Paul George struggles in return game, Sixers lose to Heat

The Sixers got Paul George back from injury but could not shoot to save their lives, losing 108-101 to the Miami Heat thanks to an abysmal night from deep.

Here’s what I saw.

The Good

— Adem Bona is a long way from being a reliable rotation guy, but you can see that he is going to give himself every chance to get there with how hard he works and plays. There was one play in the second half that brought me a good laugh on press row, with Bona sprinting down the floor and exhaling in a bit of disbelief that he didn’t get the ball. It’s not that the effort was funny, but he was moving so fast that he probably would have caught the pass and barreled right through the basket, bringing back visions of Luis Mendoza in the second Mighty Ducks movie.

I have a lot of love for a guy like that, though, and Bona is getting better at the rim protector’s job of showing his hands and wingspan without jumping at everything or fouling every rim attacker. The highlight plays are still there, but there’s more restraint with each passing game. When you can run and jump like that, you can be selective.

— Reggie Jackson scored eight straight points to open the second quarter for Philly, and played the best defensive possession they had against Tyler Herro all game. That’s better than a lot of these jokers.

The Bad

— 12/40 from three ain’t getting it done, fellas. The story of the game could be told in one sentence, honestly.

To paraphrase a Dave Chappelle bit, ain’t no punchline here, they just sucked.

— It has always been the case that great offense is better than great defense at the NBA level because even the best contest is not stopping an elite shooter or paint scorer. You do what you can, and then you hope that’s good enough. But you do indeed have to “do what you can” before you can worry about whether the other team is going to score through your defense or not. In other words, man, I am sick of watching the horrific defense Philadelphia has played lately.

I am not entirely sure what the plan was against Tyler Herro, Miami’s newly-minted All-Star guard, but the Sixers spent much of the first half providing him with an open runway to the rim. He would beat one defender, and there was no help or low man in sight. He fairly easily picked up layup after layup in the opening moments of the game, at which point the Sixers decided they ought to try something new. It worked well enough for a few possessions, but Terry Rozier would stop missing the wide-open threes he got from the left corner, and the Sixers were back in an unfavorable spot.

It didn’t help that they gave Miami roughly a million chances every possession even when they forced the initial stop. Turns out, there are real consequences to playing a Reggie Jackson/Kyle Lowry lineup, even if the plus/minus splits have been favorable for that pairing all season. Miami pulled down four offensive rebounds on one particularly gruesome first-half possession, eventually canning a three as if to say, “Well damn, I guess you wanted us to have this.”

Even the guys who have been good on defense have had some rough moments and stretches lately, with Kelly Oubre taking up that mantle on Wednesday night. The Heat shot the lights out and deserve their end of the credit for it, but Oubre played perhaps his worst off-ball defense of the season against Miami, constantly coming up empty on gambles before having to scramble back into position for a closeout. It felt like something close to seven threes flew over Oubre’s head.

This is largely a personnel problem right now, and they did a much better job of making Herro and the Heat work in the second half. But it’s not like the Sixers are suddenly brimming with options in the backcourt. Embiid is the guy who will be expected to clean up a lot at the rim, but as we saw on Tuesday night, there are some basic communication and cohesion issues to work on there. These guys still lack processing speed as a unit, and forcing turnovers has often been the only way they can get stops. Tough to watch.

— This recent Sixers run of moderate fun has been about much more than just Tyrese Maxey, but the importance of Maxey to their success was driven home by his pedestrian game on Wednesday. A lot of the shots were the same, the approach wasn’t markedly different from what we saw over the last few weeks, and still, he started slow out of the gate. So did the Sixers, because they need him to create pressure and cook it up to have a puncher’s chance on offense.

Maxey was determined to try to pull this game out of the fire, and he tried to cobble together a good game by playing with lightning pace in transition. Maxey’s inside-the-arc finishing was far better than his three-point shooting, in part because he kept winning footraces with the Heat before they could get set. The Heat are as disciplined a team as there is in the league, and while they did a good job of stifling him in the halfcourt, I thought he was opportunistic, using the few momentary lapses in judgment from Miami to get all the way to the paint.

Ultimately, just not good enough for him. Too many missed threes, too many late shot attempts by the basket that fell harmlessly off of the rim. He was due for a down night, and even his down night was the best solo effort from any Sixers player.

— We’ll keep Paul George in this category since he was playing his first game since picking up the pinky injury. Everybody gets a game of grace before being pummeled for their failures, though there were plenty of those for PG in his return vs. Miami.

If there is any solace to be taken from his first game back, George wasn’t completely taken out of the drive-and-kick game by the finger injury. He had talked about dribbling being a lot more difficult than shooting on his podcast, and I thought George showed a reasonable amount of driving bravery, squeezing through traffic to try to score at the rim. The results weren’t pretty, but the want-to was there. That matters for a guy who is going to have to play through this finger issue for a bit unless it magically resolves during the All-Star break.

But, well, you do need to prove you’re capable of making a shot inside the three-point line. Without the ability to put pressure on the rim as a driver or cutter, George’s only path to scoring was getting freed up by a screen for a catch-and-shoot opportunity. He shot the ball well, but he was relegated to the background all night, sitting on six points deep into the fourth before he hit his third three of the game.

George also continues to pick up at least a silly foul or two per game, and there are no great indicators for when they’re going to happen. You watch him play spectacular help defense for five straight minutes and lurk in passing lanes with near-perfect discipline, and then he winds up for a bad, lazy reach-in for seemingly no reason. Hard to figure it out.

I think the tough part for George has been that for the season, he has played roughly as well as you probably need a “third guy” to play, with stellar defense, occasional hot shooting, and the willingness to blend into the background to serve other guys who are cooking — it’s just that he is (at least on paper) the No. 2 option. With Embiid, George, and Maxey all on the floor together, you can still almost see the vision for the team. But we’re still waiting for any consistent run of games with all of them on the floor together, and his offensive struggles are more glaring as a result.

The Ugly

— I will never approve of Jackson-Lowry-Gordon lineups even if the numbers say they’re better than the opponent by 100,000 points per 100 possessions. I can’t believe this is a thing at all, let alone a current lineup staple.

Lowry was the worst of the bunch, stuck in mud on defense and completely useless on the other end of the floor.

— I can’t say this was a well-officiated game.

— Not sure why Justin Edwards was stapled to the bench late in this game, or why Ricky Council IV played so little in a back-to-back with lots of tired legs.