The One Thing Each Sixer Does This Season That Drives Me Nuts
This is what really grinds my gears.
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How much losing can good vibes survive? Hopefully it'll take more than one three-game road losing streak for everything that felt fun and exciting and different about this Sixers team through 25 games to feel like the same old drag that last season ended up being -- still being in first helps, thanks to nobody in the East seemingly being able to figure their shit out this year -- but reality is settling in a little bit, and we still haven't even been hit with any major injuries yet. Ben Simmons morphing into peak LeBron because he's still angry about a couple hoodies Donovan Mitchell wore in 2018 is very nice, but probably isn't something we can rely on most nights, and in the meantime, the Sixers seem one guy short of being able to hang with the NBA's true elite.
And when your team starts to lose a little, the things you were able to overlook them doing when they were winning gets a little harder. When a relationship is going good, you can just laugh off the tiny aggravations as personality quirks, but when you're already on edge from a stressful week with them, it gets to be I SWEAR TO GOD IF SETH CURRY LEAVES THE BATHROOM LIGHT ON ONE MORE TIME territory real quick. I don't want to sound ungrateful for this Sixers team, who I still love and adore (collectively and in most cases individually) -- and who, once again, are still somehow in first place, with a softer run to their schedule coming up -- but I might be getting a little prone to snapping at them this week.
Here, in alphabetical order, are the ten Sixers who've gotten major rotation minutes this season and the one thing they do that absolutely kills me every time -- not things like missing open shots or failing to grab a rebound, but seemingly avoidable, correctible things.
Seth Curry: Never leaning into a defender to draw a foul
Dave Early of Liberty Ballers tweeted something earlier this week about how the Sixers had only drawn a single foul from three this year -- or, one fewer than anti-Sixer WMD Jordan Clarkson did on his lonesome last night. That's a team-wide failing to capitalize on what's essentially the most efficient play in the NBA, but to me a lot of that falls on Seth Curry, who is awesome at getting defenders to full-body lunge at a shot-fake from beyond, but who prefers dipping around their hurled body and driving for a pull-up two, rather than simply angling into the lunge and picking up three freebies. (Which, by the way, he's converting at a 97% rate this year.) Easier said than done perhaps to accept collision with a 6'6, 225-pound projectile, but for whatever frustrating tendencies of his own JJ had, he certainly knew how to take advantage of such generous-if-taxing gifts from the opposition.
Joel Embiid: Flailing on shot attempts late in the game
While Seth Curry never tries to draw a foul, Joel Embiid can't seem to stop himself. And for the first 44 minutes of a game, that's easy money for the Big Man -- he's shooting over 11 free throws a game, tops in the league, and hitting 'em at a career-best 85% clip. But while he's earned the benefit of the whistle for the first three and a half quarters, the refs have proven time and time again that they just aren't going to call his shit the same way down the stretch. Which isn't to say he should start avoiding physicality altogether, but the exaggerated flails that he does trying to draw the whistle end up just being live-ball turnovers and easy scores at the other end most of the time, particularly while Jo lags behind to chew out the refs for staying silent. Someone on the coaching staff has to put together a video compilation of these moments -- starting with Game Three against Boston last year -- and drill it in his head that he's gotta play through contact down the stretch, not just into it.
Danny Green: Dribbling into pull-up threes in transition
I mean, Danny Green should probably not pulling up at any point from anywhere on the court -- or dribbling from anywhere ever, really -- but I've harped on him attempting to be a pick-and-roll playmaker enough, and truth is he's actually had a few decent possessions doing so in the half-court in recent weeks, so I'll let that go for now. But the dribbling into pull-up threes is comically misguided from him. Green's been about what I expected from deep this year -- if you hit him with the right pass in the right spot at the right time, he'll hit open threes at a decently reliable clip, but if he's at all rushed or out of sync or generally bothered, hope someone's there for the offensive rebound. So when he's pulling up on the move... well, I'll say this much: He has hit one or two this year, and when that happens, it feels like holy shit this team is UNSTOPPABLE right now. The other 90% of the time, though, it just feels profoundly wasteful.
Tobias Harris: Letting the ball go out of bounds when it's unclear who last touched it
Tobias Harris is a true optimist when it comes to out-of-bounds calls. I can't count the number of times this season -- though I did count three times (!!) in the game against Phoenix on Saturday -- where the ball was on its way bouncing towards the sideline, and rather than make an attempt to, y'know, pick it up, Tobias did the arms-out, velvet-rope thing to make sure it made its way out of bounds unfettered. In his mind, it's obviously always off the other team; in reality, sometimes it's off Philly and going the other way, and sometimes fuck if anyone actually knows who touched it last, and we end up having a jump ball for possession. I didn't really watch during his Phillies era, but I'm guessing this is what Bobby Abreu's fabled fear of running into the wall felt like. The sideline isn't lava, Tobi, just go get the ball please.
