Instant observations: Joel Embiid overwhelms Blazers in Sixers home opener

Joel Embiid dominated the Portland Trailblazers from start to finish on Sunday evening, earning the Sixers a 126-98 win with a two-way masterclass that ended at the final buzzer of the third quarter.

Here’s what I saw in the Sixers’ home opener.

The Good

— It was unclear if Joel Embiid would play in Sunday’s home opener up until 30 minutes before tip-off when the Sixers finally admitted he was good to go on the second half of a back-to-back. It’s a damn good thing he did.

While Tyrese Maxey was the lead figure during the early stages of this game, it was Embiid who helped give him a runway for takeoff. These two are operating at a high level out of pick-and-rolls and dribble handoffs to open the season, and Maxey’s improvement as a movement shooter is giving teams fits as he comes around that corner. Just as important — Embiid is making contact with some good, hard screens, creating that extra bit of separation for Maxey to get a good look at the rim.

As much as he’s helping Maxey, though, Embiid is still an isolation-scoring demon. There was a downright comical possession late in the first half, with Embiid already in a groove and having sent DeAndre Ayton’s sorry ass to the bench with three fouls. Stuck in the middle of the floor on an island against Robert Williams III, he must have jab-stepped 10-15 times before finally unleashing a midrange jumper as he fell down, cashing out for two more points. It was a rare exception in a half filled with quick, purposeful offense, but it was delightful to watch (mostly because the shot went down).

On the glass, there are times when Embiid seems to forget (or not care) that he’s seven feet tall, but he made use of every bit of his physical tools in this one. By halftime, he had already pulled down nine rebounds, blocked four shots, and stolen the ball from Portland three separate times, flying around the floor in pursuit of any loose ball he could get his hands on. Portland was simply unable to deal with him around the basket, with the big man shoving Ayton aside for some second-chance efforts that drew wild, swinging hacks from the opponent.

It is a breathtaking experience when Embiid has it all rolling. The Sixers were in freefall when he returned in the second quarter, well on their way to a decisive loss in the period. And then he blotted out the sun for about four consecutive minutes to end the half, putting the Sixers ahead at halftime in hardly believable fashion.

And the best part of all was that Embiid got all of his work done in the first three quarters of the game, setting the Sixers up with a big enough lead to sit on the sidelines for the entire fourth quarter. You wouldn’t have been able to guess from the box score — 35 points, 15 rebounds, seven assists, and six blocks is enough for a full night’s work, and he put it together in 29 minutes and 25 seconds of action. Pretty damn good.

And for good measure, he left us with this lasting image:

— Tyrese Maxey is going to go through a rough patch at some point this season, but it sure doesn’t look like that’s coming anytime soon. He has come out of the gate on a mission, so much so that most of the fanbase (as far as I can tell) is ready to move James Harden for a bag of basketballs. I can’t say I blame anyone for feeling that way right now.

His play off of Embiid lives up to the label of “two-man game” because they are operating in unison rather than simply coexisting in the same space. They’ve found a way to toggle between handoffs and rolls to the basket and post touches without it ever feeling unnatural, and when one guy gets the ball in his hands, that’s not the end of the work for their partner. That’s where it differs from the Embiid/Harden combination, which was deadly but isolated because of Harden’s limitations off-ball.

Once again, Maxey was able to balance the priorities of outside shooting and rim attacking, getting up eight threes while earning 10 free throws and making all of those looks at the charity stripe. This season is going to be all about Maxey balancing the many responsibilities of full-time point guard play — assuming Harden doesn’t have a change of heart, lol — and

There are still some hiccups with Maxey running the show on his own, with the Sixers relying an awful lot on him to simply dribble and shoot his way out of stagnant possessions. But he is now good enough to dribble and shoot them out of stagnant possessions, and that’s a victory in and of itself.

(And how about the kid getting double-digit rebounds? Embiid chasing more blocks requires gang rebounding from the entire team, and Maxey has taken that assignment seriously so far.)

— I think you can already see a noticeable difference in how the Sixers play because of the coaching change they made this offseason. There is a lot of purposeful and designed cutting on offense, even from guys who haven’t traditionally been cutting threats.

The Sixers ran a beautiful set in the first half of Sunday’s game, stationing Maxey and Embiid at either elbow in a “HORNS” look with Tobias Harris as the initiator. After getting Embiid the ball at the nail, Harris received a (very good!) screen from Maxey and ran free toward the basket, with Embiid hitting him for one of the easiest baskets you’re likely to see in an NBA game.

Speaking of Harris, he appears to be one of the big early winners of the egalitarian approach to offense in Philadelphia. He has long been an advocate/spokesman for the importance of “flow” on offense, and he’s getting to try a whole bunch of stuff throughout the course of 48 minutes. One possession he’s a cutter, the next he’s a pick-and-roll handler, the next he’s a spot-up shooter. And he has been good at basically all of it, scaling up his game beautifully to handle the increased volume that has come to him without Harden on the floor.

Great start to the season for him.

— Finding the perfect-sized role for Pat Beverley might be a tough needle to thread this year, mostly because of the personnel around him. He’s not really cut out to run a unit by himself at this point, and even splitting duties with De’Anthony Melton seems like a stretch.

On the other hand, he remains a master of the basketball dark arts, scratching and clawing and swiping for whatever he can get his hands on. He’s coming away with rearview blocks, ripping balls away from driving opponents, and even making an impact on the glass from time to time. He’s everyone’s favorite professional irritant for a reason.

— Finally, a good De’Anthony Melton game! I knew there would be one again this season, and it only took two clunkers to open the year to get back on track.

The Bad

— I am a big advocate for Jaden Springer minutes. I am glad Nick Nurse gave him some burn in the first half of this game. His chase-down block in transition was one of the defensive highlights of the game:

That being said, you can’t commit four fouls in less than four minutes of time. Easy way to get yourself buried at the end of the bench.

— Paul Reed may well be a positive role player on this team in the macro, but he is having a rough start to the season overall. The coaching staff is asking him to do some new things this season, and on Sunday night, he embraced his newfound freedom a bit too much, hoisting some early-clock threes that never had a chance to drop from the moment they left his hand.

Living with some bad shots would be fine if he was impacting the game on defense and getting after it on the glass, but he has not lived up to his end of the bargain there. The Blazers punished the Sixers on the glass in a big way whenever Joel Embiid sat, and they didn’t exactly have ultra-big lineups on the floor while doing so. Robert Williams III is a bouncy, athletic guy who can live above the rim, but the Blazers just bum-rushed Philly from all over the place, and Reed was helpless to stop them.

Nurse has talked a bunch about needing to figure out who gets/deserves a longer leash for experimentation, and once this early part of the season is over, I would guess we’d see Reed in more of a traditional big-man role instead of periodically spacing the floor. Just a hunch.

The Ugly

— Maxey’s dive to the floor for a loose ball in the second quarter is the sort of thing you love to see from your team leaders. Unfortunately, you saw right away why a lot of guys refuse to dive to the floor in any circumstances, because Maxey popped up in a ton of pain, shaking his hand/wrist and constantly grabbing at it for the next few minutes of game time. It was hard to tell if the game got away from him sort of naturally the rest of the quarter, but he was uninvolved in most of their offensive sets as they marched toward halftime.

We’ll check in with Maxey after the game, but hopefully, it was just a jolt of pain and nothing we have to monitor moving forward.