Quick Six: Shorthanded Sixers lose stinker to Jazz

Joel Embiid was scratched late, joining several Sixers rotation players on the shelf while their teammates lost a 120-109 stinker to the Jazz. Coming off of a putrid Knicks performance, they offered up another unwatchable game.

Here’s what I saw.

Maxey struggles sans Embiid

Lineups featuring Maxey with Embiid on the bench have been awesome for most of this season. Lineups with Maxey leading the team on Embiid off nights have been, well, much less stellar, and Maxey has struggled to dial it up as a No. 1 option. While he has basically mastered the No. 2 role off of Embiid, his success as a true lead player is going to take some time, it appears.

Opponents are certainly throwing a lot at him to try to slow him down, and the Jazz are more willing than most to mix it up. They tried to hard deny Maxey often, they blitzed him out of handoffs and pick-and-rolls, and in a nod to a concept Nick Nurse won a title with, the Jazz used box-and-one on Maxey for possessions here and there. It was hard to figure out what they’d do next, which was the point of the exercise, I’d imagine.

All of that probably would have been washed away with a strong shooting night from deep, but Maxey struggled for the second straight night beyond the arc. He has been boom or bust as an outside shooter for the last two weeks, which I suppose is the danger of relying on stepback threes for a huge chunk of your shot diet.

Feeling your way into a game is possible when you have Joel Embiid leading the way, which might be the biggest factor in Maxey eventually figuring it out in full-strength games. When the big dude has 30 through three quarters, it doesn’t matter as much that you’ve been focused too much on playmaking or walled off from the rim. But when all eyes are on you and Embiid isn’t there to carry the weight for 36 minutes, your fourth-quarter burst isn’t going to hit as hard.

Pat Bev masterclass…at the expense of Maxey?

On a night where the Sixers got very little out of their available depth, Patrick Beverley was a welcome boost of life off of the bench. That being said, deploying him as something closer to a true point guard left Tyrese Maxey marginalized on a lot of possessions, which strikes me as counterproductive.

Utah’s aforementioned scheming was part of that, with the Sixers deciding to run Maxey off of screens away from the ball to get him free. And credit goes to Beverley for what he did with the opportunity in the first half — he had some real juice as a finisher off the bounce, dropping some pretty teardrops over outstretched Jazz arms in the paint. When Utah overcorrected and tried to prevent Beverley from scoring, he made strong reads as a playmaker, creating open threes that Philly struggled to get for the rest of the night.

I am not going to blame Patrick Beverley for Maxey’s relatively quiet game. He is not the one making the call to put him in control of the offense. But getting a good Beverley game at the cost of pushing Maxey to the side is like getting some nice deck chairs for the Titanic.

My kingdom for a made three

Maxey certainly wasn’t the only Sixers player to struggle from deep in this one. Philadelphia was 5/21 at halftime, and if you would have told me that’d be the case heading into the game, I would have assumed they’d be down 15 or more at half. They have a lot of guys with little off-the-bounce utility, so if they can’t punish you from deep, they’re left with no Plan B.

The cast of bricklayers is a spectrum. On the one hand, you have Kelly Oubre, whose shot selection on an Embiid-less night was less than ideal. You were going to have to turn to him for some volume scoring with so many players out of the lineup, but he reverted to some bad habits in this one, forcing up shots instead of moving the ball and trying to hunt better looks. And on the other hand, you had Jaden Springer, who took wide-open threes and clanged them because the Jazz were apathetic about his ability to beat them.

Though I have beaten the drum for making smart, targeted role-player additions, I do think you can see in games like these why front offices often hunt for big fish instead. You can’t really ask role players to scale up to replace players who can create their own shots and bend defenses at will, and playoff defenses will take away every player’s Plan A almost every time. Food for thought…

(By the way, Nic Batum stunk it up from deep and stunk it up in general, for no apparent reason. Long season I guess.)

Confirming my priors

This is about what I expected from Oubre when he came on board late in the off-season. He was Philadelphia’s leading scorer and a dangerous transition guy, seizing on some opportunities to score before the Sixers could get set. But the process was absolutely horrendous everywhere else, with Oubre drawing a lot of rolled eyes, shouts, and glares from around the floor.

I am more than okay with Oubre having a bad volume shooting night from three, on this night or any other. The off-ball miscues on defense — and some shockingly bad moments as an isolation defender — are a different story. There were a lot of bad moments involving Oubre on the defensive end, and when you’re involved in a series of miscommunications, you eventually have to point at the common link.

So that I’m not just picking on Oubre, it’s worth noting that these guys eventually just petered out, which is more aggravating when you consider Utah had played the night before, and on the road to boot. I don’t think it’s quite as bad of a loss as the doomers will suggest, because the Jazz have surged lately, but it was an ugly and uninspired performance that no one should be happy with. I pity anyone who paid money to come watch it.

The Paul Reed offer sheet game

Reed was nearly a member of the Utah Jazz after signing an offer sheet in the summer, and he was one of the few guys providing consistent offense in this one. That sentence should tell you everything you need to know about this game.

I wouldn’t even say I liked most of the shots Reed got to drop. He hit multiple catch-and-shoot jumpers from the midrange, which I wouldn’t encourage almost anyone in the world to take from a math perspective. He also got pretty frisky as an off-the-dribble guy, knowing Nurse couldn’t look down the bench and summon Embiid to spell him if things really went off the rails. But complaining about him would miss the point, I think, because at least he played okay. Can’t say that about most of this group.

(We’ll just pretend he had nothing to do with Utah shooting about 90 percent at the rim. Good good, they sucked on defense.)

Markkanen hive role call

I haven’t done a ton of trade target discussion in written form, but we have discussed Lauri Markkanen on the podcast quite a bit, highlighting him as a player who would be an ideal fit in Philly that (unfortunately) isn’t really gettable. He put basically all of his best qualities on display on Saturday night, lighting it up from deep while scoring the rest of his points with sensational variety. Markkanen hurt Philly as an offensive rebounder, cutter, and roll man. His length even made a difference on the defensive end from time to time, with Markannen flying in as a secondary rim protector to force tough shots at the cup.

And those reasons are exactly why the Sixers would get outbid if they made a real push to trade for him. The Jazz are in no rush to trade him, and even if they were, my guess is it would take more than Philly has to offer.