Dwight Howard: Jumping for blocks that have no chance (and would probably be goaltends anyway)
Obviously you have your pick of the litter when it comes to lodging Dwight mini-complaints -- though credit where due, he was awesome in the Jazz game last night. But the thing he does that gets the loudest of my 10.2 "AW, COME ON, DWIGHT!"s a contest is probably the skying for a block when a) the shooter's primary defender is still in front of him, b) he's deep enough in the paint that even if he did have a chance of blocking the shot it'd probably already be on its way down and c) he needs to be concerned with boxing out his own man, who's likely sneaking in behind him for the easiest of putbacks. There might've been a time when D-12 could make gaffes like that and still recover to get back in the play; in 2021, they usually just end up costing us two points for one reason.
Furkan Korkmaz: Passing the ball to Dwight
Even after my attempts to get a mandatory fine instituted for passing the ball to Dwight anywhere but immediately above the rim, several players on the Sixers bench unit still can't seem to resist trying to feed our backup big. With Shake Milton, the other worst offender, I sort of get it, because he's in so many pick-and-rolls with Dwight that you almost have to try to get him the ball on occasion just to keep defenses playing you honestly. But to my eye, Furkan's the one who most frequently tries to get fancy with it, attempting to hit him on the move, or float the ball to him over a defender, or get him the ball markedly outside of his comfort zone (which, again, is anywhere but inches above the cylinder). I've made my peace with the gigantic-feet turnovers, but these have got to stop.
Tyrese Maxey: Pump-faking from three and driving to nowhere
Should probably be careful with the T.J. McConnell comparisons here, since Spike has never stopped seething at me for the column I wrote about my T.J. frustrations two years ago. But still, hard not to get flashes of Teej when Tyrese Maxey also gets a feed wide open beyond the arc, offers a slight pump-fake to no one in particular and then drives directly into the teeth of the defense. Of course, Maxey's range leaves much to be desired at the moment -- just 28% from three on the season -- so I understand the hesitation, but when he's playing with Simmons, Thybulle and/or Howard in most of his minutes, we can't really afford to have him out there if he's just not willing to take that shot. I'm OK with him missing most of 'em; I'll never be OK with the pump-and-drives to nowhere.
Shake Milton: Complaining to the refs
I was incredulous recently when Marc Zumoff commented about Shake being unusually demonstrative with the refs, since at this point, Shake would have to do a one-man staging of Wagner's entire Ring cycle for his referee demonstrations to be considered out of the ordinary. Likely it's in large part a byproduct of him now just driving to the hoop all the goddamn time -- he's learning that when you drive a whole lot, you get hit a whole lot -- and I can certainly understand his frustrations there. But he's hurting his case yapping on seemingly every single play, and he really doesn't seem like the kind of player that performs his best while furious. I don't know if his rage is more cause or byproduct of his foul-related grievances -- either way, I hope his time off with the sprained ankle this week allows us to get the Shake back whose forehead didn't double as a frying pan.
Ben Simmons: Not looking at the rim in one-one-situations
This feels silly to complain about after a 42-point game where he took 26 shots -- all the rounds of applause you want for that one, Fresh Prince -- but it's the first game in recent memory for Simmons where there wasn't multiple sequences where Simmons had a favorable one-on-one matchup, could've easy plowed his way to the rim, and instead reflexively kicked out beyond the arc. After having a dominant first half in Phoenix on Saturday, he started doing this in the third quarter -- including one play where I thought he had a sure layup, and instead passed to a guarded (!!) Matisse Thybulle (????) in the corner. If last night was a corner-turning game for Ben, then that's a marvelous development, but Sixers fans have long learned not to assume any corners have truly been turned with Ben until he's all the way around that 90-degree angle and halfway to the horizon line.
Matisse Thybulle: Picking up bailout fouls
Matisse's aggressiveness on defense is one of the truly wondrous things about this Sixers squad -- I can't tell you how happy it made me last night when six or so three-pointers deep into Clarkson's career night, he came in and immediately blocked one of the Mighty JC's jumpers. But you also saw the downside of that aggressiveness, which is that he still seems to have no idea how to tone down that aggressiveness at times when the situation calls for him to do so -- like, end-of-clock-type situations where the only thing that really kills you on defense is fouling from behind the arc. Obviously anyone who defends as relentlessly as Matisse is gonna get some frustrating whistles, and that's fine. But there are times when the best defense he can play is just stuffing his hands into his pockets, and when that's the case, he's gotta learn how to stop being Mr. Octopus Arms for at least a couple seconds.