The Sixers got their asses handed to them by the Celtics on Tuesday night, to put it bluntly. They fell into a double-digit hole early in the second quarter, managed to claw their way back to tie the game late in the third, then got buried by an avalanche of three-pointers and called it a night.
While the beef and/or lamb chops and gravy between Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum took center stage Tuesday night, the real story of the game was that the Sixers and Celtics came into it with the two best records
in the Eastern Conference. This was the first of four matchups between two legitimate title hopefuls, one with no shortage of bad blood on either side (as much as the Celtics try to deny it).
The result raised two glaring red flags for the Sixers, ones which have been prevalent throughout this early start to the season. Their lack of three-point shooting and lack of rim protection behind Joel Embiid once again came back to bite them, and this time, they weren’t able to muster a second-half rally via lockdown defense.
Sixers losing the math game
Through their first 12 games, the Sixers are 24th in the league in made threes per game, 26th in three-point attempts and 21st in three-point percentage. In the 22-point loss to Boston, they got outscored by 33 points from deep.
The Celtics have been one of the NBA’s highest-volume three-point shooting teams under Joe Mazzulla, and that hasn’t changed this year. After Tuesday’s avalanche of triples, they’re now second in the league in three-point makes, fifth in attempts and third in long-range shooting percentage.
Even though the Sixers drew 28 free-throw attempts compared to only five for the Celtics, they weren’t able to overcome the math advantage from Boston’s three-point barrage.
“We weren’t aggressive enough defensively, and they got loose,” Tyrese Maxey said after the game. “For them to get up 50 threes is, you know… the way they got them up, too. The catch-and-shoot threes, the open threes. We know their game plan is to get up threes. But we can’t give up the catch-and-shoot threes to this team because the result is this right here.”
Three-point shooting loomed as a legitimate concern for the Sixers heading into the season. Maxey is the only plus long-range shooter in their starting lineup. All four of their other starters can knock down triples as well, but they aren’t particularly reliable from deep. Opponents will happily concede those shots, particularly if they’re contested, if that allows them to wall off the paint and prevent easy looks at the basket.
The one silver lining to Tuesday’s game is that Joel Embiid, who was mired in a brutal 0-of-19 three-point slump over his previous seven games, finally knocked one down at the beginning of the second half.
“I think you can see it, as soon as I made a three, the next shot that I had in the short corner on the right side, I didn’t even think about it, I just shot it, let it fly. And I made it,” Embiid said after the game. “Probably if I hadn’t made a three, I probably would have been in my mind and would have thought about it.”
Head coach Nick Nurse doesn’t seem particularly concerned about the Sixers’ three-point woes in the early going.
“I think that we’ve got some guys that are obviously shooting much lower percentages than their last season or their career average, almost a handful of guys,” he said after Tuesday’s game. “And I don’t think it’s because they’re shooting fall-away, totally contested ones. I think they’re shots that we want them to take. So I think we’re going to continue to take them, and I’m pretty sure those will even out into their career averages.”
In particular, Nurse highlighted Dean Wade—a low-volume, above-average three-point shooter—as someone who can help fix the problem.
“We certainly feel like there are shots that he turned down in the first half-dozen games, for sure,” Nurse said. “But again, I don’t think he’s quite in the mindset to take them. We just keep showing him. We need his spacing. It’s obviously why we signed him. He’s a spacing big, and we need that, for sure.”
Too-small small-ball?
Ariel Hukporti is out for the year with an Achilles tear. Dominick Barlow has yet to make his season debut because of a back injury. And Adem Bona suffered a cervical spine sprain against the Detroit Pistons and has missed the Sixers’ past three games. That’s left the Sixers woefully shorthanded in the frontcourt behind Embiid.
Jabari Walker has been filling in as the nominal backup 5, but he’s only 6’7″. When Embiid has been off the floor in recent games, opponents have started attacking the basket with aplomb knowing the Sixers don’t have a rim protector lurking to swat their shots away.
After the Celtics game, Nurse told reporters that he might have to switch up their defensive strategy whenever they go with a small-ball 5.
“I think we need to just check on it schematically to see if there isn’t something we can do different when we’re small,” he said. “Maybe we can do a little more switching, maybe we can do a little more blitzing, things like that. As you know, we kinda used to use certain coverages, and when Bona would check in, we’d go to some other coverages. We haven’t gotten to as much of that this year, but that’s probably where we’re heading.”
On a related note: What’s the point in having Tacko Fall signed to a two-way contract if he can’t get on the floor even with the frontcourt this depleted? That isn’t to suggest that he would have stemmed the bleeding against the Celtics—if anything, they likely would have picked him apart in drop coverage—but the Sixers may need to reevaluate how they’re using their two-way spots to add more frontcourt insurance until they get healthier.
The Sixers’ schedule considerably softens up over the next few games, which should help deter any Chicken Littles from screaming about how much the sky is falling. But despite their early-season success, the Sixers are still clearly a ways away from being a legitimate title threat this year. The loss to Boston underscored two glaring weaknesses that opponents will happily exploit in the playoffs if the Sixers can’t fix them before then.
Unless otherwise noted, all stats via NBA.com, PBPStats, Cleaning the Glass or Basketball Reference. All salary information via Spotrac and salary-cap information via RealGM.
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