Sixers drop to 1-4 following lifeless loss to Grizzlies

The Sixers lost another uncompetitive game to the visiting Grizzlies, falling 124-107 in a game that wasn’t close for the entire fourth quarter.

Here’s what I saw.

The Good

— Jared McCain was one of the lone bright spots in this game, and it certainly took a while for him to get revved up. McCain couldn’t find anywhere to go for the first three-quarters of this game, with Jaren Jackson Jr. personally turning away two of his attempts at the rim. As McCain has been quick to remind reporters, it’s an adjustment learning how to play around NBA length.

With the game basically out of reach in the fourth quarter, McCain finally settled into the game, going on a one-man run that ranked as the most entertaining stretch of the evening. He made his first NBA three on a catch-and-shoot jumper from the trail spot, added another one shortly afterward, and then the Duke product started getting busy as a driver. McCain drove into the trees and came out a winner, bringing the Sixers to within 14 to force Memphis’ starters to play through to the end.

If nothing else, I have enjoyed McCain’s resilience, because it’s not easy for a rookie to get completely stonewalled for three quarters and still come back for more. Give me more McCain minutes, please.

— Guerschon Yabusele is one of the few guys who I think can come out of this stretch with his head held high even though his minutes at center have been a symptom of their larger problems. The most important thing is that he has made threes at a respectable clip, and that is going to give him a chance to play a multi-dimensional role no matter who’s in the lineup.

(Nurse has to want to play him more at power forward, of course, but that’s another discussion we’ll get to when the reinforcements actually arrive.)

— KJ Martin has his drawbacks, but he has had an excellent start to the season on the defensive end of the floor, and I can see why Nurse keeps calling his number. With the Sixers throwing a lot of undersized lineups on the floor, Martin has been asked to defend much bigger players since opening night, and he has been up to the challenge. And these have not been pedestrian big guys, either, with Martin holding up against the likes of Giannis and Jaren Jackson Jr.

More importantly, he has leveraged his athleticism well as a helper, often blotting out plays before they can develop with timely rotations. That’s one of the few guys you can say that about through five games, and it’s a marked change from his former defensive profile. I honestly would give him more chances, offensive issues be damned.

The Bad

— This may seem like overly simplistic analysis, but I think a lot of Philadelphia’s problems stem from the fact that they are simply too small. And if you’re going to try to get away with smaller lineups, you at least need to be able to get some sort of advantage from doing so. In most cases, you’d hope that would be shooting and/or playmaking. But Philadelphia does not have enough of either, so they’re making a trade-off to lose rebounding and strength battles for no real payoff.

This manifests all over the floor if you pay close enough attention. They can’t create enough separation (which is also a team speed/ballhandling issue), so their finishing around the basket leaves a lot to be desired. Because they can’t score efficiently at the basket, they can’t consistently create open threes, so they end up record-scratching out of a fair amount of threes and going on long, plodding possessions. And it’s much worse on the other end of the floor, where they’re susceptible to matchup hunting, offensive rebounding opportunities, and lobs over their heads they have no chance to go up and contest.

George and Embiid will help eat into this, but I continue to think Yabusele will need to play a plus-sized role in the rotation as a forward to help eat into this problem. They need more guys who can throw their weight around. When you’re throwing out groupings like Lowry-McCain-Gordon, I don’t know how you expect to do anything except get bullied all over the floor.

— I tried to warn most of the fanbase that we’d all have to live through some putrid lows with Caleb Martin between now and the end of the regular season. I was not anticipating that he’d have to be a real-deal creator for the Sixers to open the season, or I would have sent up more warning flares for the opening month.

It’s not that Martin won’t have to take and make threes with the full squad on the floor, because of course, he will, but his read-and-react game works a lot better playing off of an offensive hub in the middle of the floor. Martin was excellent at timing cuts playing off of Bam Adebayo down in Miami, and those opportunities basically don’t exist right now with the Sixers playing the screen-and-roll/switch-hunting game with Tyrese Maxey. Nurse has moved Martin around some, using him at some “HORNS” looks that bring him to the elbow as a screener, but it basically always ends with him in the corner and needing to shoot. And he has been ice cold to open the year, bringing all the focus onto that part of his game.

Martin made some decent on-ball contributions against Memphis, marching to the free-throw line eight times in the first half alone. But again, he’s being asked to do a little too much there right now, and there were some wayward journeys into traffic that had no plan or purpose. I’m still a big believer, but this wasn’t a pretty game.

— Focusing on Andre Drummons’ rebounding total is not a great way to measure his impact there, because a lot of teams have no choice but to foul him when he’s setting up for an easy second-chance bucket. Jaren Jackson Jr. picked up two fouls trying to haul down Drummond in the first half, creating extra possessions for Philly that don’t show up in the stat sheet.

That said, his defensive issues are not accurately depicted by the box score, either. Drummond is able to provide value when he can sit back, prey on weak-handled drivers, and focus exclusively on rebounding. The problem is that NBA teams rarely allow you to do that anymore. Once you start to move Drummond around the floor and defend outside of the paint, it all begins to unravel. A swing pass or two leaves him out of position and late to offer protection at the rim, but even worse is the cushion stretch bigs get to shoot with if he has to make a real closeout. The Grizzlies have a fair amount of shooting bigs on this roster, and they dragged Drummond out of the paint constantly on Saturday night, leaving him helpless as a defender and a rebounder.

(Even when Drummond got chances to be a true paint defender, he was pretty much useless in this game.)

And man, has his touch been horrendous to start the season. Despite the majority of his shots coming close to the basket, Drummond ends up missing a lot of his shots by a foot off of the glass.

— The Sixers felt due for a random three-point explosion from one of their role players. It certainly wasn’t going to get worse than sitting at the bottom of the league in team three-point percentage. Kelly Oubre was the guy who answered the call for Philadelphia early, going on a first-quarter scorcher that ended with a heat-check miss around the four-minute mark.

That was about the last of his good offense.

— I don’t really feel the need to hammer Tyrese Maxey for a subpar game, because he was excellent early and just got swallowed up by a Memphis team that didn’t feel like they needed to guard anybody else. I think that’s an important distinction between this game and, for example, the opener against Milwaukee, where he stunk all the way through and committed a lot of unforced errors.

Still not a good game. So it goes.

— Transition defense is quickly becoming a problem area for the Sixers, and not just on turnovers and missed shots. The Grizzlies killed the Sixers with early offense on Saturday, making a few threes while the Sixers were still trying to get back after a made shot.

The Ugly

— When the first possession of the game ends in a clock-beating three-point attempt from Andre Drummond, you probably did not have a great first possession of the game. The most bullish person in the world on Drummond’s shot wouldn’t start the game like that.