Sixers lose ninth straight game despite valiant effort vs. Knicks

Tyrese Maxey and Paul George battled for all four quarters against the Knicks but fell short in a 110-105 loss thanks to a slow offensive start. Hope is fading fast if any remains.

Here’s what I saw.

The Good

— I would say that Philadelphia’s defensive effort was worlds better than in other recent games, even if that isn’t saying much after they were down 50 points to the Chicago Bulls on Monday. But it starts with your leaders. Tyrese Maxey and Paul George have had some great defensive stretches this season and have been as lazy and disconnected as the rest of their teammates during this recent losing streak. Both guys came with their hard hats on for this game.

You don’t normally have to worry about Maxey as an on-ball defender, and it’s off-ball tracking that tends to go when he lets go of the rope on that end. Maxey did a great job of rotating and popping up when his team needed to cut off space, forcing the Knicks to move the ball exactly where Philly wanted it to go. Which is to say, mostly to Josh Hart standing with the ball in his hands on the perimeter.

Paul George putting his podcast on hiatus is, as far as I can tell, coming from the right place. Maybe he’s just putting on a good show for the public, but I have heard the weariness in his voice and seen the frustration in his facial expressions from up close. This season is wearing on him, whether you think he came here for the money, a championship chance, or some combination of both. Giving up off-court activities isn’t going to change what it looks like for him on the floor. George is an inconsistent player, forced to make a living on pull-up jumpers with a hand in his face, but he can make up for the offensive lulls by putting pressure on teams on the other end.

And that’s exactly what I saw from him during the first half — George could not hit water from a boat, but he was a demon in passing lanes, using active hands to grind the Knicks down. His teammates took notice, matching George’s effort with some gutsy play of their own. They passed off switches, communicated effectively, and only had a few early defense disasters to allow open threes or layups. Progress!

George got on a bit of a heater in the third quarter, pulling the Sixers back into the game after it looked like the Knicks would coast to an easy victory. He had an acrobatic finish at the rim that made him look like the old PG for a moment in time, and he kept coming even through pressure and cold spells, something that has been a struggle for him in a Sixers uniform.

Rarely have we seen George come out and control a game from start to finish, and with the injury caveats applied, I still think it’s reasonable to want more from a guy who signed a four-year max in the summer. Still, if this guy is going to be here for the next few years, I respect/appreciate that he isn’t just taking the check and waltzing toward the offseason.

— Kelly Oubre has not been much (if any) better than the rest of his teammates lately, with the energetic wing finally falling into the same midseason muck as everybody else. That has played a part in their collapse on the defensive end because few guys have brought it as consistently as No. 9.

Wednesday was a return to the form we’d grown used to at the start of the season. Oubre was diving on the floor for loose balls, running the floor hard in transition, and doing great work as a slot driver when opportunities presented themselves. He had an early three or two that drove me insane because of how much time they had left on the shot clock, but he made up for that was bad-intent drives, punishing poor Knicks positioning with his first step.

It is wild to think of Oubre as a tone-setting player, given the rep he arrived to Philadelphia with, but he’s one of the few they have on the roster who can claim that title this season.

— Good Justin Edwards minutes in the second half after a tough start. Competed hard, made some important threes in the fourth quarter, and looked like a guy who will be a rotation mainstay.

The Bad

— A bad team will always find ways to lose even if they improve or “fix” the biggest problem from the last game. Philadelphia showed up with a level of want to on defense that has been missing in recent weeks, at least making the Knicks work to score in the first half. Unfortunately, that coincided with their offense completely crapping the bed for the entire first half. As we keep saying in written and podcast form, they’re not consistently good at anything.

In Tyrese Maxey’s case, you can see some of the effects of playing through an injury on his dominant right hand. After one half of play, Maxey had eight points on 15 shots and was a gnarly 0/6 from deep, clanging everything whether it was a pull-up three or a catch-and-shoot look. I’ll give him at least a half-pass for the outside shooting, because he looked more and more gunshy as the game wore on, and I’ll just assume it’s hard for him to bomb away with the hand taped up. That said, it has been a down year for him from deep, and I wouldn’t guess that he’ll pull it out of the fire in the final 24 games.

There were other moments early on against New York where he struggled to get downhill going to his right, moving into some crossovers and midrange pull-ups instead of hitting the gas. Navigating through traffic, there were several moments where the ball looked slippery in his hands, as Maxey fought his own body to control the ball. Sympathy for the hand aside, I still expect him to be moderately more effective than he was for the first 2.5 quarters on Wednesday night. It has been a while since we have seen Maxey play with the tunnel vision he showed against the Knicks, driving into multiple defenders repeatedly with no plan in place to look for a shooter. It’s hard to find the proper balance between scoring and playmaking when the surrounding options are this disappointing, but that’s the task at hand.

You can appreciate the fighting spirit he showed on offense, with Maxey wearing the Knicks down over the final 1.5 quarters. He was relentless as a downhill attacker, going to the basket and the free-throw line over and over again down the stretch. Maxey had his worst three-point shooting game of his career, and he refused to let that deter him.

That said, he shot the ball 32 times and scored 30 points. That’s not going to cut it.

— I would like to see the numbers on the flare screen play the Sixers run to get a shooter a look on the left wing. It’s one of their few looks specifically designed for a three, and it feels like they’ve made maybe 10% of their shots out of it. Not saying that means they should throw it away, just an observation.

The Ugly

— Andre Drummond managed to get a tech for kicking a ball as he was finishing a dunk (at least that’s what the broadcast thought) and also tipped the ball in his own basket on a defensive rebounding opportunity. He will be an unbelievable tank commander.