Five Takeaways From Sixers’ L.A. Win: Kelly Oubre Can Pass, Paul George Can’t & More
Let’s examine some lessons from one of the most fun Sixers wins in recent memory.
That was awesome.
From the Sixers’ bench hearing “BBall Paul!” chants rain down from the upper deck of the Crypto.com Arena, to Kate Scott saying the name on the NBC broadcast, this year’s Fly The Process was a masterful success. The Sixers beat James Harden and the Clippers 121-107 in Los Angeles, in what was arguably the most fun win of the entire season (mostly depending on how you feel about the 70- and 50-point performances from Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey).
Here are my five takeaways from the picture perfect win on Sunday:
1. Kelly Oubre Jr. Is Making a Playmaking Leap
You know he just had to do it with Mike in attendance.
Validating the oft-expressed belief of his longest-time supporter, The Tsunami Papi had five assists in the first half alone on Sunday, finishing with six for the game, just one short of tying his career-best.
More importantly, these were not fake assists: Oubre did not just hand the ball off to a teammate to dribble five times before hitting a contested jumper. Rather, he twice slashed into the heart of the Clippers’ defense, and when extra defenders rotated over to cut him off, he found the open man in the dunker spot. And while his four other dimes were hardly spectacular, they were still nice swings of the ball to the right spot at the right time.
All of this was the culmination of a wonderful March for Oubre. Ever since that road win in Dallas, where he seemingly finally learned that he should just put his head down and get to the rim every time he touches the ball, he’s been the best Philadelphia 76er not named Tyrese Maxey. Over his past 12 games, Oubre is averaging 19.5 points, 5.8 rebounds, and 2.7 assists. That last number may not seem like a lot — and it isn’t, really — but it’s more than double his pre-March average of 1.1 dimes per contest.
The Oubre passing leap may have been a methodical, slow climb, but the signs have been there this past month. Without question, his best assists are his dump-off passes to bigs in and around the dunker spot. He’s such a dynamic force standing at 6-foot-7 and often having the best first step on the court. Defenses are forced to collapse when he puts his head down and drives, and he’s finally learned how to leverage his best skill into easy scoring opportunities for his teammates.
Oubre might not hit six assists in another game the rest of his career, let alone this season. In all likelihood, he’ll return to role player duties if/when Embiid returns and the team’s hierarchy is restored, and he won’t be given such ample opportunities to have the ball in his hands like he has now. But his effort and bravery stepping into this primary role the past month has been incredible: With the reigning MVP’s season derailed, Maxey in and out of the lineup with injuries, and Tobias Harris suffering through the worst stretch of his entire career, Oubre stepped up to moonlight as one of the stars for this ravaged Sixers team, and he’s done about as well as anyone could have possibly hoped for.
All in all, getting Oubre on a minimum contract this past summer is one of the absolute best moves Daryl Morey has made throughout his tenure in Philadelphia. And though these improvements in play will make it even harder for the Sixers to retain him in the summer, Oubre’s performance this season should be cherished by Philly fans.
2. Sixers Should Keep Using K.J. Martin in the Short Roll
Almost every team has defended ball screens set for Maxey the exact same way since Embiid went down. They want to put two defenders on Maxey and dare him to give the ball to his lesser teammates in a 4-on-3 situation, trusting that they can’t make them pay. There are slight variations each time — some teams go for an all out double and blitz Maxey, while others simply show the big man defending the screen at a level way up above where they would normally be — but the philosophy remains the same.
For two months, Sixers fans have watched both Mo Bamba and Paul Reed consistently fail to pay off these 4-on-3 opportunities, rendering the offense a jumbled mess. That is until Sunday, when KJ Martin stepped forward as Maxey’s screening partner and picked the Clippers’ defense apart with quick and precise passes on the short roll.
Martin only got one assist out of those three plays above, but each time he made a good decision with speed and gave his teammates an opportunity to score.
