When the Sixers put together the third-most efficient offensive performance in the past 26 years (per NBA.com’s John Schuhmann), “Upon Further Review” returns. Those are the rules.
Strategy
• Coach Doc Rivers said James Harden came to him with a suggestion a couple of weeks ago. He wanted the Sixers to run more one-two and two-one pick-and-rolls with himself and Tyrese Maxey. So, Rivers said they drilled that specific look home all week to the point that the Sixers became comfortable with it.
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“When you put two guys like that together and you get the right switch and attacks, with Joel in the dunker spot and us driving, that gives us a lot of stuff,” Rivers said.
That idea of “the right switch” is key to this first-round playoff series against Toronto. The Raptors elected to start the game with Scottie Barnes on Harden. Barnes, who suffered an unfortunate-looking ankle injury late in the game, is not the ideal player for this version of Harden to attack. Frankly, Toronto doesn’t have a bunch of them. That is one of the main reasons they were a trendy upset pick before the series.
So, who did the Sixers view as the right switch? Who did they look at as the ideal hunting spot? They told us by their actions, and it’s not much of a surprise: Fred VanVleet and Gary Trent Jr. Those are the smallest members of Nick Nurse’s starting lineup, which is full of athletic wings. VanVleet got the bulk of the Maxey assignment, and Trent also defended Harden for a bit. One of the strengths of the Sixers’ starting lineup is that there is only one hiding spot (Danny Green or Matisse Thybulle), not two.
It’s a very simple, playoff-friendly action, and the Sixers ran a ton of it with both Harden and Maxey trading roles as the ballhandler and screener. The goal is the same, though: Get Harden his switch, and let him decide from there.
In this play, all it takes is for Maxey to half-heartedly reject the screen and get Trent switched onto Harden. This results in a stepback 3 for Harden.
I find it more fun to watch when Maxey is the screener for Harden, and that isn’t because someone like Barnes might occasionally hit the truck stick on him. In the two-one pick-and-roll with Harden initiating, Maxey’s speed off the ball is something the Sixers can better exploit.
“It’s good, we’re working on it,” Rivers said. “We like that action, when he gets a screener and then comes off, the space that it creates for James, but more importantly, the swing back to Tyrese gives him a lane.”
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Smaller guards can be very effective screeners. JJ Redick and Steph Curry are two great modern examples. Watch Maxey continue to re-screen here to get VanVleet onto Harden. And Barnes, who did a solid job trying to fight around the screen, gets punished because he’s a split-second late, Harden’s pass is on time and Maxey is going straight to the rim if you’re not directly in front of him. The Sixers got a bucket later in the game on a similar play when Pascal Siakam made a slow closeout to Maxey.
“We think we can get better at it, honestly, because he’s never probably screened a guy in his life,” Rivers said. “But he did a pretty good job of it.”
• Perhaps this was a feel-out game for Nurse, considering that it sure didn’t seem like we saw any outside-the-box defensive strategies outside of the Raptors’ normal man-to-man defense. They did seem to go to a 1-3-1 matchup zone for a couple of possessions late in the second quarter. The results were a wide-open Thybulle 3 (off an offensive rebound) and a straight-line elbow drive from Joel Embiid. And then the Raptors were out of the zone.
• One area the Sixers need to improve on? Off-ball defensive awareness. The Raptors got six points in the first half off backdoor cuts when the Sixers (Shake Milton twice, Green once) fell asleep.
One of those plays happened when Harden was defending Thaddeus Young in the post and Green let Barnes cut right by him. That is by the place where Harden feels most comfortable and the television cameras picked up him yelling at his teammates: “What are you doing? Stay home!” The man does not want any help on the low block.
• I already wrote about Embiid’s clean floor game, which was a huge deal. He did struggle a bit with shot selection in this one, but I thought the lack of other mistakes combined with his high level of intensity made for a very impactful performance.
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This sure felt like one of Embiid’s best games running the floor in a while. That was obvious early on when he was cleaning the offensive glass. But there were subtle plays he made the entire game. Take the one below for instance, where he’s defending Siakam on the cross-match with his defender (Precious Achiuwa) stuck down low. He makes sure to beat Achiuwa down the floor, hops over his countryman and seals him as Maxey walks right down Broad Street for a layup.
The Sixers finished with 29 fast-break points. Cleaning The Glass has a measurement that estimates transition points added per 100 possessions. This was the Sixers’ third-best performance of the season (and probably second-best if you don’t want to count the first leg of The Paul Reed Victory Tour in Game 82). Embiid was a big part.
Rotation and matchup notes
• Speaking of Reed, he was plus-4 in 11 minutes, although some of that was in garbage time. The Sixers played Toronto even for the most part with Embiid on the bench, which is a huge deal. If that continues, it’s going to be hard for the Raptors to win the series. I joked on Twitter that Sixers game ops should have flashed “Paul Reed: 5 minutes and 33 seconds, +1” on the scoreboard. Forget the BBall Paul chants, the crowd would have given him a standing ovation.
As for Reed, he made a couple of defensive mistakes but not an egregious amount. He also made some helpful plays, including a block of VanVleet and a surprising late shot-clock dime to Harris. BBall Paul did his job and deserves to play, but I thought the way the Sixers rotated around Reed was even more fascinating.
• For Rivers, the former All-Bench Zealot, Game 1 marked a complete 180. He replaced, “let’s just try to survive these non-Embiid minutes,” with “I am not messing around at all.”
