A Sixers Christmas Miracle: What We Can Learn
This was the greatest game in Sixers history. How much of it was real?
Adam Aaronson, whose legal name is Sixers Adam (@SixersAdam on Twitter), covers the Sixers for The Rights To Ricky Sanchez. He has been legally banned from covering the team in person, but that ban will be lifted in March of 2020. He is brought to you by the Official Realtor of The Process, Adam Ksebe.
It’s hard to overstate the importance of last week’s Christmas Day game against the Bucks. It may have been the biggest regular season NBA game played in Philadelphia in my life. (Admittedly, this is a pretty short time-frame.) After six months of speculating about how these teams would look against each other, we finally got our first taste of Sixers vs. Bucks.
These teams have three matchups remaining in the regular season, and God willing, some more coming up in May. So what can we reasonably take away from battle number one? What’s real and what’s smoke and mirrors?
Joel Embiid’s defense against Giannis Antetokounmpo
Make no mistake, Joel’s complete dominance of the defending NBA MVP was in no way a fluke. While Giannis was far from the best version of himself, his 8-27 shooting performance (2-11 with Embiid as primary defender) was not nearly as much a byproduct of bad offense as it was of great defense. Giannis is a nearly impossible one-on-one cover because of his array of physical traits that goes unmatched. No player has the size, length, speed and strength of Antetokounmpo while also being able to handle the ball with ease. In most cases, he can simply overpower his defender. But Joel Embiid was having absolutely none of it. Nearly each time Giannis tried to storm the paint and finish at the rim against Joel, every bit of power he brought was matched and beaten. Embiid’s thorough control of a player who is efficiently averaging 35.4 points per 36 minutes this season is by far the most impressive feat of his career on the defensive end. And the most impressive part is that he did it largely on his own -- the Sixers are steadfast in their commitment to staying home on Milwaukee’s shooters, often leaving Antetokounmpo’s defender alone on an island. Embiid was left alone on Giannis Antetokounmpo and smothered him.
All of this is not to say that next time the two face off, Giannis can’t get the better of Embiid. He can only be contained for so long. But this was just about the best possible showing anyone could have asked for from Joel.
The viability of the Sixers bench
The Sixers dominated for the vast majority of this game, and it was far from a solo act. Each of the starters sans Al Horford had an above-average game for their standards. And the Sixers got some notable contributions from their reserves. But I think the biggest difference between the Christmas game and a potential playoff series between these teams is that the Sixers had no discomfort last week with their personnel, as it was just a highly-anticipated version of regular season basketball.
But as we all know, games look much different in the playoffs than they do in the regular season. If you’re a weak link on either end, your opponent will seek you out and hunt you down. We’ve seen JJ Redick and Marco Belienlli get eaten alive by Boston’s plethora of wings two years ago. We’ve watched Ben Simmons’ offensive impact in the half-court get neutralized. We’ve seen what feels like hundreds of immobile backup centers get run off the floor. And while these concerns are not as prevalent with this Sixers team as they have been in recent years, they still exist with players like Korkmaz or Trey Burke -- and even James Ennis III or Mike Scott can be taken advantage of in certain matchups. As far as this bench is concerned, I’m skeptical that the Sixers will be able to get nearly as much out of them in April and May as they are right now -- part of what makes upgrading at the Trade Deadline imperative.
Three-point shooting and “variance”
There are only a few ways to beat Milwaukee, and one of them is to shoot the lights out. The Sixers made 21 of 44 three-point tries against the Bucks, good for 47.7 percent from deep and a tied franchise record. This has become a common figure pointed to in order to justify the argument that Milwaukee is still the heavy favorite in any hypothetical playoff series featuring these two teams, the claim being that the Sixers simply lucked into hot shooting on the right day. And while I would still pick the Bucks to beat the Sixers in the playoffs with little to no hesitation, I don’t think this rationale is valid. The Bucks lost because, well, they invite these instances of shooting variance coming back to bite them: they nearly allow more three-point attempts per game than any other NBA team. That doesn’t mean their defense isn’t excellent (it is), but it does make them more prone than the average team to being hit with a red hot shooting performance.
Obviously, the Sixers can’t shoot that well against the Bucks every time. They’ll almost certainly drop at least one or two of the remaining matchups. I still believe that Milwaukee is the better team by a noteworthy margin. But the Sixers draining a hilarious amount of threes did not happen by chance.