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Jaylen Brown blocks Cade Cunningham in the final minute of the Sixers’ win over the Detroit Pistons. [Reuters]
Jaylen Brown scored 30 points and likely sealed a Sixers victory with a block of Cade Cunningham in the final minute against the Pistons on Wednesday night. Joel Embiid, for his part, went for 26 points and reeled in 15 rebounds as the Sixers exacted revenge on Detroit, picking up a road win on Tyrese Maxey’s birthday to move to 8-1.
Here are three takeaways from the game.
The birthday boy sits on the bench
Tyrese Maxey spent the majority of the first half on the bench with foul trouble. God forbid the newly minted 26-year-old have a little fun on his birthday! His third foul, the proverbial nail in the coffin on his first half, was a good summary of the nonsense both teams dealt with from the officials early on. He got whistled for getting physical on an off-ball screen when he was merely responding to the physicality levied upon him by Duncan Robinson as he tried to create space.
Even with a lesser workload than usual in that first half, Maxey still wasn’t particularly good on offense. Detroit’s length and relentless ballhawking seem to be his kryptonite, and the Pistons maximized the ball pressure from the start with Ausar Thompson picking him up in the backcourt on the opening tip-off.
Maxey wasn’t making the open ones, either. However, not to worry. The fruits of this offseason bore early on, with Brown stepping up to keep the wheels turning while Maxey struggled to get going.
He missed a deep three early in a transition possession. It was an objectively bad shot, but a shot that you live with when you’re trying to make all the stars feel like themselves. What followed that miss was an absolute barrage.
The Sixers kept pushing their lead because of Brown’s shotmaking, the wing cooking up a platter of threes, mid-range jumpers, and contested buckets at the rim.
A season-high 23 points in the first half for Brown kept Philadelphia moving. The ideal scenario is that they’re all cooking at once, obviously. But Brown being able to shoulder the load while Maxey was stuck underlies one of the benefits of the trade, not that it needs any more justification. Whereas Paul George has moments where he can crack a defender and get to the rim, he’s largely at a stage where the jumpers are either falling or they’re not. Brown, by contrast, still very much has the three-level scoring prowess to keep the offense from stalling when Maxey has to play in a limited capacity. He kept Philadelphia’s solutions flowing while the face of the franchise was in a funk or stuck to the bench.
Adem Bona’s best game of the season
It was funny watching the contrast between Bona and former Sixer Paul Reed. The guy affectionately known as Bball Paul had a good start to this game, which afforded him an inch of freedom on offense. The problem for Detroit was that inch became a request for five feet.
Reed’s decisions with the ball in his hands were a major reason the Pistons amassed a handful of terrible outcomes on their possessions in the first half. And because Reed was the one taking wild shots, he wasn’t in position to rebound. So Reed’s irrational confidence shot the Sixers into transition, allowing them to grow their lead.
Bona, on the other hand, has no idea what to do with the inch you give him on offense. And frankly, that’s probably a good thing. He’s such a deer in the headlights when the ball hits his hands that the decision he lands on, if he somehow manages to maintain control of the ball, can’t possibly be that damaging.
But perhaps nothing says more about the way LeBron James is programmed than him passing to Bona in tough situations multiple times. One was a kickout to the strong-side corner out of a drive, and Bona wisely remained patient, searching for a better option than a corner three to unfold. James consistently made the right plays toward Bona, finding him open at the rim for a pair of scores to keep those sans Joel Embiid minutes stable. His ability to maintain the ball without losing it on James’ passes was one thing. When you consider the snowball effect that a guy picking up three quick fouls can have, Bona actually defending without racking them up was one of Philadelphia’s biggest wins in the game.
Big man basketball
Imagine the element it will add to this offense when Embiid starts to see mid- and long-range jumpers fall. He’s making less than 40% of his long mid-range jumpers, per Cleaning The Glass. Embiid is shooting just 13% from three. Those will likely tick upward as the season progresses. He’s historically too good of a shooter for that. But it also hasn’t materially affected Philadelphia all that much because Embiid has played a selfless brand of basketball and, to the delight of old heads everywhere, has played closer to the rim on offense quite a bit.
This game was probably his best of the season. It took a mild kerfuffle with Tolu Smith to get him going, but once Embiid was locked in, he just dominated. He took his share of jumpers, but Embiid was plenty forceful in the paint. He refused to let Reed or any other Detroit big dictate his night. So Embiid used his size, putting the ball on the deck and attacking the middle of the paint for an endless parade to the foul line.
Most encouraging of all, Embiid was hungry on the glass. He racked the rebounds up in a variety of ways, from outmuscling smaller Pistons to tipping the ball back up and snatching it away on the second effort. And perhaps as notable was that Embiid actually pursued some long rebounds to prevent Detroit from having chances to get set on defense.
Maybe Embiid’s lack of lift will affect how much of his three-point shot he recovers. But you don’t have to have great lift to be a productive rebounder.
Around Sixer world
Kyle Neubeck: “In addition to the all-world offense, Brown was a huge part of Philadelphia’s solution for Cade Cunningham, who was running hot to start the game while matched up with VJ Edgecombe, simply shooting over him from the midrange for a few early buckets. Nick Nurse did not waste a lot of time changing the matchups, unleashing Brown, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, and Dean Wade to show Cunningham different looks and disrupt his timing.”
Derek Bodner: “VJ Edgecombe looks to have leveled up defensively in his second year, and now looks fully comfortable taking on the toughest matchup on a nightly basis. The lower offensive workload has Jaylen Brown locked in on that end. Tyrese Maxey looks to have taken another step as a defender and, crucially, has been hurt ball watching less frequently than he was in previous years. And the addition of Dean Wade gives them an incredibly versatile option off the bench.”
Sixers Adam: “One of the more quietly important subplots of this Sixers season is how Brown fares on catch-and-shoot threes; he has never been all that reliable there despite being an elite mid-range shot-maker. The sample remains very small, but Brown entered Wednesday shooting 41.9 percent from long range on the season and then shot 3-for-5 from beyond the arc in the first half alone. If he continues to impress from three-point territory and forces defenders to guard him tightly out there, this offense will be even more dangerous.”
Noah Levick: “Embiid sat out the fourth quarter Monday night for the Sixers' win over the Bulls and said he was on a minutes restriction (25) because of his right foot plantar fasciitis. He played the fourth period against the Pistons and logged 33 minutes. Bona went back to the locker room early in the fourth. Nurse told reporters postgame that Bona had “neck soreness.”
Chris Hine with an update on Dominick Barlow