Sixers lose nailbiter to Heat heading into All-Star break

The Sixers lost a 109-104 barnburner to the Heat to close out the portion of their schedule prior to the All-Star break, coming within a timely rebound or two of a third straight win.

Here’s what I saw.

The Good

— Ricky Council IV has multiple bankable skills to keep him in the rotation right now, regardless of what the plan is for him moving forward:

• He consistently gets to the free-throw line. Smaller and slower defenders are getting punished when Council gets them on an island, as Duncan Robinson found out the hard way when he was rag-dolled by Council on a drive to the basket
• Council is a decisive, productive rebounder on both ends. He’s too strong to dislodge, has the hops to jump with most players, and most importantly, he’s up there with two hands just about every time. If he has good positioning after the shot attempt, he’s going to end a possession or give Philadelphia an extra one. And he can do that even when he starts from a suboptimal spot.

I enjoy that he has been able to play a destructive, physical style without completely losing sight of the team. That’s a tough needle to thread for most young players. But his brand has been purposeful physical basketball, with Council making smart decisions with the ball in transition and the halfcourt.

The shooting is a bit wild right now, and right when I was about to give him credit for ironing out his shooting mechanics, Council took a couple of wild threes in the second half. But he has been a breath of fresh air for the rotation, and it’s going to be a tough sell to the fanbase if he loses minutes after the All-Star break.

— It has been Buddy Hield’s world and we are all simply living in it. When Daryl Morey called him the best player moved at the deadline, even he couldn’t have expected for Hield to look this good, this early for Philadelphia.

We said it when we got here, but it bears repeating — Hield’s value is a shooter is hard to compare to most guys in the league, because he can hurt you every which way. Against Miami, he was a terror in transition, getting down the floor in early offense for some pull-up jumpers before they were set. His constant movement in the halfcourt has broken up what can otherwise be a stagnant group, and as he draws the eyes of multiple defenders coming off of a screen, he opens lanes for Tyrese Maxey, Kelly Oubre, and others to attack.

As you saw during his first game against Atlanta last week, the touch won’t always be there. So it has been nice to see consistent playmaking out of Hield, which offers hope if (and when) he remains on the floor during a cold shooting night. In one first-half sequence, he pump-faked a three to get by a hard closeout, took a couple of dribbles toward the rim, and then dropped a pass off for an easy KJ Martin layup. Those little plays are super meaningful now and will hold a lot of weight as the games get tougher in the playoffs, when split-second decisions are needed to unlock good defenses.

(Hield piling up double-digit assists is a bit deceiving, especially when you consider that he had some awful turnovers in this one. But he’s stretched thin at the moment, so it’s hard to kill him for having to do a bit too much on a team that won’t ask that from him moving forward.)

His offensive discipline has set a great example for this group. Even with Hield shooting the hell out of the ball, it has rarely felt like he is forcing up shots or losing sight of better opportunities from the group. His feel for pressure has been excellent, with Hield constantly splitting doubles and hedges with passes to free his teammates for four-on-three offense.

— I sort of fall in the middle on this Tyrese Maxey performance, which featured some excellent rim attacking and midrange shooting with, uh, less than stellar decision-making elsewhere. He tried to get a little more adventurous with his playmaking than was advisable, and those few turnovers were costly on a game that was neck-and-neck for nearly the entire game. We’ll get to the defense below.

That said, the good news is that he was able to finish the game at all. He was removed in an early third-quarter sub that caused some panic around the arena, with Maxey going back to the locker room with trainer Kevin Johnson. Maxey got a nice hand upon his return, and went to work almost immediately, immediately restoring credibility to a lineup that had been drowning without him.

Kyle Lowry wasn’t ultimately able to make his debut on Wednesday night, but it’ll be interesting to see how much Nick Nurse toys with Maxey-Lowry lineups in the future. If Maxey has problems right now, many of them come down to the fact that he’s the only capable dribbler in a lot of the lineups they’re putting on the floor. Managing a 28-6-7 line with good efficiency in that context is a lot better than I am probably giving him credit for.

— Before the game, Nick Nurse noted there are two main things to look for with his current bigs. Paul Reed needs to impact the game by understanding his strengths and winning through activity. Mo Bamba, Nurse effectively said, needs to show the energy to make use of his gifts. I doubt Reed heard that message himself, but he sure played like he did, because he was an absolute force on the boards for most of the night.

Bam Adebayo had an ultra-efficient night across from Reed, though I hardly think that is a reflection of how the Sixers’ big man played. Reed was put in constant no-win situations, forced to try to stop both the ballhandler and his man after the Sixers got smoked by drivers on the perimeter. Try as he might, Reed was not able to make up for that all by himself.

(That said — man, the final Adebayo rebound was a killer.)

The Bad

— The Sixers’ midseason acquisitions have made them a better (and more watchable) offense. If you haven’t noticed, that is quite valuable. But it is tough to ignore just how bad the defense has been, and unless the post-break reinforcements completely change things, we’re going to be watching a lot of shootouts between now and Joel Embiid’s eventual return.

That’s not to say it’s all on Buddy Hield and Cam Payne, even if they’ve played their part in the layup line. Hield, as my colleague Rich Hofmann pointed out, was part of a horrific defense in Indiana and has battled questions about his off-ball awareness for the entirety of his career. He is not helping that reputation so far. Payne’s issues are of a different sort — he’s drawing dead against most matchups across the league, so teams can pick on him whenever they choose.

Moving on from those guys, it’s pretty bad across the board. Tyrese Maxey was downright horrific for most of Wednesday’s game, with Tyler Herro easily dusting him for most of the evening. Maxey’s defense has been ugly for a while now, both in terms of his ability to contain off the dribble and his issues navigating screens. The inability to contain on the perimeter combined with crappy help defense led to quality look after quality look for the Heat. When Herro didn’t get to the rim, he found a release valve on the perimeter, with Miami ping-ponging passes around the perimeter to set up open threes.

There is a general lack of connectivity that can be explained by a lack of time spent together. Even the incumbent players are in lineups that have rarely been played before recently, so there’s frequent confusion about who needs to go where and when. Miami absolutely crushed them with baseline cuts and exploited their indecisiveness as a group, something they can’t afford with their premium rim protector on the shelf for a while.

— A few days after Kelly Oubre played one of his best games of the season, he was in active saboteur mode against Miami. He took a gaggle of absolutely horrendous shots while also passing up an open three or two, which seems impossible. He (evidently) wanted to take the bad ones but had to be convinced it was a good idea to take open threes. How is that possible?

It was an out-of-control night for him on defense, too. Oubre committed three or four of the dumbest fouls of the season, with his fifth coming as he climbed Bam Adebayo’s back on a rebound opportunity he had zero chance to convert.

I tweeted this in the early stages of the fourth quarter…

…and I think there’s a good case to be made that the rookie should take Oubre’s minutes. It doesn’t have to be permanent, and the vet certainly has a role to play for this team as a secondary shot creator. But I’d rather try to develop the young guy who shows some semblance of belief in a team concept. Just my two cents.

— Watching the Sixers rebound is just sickening sometimes.

The Ugly

— Matt Cord introduced Philadelphia’s backup center as “Mo Bamba Number 5.” Well done.

— After a few good games to open his Sixers career, this was the first Cam Payne game that made me think about how much better it should look with 37-year-old Kyle Lowry out there. Not sure I could name a single thing he did right.