Joel Embiid shines as Sixers close out preseason

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VJ Edgecombe was the only Sixers starter who sat, while LeBron James made his preseason home debut. The regular season starts on Tuesday.

But, before that, some takeaways from the preseason finale.

On one of the very first Philadelphia possessions of the game, Tyrese Maxey spotted Joel Embiid cross-matched deep in the post and did his best to quarterback a pass to where only Embiid could get it in transition. The pass, which had to hang in the air, was inherently easy to read and make a play on. As such, Boston intercepted to create a Philadelphia live-ball turnover. LeBron James then attempted a similar pass to feed Jaylen Brown’s mismatch in the post early in another transition possession, successfully delivering the ball to his teammate. Maxey tried a long hit-ahead pass a short while later, which was again intercepted.

All of that is to illustrate the peaks and valleys of trying to play fast. At its best, this group will drop jaws to the floor as they fly up and down the court. It’s going to look great when the running against favorable numbers yields a lob at the rim or a splash from three-point range.

But it’s not always going to be fun. And when it’s not fun, it’s going to be frustrating and ugly.

“I think that the looks are correct. We just got to kind of be a little more sure of them. Take them a little further. Get a little better angle,” Nick Nurse said after the game.

“Make sure it’s just not floated up for grabs. You know, I think there’s some real opportunities there. But we certainly can’t come down and you look and you see, everybody can see that opportunity at the rim on a post-up and then all of a sudden it’s going the other way for a probably kick-out three.”

Upping the pace is a practice in risk-taking. You try long passes because the ball always beats the defense when it’s advanced through the air instead of with the dribble. Every thought process is a little more rushed. Mistakes are inevitable.

After the game, Nurse rejected the premise that he could live with the risk of turnovers if it meant the team was operating at a faster pace.

“But also, you know, you got to say that increased pace usually is just going to knock turnovers up automatically just by sheer volume, right?” said Nurse.

But guess who also turned the ball over a lot? The 73-9 Golden State Warriors. And the 67-15 Warriors, who coasted to a title after the acquisition of Kevin Durant. And the 58-24 Warriors, who won a second consecutive title.

Now will the Sixers fit as seamlessly as those dynastic Warriors teams did?

You might say no. The truth is, who knows?

But it serves as an example that if you have the collection of talent and intelligence on the court, you can largely overcome that sloppiness.

Will it cost the Sixers some games in the regular season? Probably.

Will it be a culprit in them self-inflicting large deficits from time to time? Absolutely.

It’s something that will get better as the season goes on, but it’s not a problem that will go away as long as they brand themselves as a fast-paced team.

And by the way, when you have this many mismatches in the lineup, you should play that way.

“I think we want to play fast and I think there has been a a little bit of carelessness, or sloppiness might be a better word. So it’s kind of double-edged sword there a little bit,” Nurse said.

“But, listen, I think that’s part of us cleaning up, polishing up, getting some more time together a little bit. But I think I’m happy with at least they’re looking. I think the pass-first mentality is there. Now we just got to make sure they’re a little bit more sure passes.”

Even for a preseason game, there was palpable annoyance as Embiid continued to fire away from the three-point line through repeated misses. His insistence upon taking threes has at times been a display of the greatness he’s capable of as a shooter, something that used to be so unusual for his position. But as he’s gotten older, it’s become a talking point for his biggest skeptics.

Some consumers have long wanted him to marry himself to the paint, using his body and force inside to derive higher value out of possessions than settling for a risky three.

And at times in the past, that criticism had validity. A three was, at times, a bail-out shot when Embiid was running low on energy. But there are different considerations now that his running mates include Brown and James.

Granted, the average consumer has seen very little of this team’s product yet. But when all the big names have been available, they’ve put on clinics in cutting.

That is partially because they feel incentivized to move off the ball with James having eyes for every teammate on the court with him. It’s also partially the nature of wanting to play fast. You’re paying attention to how your man is guarding you and trying to take advantage of that.

But it’s also partially because cutting is simply easier when the rim protector feels the need to step away from the rim. And that is how we arrive at acceptance that Embiid probably needs to keep letting them fly.

Not only do his partners in the pick-and-roll need space, making popping out to the arc an easy decision. But if Embiid is lording over the elbows and parking himself in the paint, there’s no room for cutters.

In that sense, his sacrifice for the offense is, in some ways, taking more threes. It keeps the offense flowing, even if the outcome is a miss.

“Extremely,” Maxey asserted when asked about the importance of Embiid continuing to shoot threes to keep the floor spaced.

“Yeah, extremely. He’s going to get them. They’re going to give them to him. So he’s gonna shoot them. I think he’s a good shooter. So the more threes he takes will be the better for us.”

Brown played in three of the four preseason games. He was the leading scorer in two of them. That, by itself, is largely irrelevant. It is the fashion in which he simply decided to take over for stretches of time that makes me dismiss pessimistic sentiments about this group.

Yeah, Embiid’s health controls a lot here. (By the way, that man is faking DHOs and dunking in traffic in the preseason. His body is in a really, really good place right now.)

But the Sixers won 45 games last season despite Embiid playing just 38 games, Paul George having a good season but certainly not an All-Star season, and George playing in only 37 games.

Brown is not as good a passer as George is. He’s not the off-ball defender George is. But he is an in-prime wing stepping on the floor for 60-70 games a year. I’m not going to concern myself with shaky passing decisions or sleepy off-ball defense when he can get any shot he wants at any time. Embiid is out for a few weeks? The arthritis in LeBron’s foot starts to act up? OK, I know where the offense is going to come from.

Give the ball to 7 and let him bully his way to the rim.