“They matched up their center with [KJ], and they were kind of blitzing at the same time, so he was kind of the automatic short roll guy,” Nurse said after the game. “When we saw that, we kind of started setting a few things up for him because he made some good plays, and then we continued to go with that. That was good because he was decisive. He was doing it with some speed and [made] some quick decisions.”
The big difference between Martin in the short roll vs someone like Bamba is the physical speed with with which KJ operates, and how that speed makes Maxey and other ball handlers more comfortable. Just look at how urgently Martin is slipping the ball screen on these plays compared to the lethargic and reactionary way Bamba plays in the same role.
This isn’t to bash Bamba anymore than has already been done. He’s a backup center being asked to play a bigger role than he’s qualified for – and quite honestly, he’s played his best basketball of the season ever since AU wrote 1,000-plus words on why he should never play more minutes than his beloved BBall Paul.
But he just doesn’t move well enough to ever threaten a defense in a 4-on-3 situation. They have plenty of time to recover to him, and any advantage Maxey or another player could create quickly dissipates. An athlete like KJ maintains that advantage: He moves with force toward the rim, and pressures the already scrambling defense into further disarray, fully capitalizing on the compromised defensive situation he’s been presented with. Though I’m the world’s first and foremost Nicolas Batum appreciator, Martin admittedly worked even better as a short roll operator than the French forward did: Opponents don’t fear Batum rolling toward the basket, since they know he probably won’t challenge them and try to score, while KJ at least always poses the threat of yamming a dunk on someone’s unexpecting head.
For months the Sixers have needed to find ways to properly counter teams sending two defenders at Maxey, and it turns out that pairing the All-Star guard with a downhill athlete like KJ Martin might have been the answer all along.
3. Paul George Has Not Been Good this Season
Single game box score stats tell some of humanity’s biggest lies. On the surface, yesterday appeared as just a mildly disappointing game for Paul George. He finished with 18 points on 15 shots and made four of his eight three-point attempts, while also committing five turnovers. Just reading those numbers it sounds like a game where George just wasn’t aggressive enough trying to score on an injured Sixers’ defense, while also getting careless with the ball, but still shot well enough from deep that he had value.
But watch those turnovers from George again. They’re truly some terrible, terrible passes, ones that even members of the 2019-20 Sixers might be ashamed of.
Passing turnovers are not the worst thing in the world: Often, they’re the result of a brilliant creator testing his limits on a high-risk, high-reward proposition, or just the bad fortune of having to go up against top-tier athletes who can break on the ball at unreal speeds. That is not what happened to George in this game, or what has happened to him in almost every game this season, as he constantly throws passes where both his accuracy and his reading of the defense are way off.
I could cherry pick plenty of poor shooting splits and points per game averages during specific time frames to illustrate how George has struggled this season. They’re out there, and they don’t paint a flattering picture of PG (this tweet below references the 1/21 — 3/6 stretch that roughly coincides with the Clippers’ season slowly turning for the worse).
However, there is no good substitute for watching film, and I’ve hardly watched every Clippers game this season. I can’t say with 100% confidence that George is declining in a massive way. But I am good friends with the crew at 213 Hoops, who do a better job covering the Clippers than anyone out there (and are worthy of a follow and podcast listen, if I do say so myself).
To a T, when I ask them about this year’s Clips team, this is what they say: Kawhi is easily the primary superstar, Harden is frustrating but clearly the second-best player due to how well he creates for others, and George is having a pretty bad season. It was preposterous that he got the team’s second All-Star nod over Harden, let alone the other deserving stars in the West.
This all is preface to say this: the Sixers going after Paul George with their max cap space this summer might be a devastating mistake. He’s been the Clippers’ third-best player behind both Kawhi Leonard and James Harden this season, and it’s not been all that close in my opinion.
