on Saturday night, and just as the Raptors did against a “full strength” Sixers team before the All-Star break. They at least look like a team. Philadelphia’s only real hope in this game would have been Maxey catching the holy ghost and going on a crazy individual heater. These guys are bad, unmotivated, and tough to watch. The biggest indictment of the group is that absolutely nobody fears them, and bad teams can pull momentum out of thin air by simply walking into the gym.

It is hard to look at what has transpired over the last few weeks as anything other than the team laying down and quitting. If the Sixers actually believed that they were going to try to go on a miracle run to end the season and go from the play-in to the penthouse, you would have a perfectly coherent case to make a change now. In the context of the season and the recent stretch, this was the players basically holding up a neon sign that says, “We’re done.”

(But who knows if the right people are watching. M Night Shyamalan has been more present at recent Sixers games than ownership.)

— On the coaching front, Nick Nurse is just throwing stuff at the wall and praying that it will stick. Two-way signing David Roddy has gotten first-half minutes in each of the last couple of games, and he has been an absolute trainwreck in the minutes that matter. On the first two possessions after Roddy checked into Monday’s game, Josh Giddey went right down Main Street, torching the bigger forward for a layup and then a drop-off for a Buzelis dunk. He followed that up with an airballed three at the end of the shot clock that hit Adem Bona in the face, as if to really drive the point home.

(To his credit, Roddy balled out in garbage time, drawing “Rod-dy!” chants from the home crowd with engaged defense and a ton of made jumpers. Good for him.)

While making room for guys who are melting under the spotlight, there’s apparently no room for Jared Butler to play before the Sixers are down 30+ points in the second half. It seems weird because he has given them some decent minutes early on and might do something like, I don’t know, “run the team” on offense. Nobody is playing well, so I’m not going to pound the table for anybody to be a surefire rotation guy, and I get that Quentin Grimes is a more important guy to look at from a long-term perspective. But it’s hard to make the case that using Grimes as a backup point is a win-now move, or that Lonnie Walker should just get to lay brick after brick while offering nothing on the other end.

To add injury to insult, Grimes left the game along with Guerschon Yabusele in the second half. Yabusele somehow managed to produce a brand-new injury designation, which is wild when you consider how many ridiculous injuries the Sixers have pulled out of thin air in this era:

Guerschon Yabusele (contact to both eyes) and Quentin Grimes (right knee soreness) will not return.

— Kyle Neubeck (@KyleNeubeck) February 25, 2025

The pain and misery will not end. 25 more games of this crap.

— Ricky Council IV’s transition turnover early in the second quarter will go into Museum of Tanking History. Philadelphia had a three-on-one break with the ball in the hands of one of their best athletes, and he managed to turn it into an up-and-down travel, drawing boos from the home crowd as they went into a timeout moments later. Unbelievable moment.

He was nearly topped by Andre Drummond airballing a six-footer from the baseline. But the good news is that there will be plenty of time for these two to have a crack at more CTE moments down the stretch.

— There weren’t, aren’t, and will never be enough smart basketball players on this team this season. It was clear from the start, and it never got better.