As mentioned above, Reed played 5:33 in the first half. All of those came with Harden and Tobias Harris on the floor, so he was already somewhat protected. But four of them came with Harden, Harris, Maxey and Danny Green on the floor. That is four starters on the floor with BBall Paul, and they extended the lead with that group. Again, the Sixers were not messing around with the non-Embiid minutes in the slightest.
That is all Rivers had to do, right? Well, there is some downside, and he mentioned it Sunday.
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“We like Tyrese and James on the floor at the same time with the bench. I thought that was huge for us,” Rivers said. “The problem with that is it extends one of those two guys to a point that their minutes are too high. You want one of your ballhandlers on the floor when one’s off. Putting them both on at the same time when Joel’s off, it actually does create a problem for us.”
He added: “But we’re going to force that five minutes a game, at least, because that combination for us is really good.”
To Rivers’ point, the Sixers are playing with fire if Harden and Maxey are off the floor at the same time. And while keeping that arrangement and playing them together when Embiid sits worked out, their minute totals were going to be super high. If the game needed to be closed out until the buzzer, Maxey would have played over 41 minutes, and Harden would have played just under 43. The second part of that equation is the concerning one. But it’s also the playoffs (which is when you should extend your players), and the Sixers are working with a thin rotation.
In the competitive portion of the second half, Embiid only sat for a few minutes. He shared the floor during that stretch with Maxey, Harris, Milton and Georges Niang.
• As we’ll get to in a second, the Raptors might be without two starters (Barnes, Trent) in Monday’s Game 2. Young also was listed as doubtful. But I thought it was interesting that Nurse went with the Raptors’ core five players to begin the game. The Raptors don’t have anyone who can defend Embiid one-on-one, so it’s a logical choice just to go with your best five instead of shoehorning Achiuwa in there. That will likely have to change by necessity in Game 2.
OG Anunoby got the Embiid assignment to start while Embiid had to defend Anunoby on the other end. One way to combat the Raptors’ five-out approach is to switch, and the Sixers did that liberally. Embiid and Harris were generally switching the Siakam-Anunoby two-man game, for instance.
In 16 minutes, the Sixers starters rang up a 130 offensive rating. That core four-man group continues to play well.
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Possible adjustments
• Considering the Raptors’ walking wounded, this section is going to be more difficult than usual. Especially if Barnes, Young and Trent are out, this feels like a golden opportunity for the Sixers to take control of the series. Toronto is not a team that runs particularly deep. But in addition to anything Nurse comes up with (which we’ll get to after this), there is a large degree of unpredictability with new players and a new rotation. I guess we’ll find out tonight in Game 2.
If Barnes is unable to play, Nurse says he’ll likely add somebody else who can handle the ball to the rotation (mentioned Flynn or Brooks, maybe both of Trent is out too). If Young is out, he said it’ll probably mean more minutes for Boucher/Achiuwa/Birch.
— Josh Lewenberg (@JLew1050) April 17, 2022
• All three of these suggestions are going to be for Toronto. The Sixers weren’t perfect for 48 minutes in Game 1, but that was a relatively dominant effort from them.
The first suggestion is that the Raptors have to do a better job of making Harden beat them as a scorer. He’s coming off a 2 of 10 performance from inside the arc, and in addition to the lack of pop around the rim, his touch is letting him down on very makeable shots. But the issue for Toronto is that Harden excelled everywhere else in Game 1. The stepback 3 is something they’ll have to live with, but Harden finished with 14 assists to just one turnover. Some may quibble with the scorekeeper on a few of Harden’s shots, but the point remains: He dissected them.
Take this play below. Harden doesn’t even have Barnes beat, and yet, Siakam and Achiuwa are both in the paint. Thybulle sets a nice screen, but that is a pass Harden can make in his sleep.
I also think this is easier said than done for the Raptors. Helping is their identity. They led the league in corner 3s allowed, which is one of the tradeoffs when a team shrinks the floor as much as they do. It has been a successful formula for them for years, and Harden becomes more dangerous one-on-one when there’s less help. But I don’t think giving Harden routine reads for corner 3s is going to work.
• Embiid was generally doubled from the baseline when he caught the ball in the post, and he handled it well. But the Raptors did spring a couple of traps that were successful late in the game with Chris Boucher doubling from the baseline. Embiid called timeout on the one below.
That Raptors lineup is all length: Barnes-Anunoby-Siakam-Boucher-Achiuwa. That means the double is coming from a tall, lanky player. There were times earlier in the game when the double came from someone like Trent, who Embiid could much more easily see over the top of. Will the Raptors change where they double from? And can they play a lineup like this with Barnes and Young out?
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• Is it a positive or negative that Toronto played well offensively? The big concern for them was half-court offense, and the Raptors scored 117.7 points per 100 possessions in the half court according to Cleaning The Glass. That is a very good number and something the Sixers will need to improve on moving forward.
The Raptors had some success attacking Maxey defensively. VanVleet screening for Siakam is something they want to explore more of. Take this set play where they take advantage of Reed and Harris switching to set up the real switch they want (because Reed can’t get around a VanVleet screen). Niang goes to help Maxey, and it’s a VanVleet triple from the corner.
Especially considering how much Maxey wore out the Raptors, they might as well make him work on the other end.
Related reading
Koreen: Raptors can’t turn 76ers’ weaknesses into strengths
Related listening
(Photo of Tyrese Maxey and James Harden: Tim Nwachukwu / Getty Images)