The Sixers got 20+ points from Paul George, Tyrese Maxey, and Kelly Oubre in a competitive 115-103 victory over Anthony Edwards and the Timberwolves. Philadelphia’s victory keeps the 76ers in the No. 6 spot in the Eastern Conference for the time being.
Here’s what I saw.
A different way to win with Embiid
Joel Embiid complained about an illness in the aftermath of their loss to Miami and missed Wednesday’s win over the Wizards after missing their film session in the morning and tweeting through it in the afternoon. After all the shenanigans, I had no idea what to expect out of him after a two-game absence with his return against Rudy Gobert, a very good defender who Embiid used to punk at the peak of his powers.
What we got was stranger than I could have imagined: Embiid looked every bit like a sick man on offense, slow to everything and unable to even get a shot off cleanly, but he moved with force and played some of his most inspired at-rim basketball all season. I didn’t know he had any games like this left in him, honestly.
If Embiid had just missed shots, I would have chalked it up to it being one of those nights at the tail end of a long season. But Embiid was slow in every regard on the offensive end, dragging his feet on offense to bring the whole operation down with him. He wasn’t impactful as a screener, he played hot potato with the ball, and seemed completely out of it with his timing. Embiid managed to turn a great ball movement possession into a blocked jumper at the top of the key, because he spent so long staring down the shot that he missed Naz Reid creeping into his space. Later, he had a shot from the same spot where he looked to be fighting himself, the mechanics coming unraveled as he clanged it off the rim.
His struggles made the Wolves’ defensive choices pretty straightforward. When Philadelphia used him in ball screens, Minnesota was content to turn all its attention toward the ballhandler, essentially daring Embiid to turn it into a jumpshooting contest. It made life difficult for Maxey and Edgecombe, who couldn’t find much space to work with inside the arc. Whether it was illness or the shot to the oblique that he absorbed from Julius Randle in the first half, he did not look like himself.
But Embiid was a fairly significant force on the other end, picking up seven rebounds and blocking four shots in the first half alone. It always helps when he doesn’t have to respect his matchup, with Embiid able to drop to the rim and focus on the paint for most of the game, but that doesn’t account for his competitiveness and attention to detail in this game. He did well to both box out and attack the ball off the rim, even chasing down some floor boards out of his area that a man of his size won’t often get to. With the Wolves going through their own offensive struggles, ending possessions after one attempt helped keep this game close before the Sixers’ offense finally got going.
With Embiid living up to his end of the bargain, everyone else’s jobs became a lot clearer. Dominick Barlow had one of his best defensive rebounding games in quite some time, Paul George continued to chip in on the glass, and the Sixers committed fewer bodies to leak-outs to focus on the first (and arguably more important!) task of ending the possession. They were connected in their rotations, making second and third efforts to close out on shooters, with even Andre Drummond making a sharp closeout on a corner shooter at one point in the second half.
Of course, Embiid and the stars weren’t going to be kept down forever on offense. He and Maxey combined for 30 third-quarter points on 9/11 from the field, with the jumper coming back to life and the dribble handoff game emerging from the mist. When Embiid finally got a few shots to drop, Maxey did an outstanding job of punishing Minnesota’s hesitation in pick-and-rolls, gliding past Gobert and other Wolves defenders for some important buckets in the third.
As we inch closer to the playoffs, a game like this provides more hope for the back-and-forth of a seven-game affair. It showed a vision of how Philadelphia can win even when its offense falters. Watching Embiid streak down the floor to give Quentin Grimes support on the break at the tail end of the third was one of my favorite moments of the entire season, full stop. That’s what basketball is all about.
Paul George continues to bring it
Perhaps we were all too soon to write off Paul George’s contract as a colossal failure for the Sixers. Or perhaps the Sixers should advocate for more 25-game breaks in the middle of the season, because that appears to have been all it took to get George back to looking like one of the most dangerous two-way wings in basketball again. Turns out, rest is a powerful tool!
It feels like watching an entirely different player after going through the first season and a half of the George experience in Philadelphia. He was meek during his first season with the Sixers, deferring not just to their stars but to 10-day and two-way players when his season was coming to a close. Since his return to the lineup last week, George has been in seek-and-destroy mode no matter who he shares the floor with, and regardless of the matchup in front of him. George pulverized different matchups that the Wolves put in front of him — he blew by Julius Randle, big-bodied Donte DiVincenzo, and always seemed to sense whether it was speed or power he needed to get a bucket on any given possession. The shot has been on enough to open up grifting opportunities, too, with George doing a great job to highlight contact and play just fast enough to entice defenders on reach-in fouls.
Early in the season, Nurse was deliberate about pairing George with Edgecombe, hoping to give the rookie a safety valve when teams overwhelm him at the point of attack. In the opening minutes of the fourth quarter, George did a lot more than that, providing the final kick the Sixers needed to pull away. George had two quick assists to start the third, including a drop-off to Edgecombe for an uncontested dunk, and then a pair of threes as Xfinity Mobile Arena was sent into delirium, the Sixers up 17 with half of a quarter to go.
It wasn’t all good for George, who turned the ball over quite a bit while carrying a heavy workload on-ball. But on the whole, super encouraged with where he is at.
Other notes
— I feel a little bad for shortchanging Barlow a bit after the start he had to this game, where his activity was about the only thing either team had going on offense. As Embiid kept clanging jumpers, he was all over the second-chance opportunities and flying in for dunks.
That said, Kelly Oubre showed why he will probably always be the closing option for Nick Nurse. The scoring he offered to end this one is something Barlow simply hasn’t shown he can do in the same spot, with Oubre shaking off a poor first half and making a few massive threes in crunch time. Roller coaster of a player, but no fear in big spots.
— Thought this was a brutal VJ Edgecombe game. It ended up being just a slightly supbar shooting night, but he couldn’t shake a defender to save his life and turned half-court possessions into pure torture.
That said, I thought he was electric in transition and created somewhere between 10-15 points with his pace and vision in the open floor.
