Instant observations: Bucks bulldoze Sixers in opening night clunker

Tyrese Maxey struggled mightily and the Sixers never really came close to Milwaukee in the second half, losing 124-109 in an impotent opener without Joel Embiid and Paul George.

Here’s what I saw.

The Good

— I will open the season by pointing out a negative for the other team at the Wells Fargo Center on Wednesday night. Giannis Antetokounmpo had his head in the clouds on the defensive glass for the opening five minutes or so of this game, wasting some very good rim protection from Brook Lopez. But here’s a critical difference for Philadelphia this season vs. last — they were well-prepared to take advantage of it.

Throughout training camp and preseason, Nick Nurse preached the value of creating extra possessions on both sides of the ball, and the Sixers have better personnel to do that than they’ve had at any time in the Joel Embiid era. Andre Drummond immediately got to work in the paint, carving a hole through Bucks box outs for tips and boards in the opening quarter. Their wing athletes got involved, too, with both KJ and Caleb Martin flying in for second-chance opportunities.

There will be consequences to playing this aggressively on the glass, but they have the athletes to justify chasing those extra shots, so bring it on.

— Nick Nurse called Caleb Martin one of Philadelphia’s five best players before the game while explaining why he was starting KJ Martin. The head coach apparently had so much conviction in that decision that he reversed it at halftime.

C. Martin (this is going to get annoying, I can tell) looked every bit like my ideal fifth starter throughout this one, other than Lillard lighting him up a bit in the second half. He was a menace on the offensive glass and one of their most active communicators on defense, constantly trying to push and shout his teammates into the right spots. That will pay off over time, even if it didn’t make too much of a difference on Wednesday.

— Guerschon Yabusele has waited a long time for his return to the NBA, and while his Sixers debut wasn’t perfect, I thought he brought the exact mix of skills you were hoping for on night one. He got after it on the glass, made some nice passes in traffic, and was a fairly useful off-ball defender, even with some moments at the rim where I wished he would have been two or three inches taller.

The thing that reflects his European experience the most is the constant movement on offense. There wasn’t a single moment where the ball stuck in Yabusele’s hands, and he did a great job of either taking the open jumper, swinging the ball, or driving into vacated space every time he got a touch. He lived up to that ideal off-ball, too, dancing along the baseline or shimmying around the perimeter to open things up for teammates.

(Unfortunately, I think those moments where I wished he was taller were hard to avoid against a Bucks team boasting Giannis, Brook Lopez, and Bobby Portis in the frontcourt. If Milwaukee was able to get through Philadelphia’s first line of defense, there was very little resistance offered around the rim. I continue to think the Sixers will probably need another big on the roster before the season is over, and that Yabusele shouldn’t be the only guy you trust to play minutes behind Drummond when Embiid is out. That problem is less about Yabusele, a natural forward playing out of position, and more about how the roster is set up.)

The Bad

— I continue to have my concerns about Year 2 of Kelly Oubre, particularly in these games where he tries to take a bigger share of the offense with Embiid and George sidelined. Oubre was relatively good as a downhill attacker, but there were probably a half-dozen plays in the first half alone where Oubre could have swung the ball or at least looked for a teammate, only to barrel into Bucks defenders for no real reason.

For most of last season, Oubre managed to avoid the headless chicken plays on defense that have punctuated most of his career. But he was disengaged off-ball for far too much of this game, leading to some avoidable open threes and easy backdoor cuts for the Bucks. For me, this is a much bigger problem than what you have to deal with in players like Lowry and Gordon — they’re both older and can be picked on to some degree, but will put themselves in the right spot enough that help can (and will) arrive to extend possessions.

I have plenty of tolerance for Oubre when he’s bought in on defense, cutting with purpose off-ball, and keeping his contested jumpers to a minimum. I’m not going to live with many games like this one, not when you’re asking someone like Martin to come off of the bench.

— The most glaring issue for Philadelphia without Joel Embiid and Paul George is, unsurprisingly, shot creation. When you build around three big-money stars, the other guys on the roster are not likely to be demons with the ball in their hands. It was still a bit jarring to see how inept they were to start this game, with possessions frequently coming down to the final seconds of the shot clock as a result of slow decision-making and a bit of early-season chemistry problems for a new-look team.

As we saw at the end of last season, there is a much bigger challenge ahead of Tyrese Maxey when he has to be a lone star, and it’s one he’s not necessarily equipped to handle on a night-to-night basis. Maxey was on the wrong end of some questionable non-calls at the rim — thanks a lot, Scott Foster — but he also missed a handful of clean looks from three and generally struggled to set the pace of the game. He did an excellent job of leading Philadelphia with speed in the halfcourt and in transition during the preseason, but there was little of that on opening night.

(It didn’t help that their defense wasn’t good enough to generate consistent stops, of course. Can’t run if you’re pulling it out of your own basket.)

In the preseason, Maxey shot poorly but balanced that out with an aggressive, proactive attempt to get the rest of his teammates going. I was actually happy to see him pursuing his own shot to open the game, taking the mantle of responsibility from Embiid as their first-quarter leader. There will be nights when he gets the shots to go down, and it’ll look a whole lot prettier than this was.

I thought it was instructive that Nurse almost immediately looked at what was happening and decided that they needed more Kyle Lowry to help Maxey out. The Sixers’ organization left a lot to be desired, but more importantly, they often had no real plan except for, “Tyrese, do something” because of the lack of dribble-drive ability around Maxey for most of the half. Milwaukee mixed up their coverages effectively and felt empowered to trap and shade Maxey a decent amount which is how I’d play the Sixers in this setup. The more you can get the ball in the hands of Andre Drummond, Kelly Oubre, and the rest of their role players, the more likely you are to get a positive result on defense.

Not much this group is going to be able to do, though, when Maxey makes around a third of 30+ shots while attacking the likes of Gary Trent Jr., Damian Lillard, and Taurean Prince for the bulk of his possessions. Credit Brook Lopez for some great rim protection and Giannis for some elite help defense moments, but the lone star was not good enough.

— Andre Drummond had his moments in this game, but all of my forward-looking concerns popped up in this game. When he has to defend out to the three-point line, bad things tend to happen. Brook Lopez had a rough shooting night and still managed to have a reasonably large impact on this game by drawing Philly’s rebounding machine away from the basket. “The Meh” is probably a better category for Drummond, but these are the categories I impose upon myself.

The Ugly

— I am a little terrified of Kyle Lowry still needing to be a safety blanket for this team. Credit to him for shooting well and still having the trust from Nurse, but it does speak to what they might lack in creative depth on the roster.

— A good night from Maxey swings this stat back toward respectability, but shooting would already rank near the top of a roster problem list. Jared McCain is probably going to have to get opportunities for that fact alone because the Sixers can’t end up in a place where teams shrink the floor around Embiid, Maxey, and George, whether they’re operating together or separately.

This is one of the potential problems with using Oubre and Martin as key wings in the rotation. They offer a decent amount of defensive flexibility, but you will be riding a three-point rollercoaster for the bulk of the season. Philly got a total of one three from the Martin/Martin/Oubre trio on seven combined attempts. Not enough volume, not enough makes.

— I did not especially like how Nick Nurse handled this game even factoring in foul trouble for a few guys and the difficulty of assembling a rotation without two of your best players. It felt like they were just throwing lineups at the wall and hoping something would work, between the Martin swaps, Ricky Council IV second-half minutes, and the decision to go small early in the third as Drummond struggled to not foul.

Experimentation is one thing, but that should happen over a longer period instead of cramming it all into 48 minutes to open the year. Too much chaos to expect to win a game against a team that was polished by comparison.