Now as far as third options go, he clearly would be a huge upgrade for the Sixers over Tobias Harris. No one who has watched basketball in the past five years would debate that. But to what Mike and Spike have mentioned in Star Hunter segments throughout this season — if this is the huge, spend-all-the-assets move, the Sixers really have to be certain it’s the right guy. It has to be a bona fide star, not someone whose team has been reeling during the second half of the season, largely due to his own shortcomings.
George is a future Hall-of-Famer, and past versions of himself would almost certainly be a home-run acquisition for the Sixers, but the age-34 version of him might not be good enough to push the team’s playoff ceiling as high as they want it to be.
4. Cam Payne Can Be Our Emergency Microwave Scorer
Of all the storylines someone would’ve predicted to come out of the Sixers-Clippers game, Cam Payne dropping a season-high 23 points and outscoring all three of Harden, George, and Kawhi was probably not one of them.
This graph sums up the entire Cam Payne on the Sixers experience pretty well:
Though it looks like your standard hospital cardiogram, that’s just an illustration of Payne’s game-by-game scoring totals since he arrived in Philadelphia. In six games out of 20, he’s cracked 15 points, while in another nine, he’s failed to break the 7-point barrier, and his minutes have fluctuated wildly throughout.
If Oubre is the team’s official captain of getting to the rim, then Payne has the microwave scorer role locked up. Some nights he has it, other nights he doesn’t. It’s really as simple as that.
Sometimes his step back jumper is falling, and the Sixers have a point guard who can run the offense easily and create his own shot whenever he likes. Other times, Payne is missing wide on everything he throws toward the rim, and suddenly the Sixers have a major liability – particularly on the defensive end of the floor – without getting any juice out of the squeeze on the offensive end.
It speaks to the current estate of the Sixers that so much of their success can be determined by whether or not Cam Payne is feeling it from three, but his hot and cold nature should play even better with the hypothetically healthy version of this team. He essentially fills the Shake Milton role from yesteryear — he’s not guaranteed any spot in the playoff rotation, but if Nick Nurse ever finds his team in a tight spot, he can throw Payne out there and see if he happens to have it going that night.
There are far worse “Get Buckets in Case of Emergency” options than Cam Payne out there, and overall Payne has been a significant net positive for the Sixers.
5. BBall Paul Still Refuses to be Normal
No analysis needed here. Paul Reed breaks all concepts of logical basketball thought. There is no way for an opponent to counter him, because not even Paul himself knows what he is about to do next with every second he spends on the basketball court.
Who else would see no one in front of him on a fast break and – rather than simply lay the ball up into the basket where there was no contest approaching – lob a bizarre hook pass over his own head and the head of the trailing defender to a cutting teammate?
Look at Kyle Lowry’s reaction from the bench. He is an awe watching BBall Paul. He knows not whether he should adore Paul’s misunderstood basketball genius, or be terrified of someone who seemingly is playing the sport in the wrong way on purpose.
Sunday was the entire BBall Paul experience summed up in just one game — he finished with 10 points, eight rebounds, three assists, three steals and two blocks, stuffing the stat sheet to the absolute brim. He even finished with the best +/- of any player in the game, with the Sixers outscoring the Clippers by 17 in the 24 minutes Paul was on the floor.
He also had multiple dumb fouls in the final minutes of the fourth quarter that let the Clippers’ subs chip into the lead, and several “I don’t know about that one” lapses in judgment. But he made up for all of it the only way he knows how — by being weird, even down to a signature Paul Reed broken possession bucket.
Paul deserved every second of those “BBall Paul” chants inside Crypto.com Arena. I hope he never changes. Just a remarkably fun basketball player.
Daniel Olinger is a writer for the Rights To Ricky Sanchez, and author of “The Danny” column, even though he refuses to be called that in person. He can be followed on X @dan_olinger.
“The Danny” is brought to you by the Official Realtor Of The Process, Adam Ksebe.
Missed the game so having the video to emphasize your analysis was helpful. Great stuff.