Three Great Things and Three Awful Things From the Sixers’ Opening Night Loss
Trying not to be all doom and gloom after a pretty brutal start to the season.
Not a fun way to start the season. How could it be when the Sixers had both one of their greatest players in franchise history and probably the single most anticipated free agent acquisition in franchise history resting in street clothes on the bench? Taking a 124-109 beating from a Doc Rivers-led fellow Eastern Conference contender shouldn’t have been all that surprising.
Still, there was a lot to learn from the first bit of competitive basketball the Sixers have played in six whole months. Here were three great things that we saw in last night’s game, and three things that immediately need to be corrected before game two on Friday:
The Great Things
The Kyle Lowry Experience
I try not to curse in my writing, but in the second half of last night’s game, Kyle Lowry was 100% back on his bulls–t.
In the second half alone, he drew three increasingly dubious off-ball fouls on Milwaukee. Twice, Lowry got an illegal screen called on Gary Trent Jr. by grabbing the back of his jersey and pulling him down with him, and another time he pinned a rebounding foul on Bobby Portis Jr. so upsetting that Portis likely had to resist swinging at him. In some ways he’s the guard reincarnation of 1987-90 Bill Laimbeer.
Just look at the exasperated faces across the Bucks’ bench after every call. They can’t believe Lowry is still getting away with it in year 19.
Even stuff that the TV broadcast doesn’t fully catch serves as evidence of Lowry’s obsession with winning on the margins. The Sixers got this pull-up three for Tyrese Maxey because Lowry immediately started clapping and yelling at the referee to hand him the ball so he could inbound it and the Sixers could attack a Bucks’ defense that was not fully set.
And of course, we couldn’t leave Wednesday night without a reminder that Lowry is still the best pure passer on the team, perfectly setting up Guerschon Yabusele for an and-one in the third quarter with a perfect pocket pass.
Even if Lowry hadn’t made three triples and finished with an uncharacteristically high 13 points, Nick Nurse still would’ve been justified playing him 24 whole minutes last night. No one else on the Sixers can do what he does. Just an extremely valuable, winning player.
Guerschon Yabusele’s Offense
Aside from the two illegal screens he was called for, The Dancing Bear played about as well as anyone could’ve hoped for in his first NBA game in half a decade. Ten points on eight shots to go with three steals is nothing to sneeze at, even if Yabusele did foul out after only 26 total minutes of play.
While the steals were a nice added bonus, Yabusele did struggle on defense for the most part. Turns out it’s hard to stay in front of that Giannis Antetokounmpo fellow without committing a foul. He was overtasked with Joel Embiid and Paul George out and still fought to make the best of the situation.
It was evident all preseason, and it was only confirmed from last night’s proceedings — the Yabusele renaissance is real, and he’s 100% going to be a factor in this rotation after his Olympics-fueled breakout last summer.
Offensive Rebounding
The 17 offensive rebounds the Sixers tallied against the Bucks would’ve been their fourth-highest mark of the entire 2023-24 season. For all their faults, it was nice to see the Sixers dominate the possession battle after the Knicks so thoroughly owned them in the category during the playoffs, especially with a mostly undersized lineup.
Andre Drummond unsurprisingly was responsible for 5 of the 17 offensive boards – though in a nice change of pace, Caleb Martin nabbed four for himself, flashing the improved athleticism he brings the Sixers at the wing. It’s just one game, but it does appear this team is better at securing loose balls and winning 50-50 situations than they were a year ago.
The Awful Things
Off-Ball Defense
Obviously, the task of defending Antetokounmpo without Embiid was difficult. The Sixers consistently sold out with weak side help to try and turn his water off, which left them vulnerable on the back line. But still, some of these breakdowns were just inexcusable.
Falling asleep on the simplest of bask screens, getting caught on an easy slip out of a pindown action, letting your man cut directly in front of your face — the Sixers ran the entire gauntlet in ways to get beat off-ball last night. Their defense will look exponentially better when Embiid returns and can hover around the rim to clean up all of their mistakes, as he’s done for the better part of eight seasons. But that’s still no excuse for the attention to detail being this bad in game one.
Speaking of a guy who’s always hovering around the rim …
Challenging Brook Lopez at the Rim
AU and I quite literally messaged each other about it during the game — Brook Lopez had one of the most dominant 3-for-11 performances in NBA history. Six blocked shots and complete defensive annihilation of the other team will do that for you.
“You don’t really want to challenge Lopez as much as we did at the rim,” Nurse said after the game. “You gotta make the next play after you beat your man and Lopez rotates to the rim, and we didn’t make that adjustment.”
Maxey echoed the same thing in his presser, saying that he needed to either stop earlier and look for his mid-range shot, or find an open kickout to a teammate on the three-point line instead of challenging a 7-foot-2 shot blocker at the summit. The Sixers got hyper-fixated on trying to win the game at the rim, a proposition the Bucks rarely lose with Giannis and Lopez in tow.
This is another obvious area where Embiid’s return changes everything: Lopez wouldn’t be able to so easily roam the paint if he was also tasked with defending one of the best scorers in the world. Likewise, the Sixers probably don’t drive into the paint so recklessly if they also have the option of throwing the ball inside to a former MVP.
Eric Gordon
I was extremely dubious of the “start 36-year-old Eric Gordon” experiment when it was first announced, and basically all of my doubts were confirmed in last night’s showing. If his three-point shot isn’t falling, he just looks like an outright negative player. He has nowhere near the same pop and burst he had as a driver in his younger days. Each one of his forays to the rim ended with his shot either being blocked or the ball being knocked away from him rather easily.
Not to mention, he also spent way too long after each drive asking for a call that he clearly wasn’t getting.
The attentiveness to detail wasn’t there on defense either. He was one of several Sixers who was frequently back cut, and he contributed almost nothing on the glass, including the worst missed box-out of the night.
Nurse obviously isn’t tied down to the idea of Gordon as a starter. After a disappointing first half, EG finished with fewer total minutes played than each of Lowry, Yabusele and Caleb Martin. The adjustment was made when it was clear the Sixes needed different guys on the court to try and mount a comeback.
He shouldn’t be completely dismissed from the rotation, particularly with George out and the Sixers desperately in need of someone who can hit threes besides Maxey. But that three-point really, really has to be falling for Gordon to justify playing 20 minutes a night. Otherwise, it could be a rough endeavor for the NBA vet.
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.
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