The Philadelphia 76ers struggled far more than anticipated but held on for a 114-109 win over the Pacers in Indiana on Wednesday night. Tyrese Maxey’s 27 points paced the team, while Anfernee Simons scored a crucial 20 points off the bench.
Here’s what stood out.
Through five games, the Sixers have rarely been able to find an offensive groove. At their best, they’ve thrived by converting defensive plays into offensive opportunities and have had some success running their offense through Joel Embiid, but have largely struggled otherwise, particularly in the half court.
From the jump, they had trouble generating easy looks, and even their first three buckets came off difficult, contested shots. Along with their shooting struggles, the team struggled to take care of the ball, committing several early turnovers and losing rebounds. Only Joel Embiid was able to generate any consistent offense early, largely because he was committed to playing with a sense of urgency. Embiid made his first five shots, all jumpers, to begin the game and applied pressure by attacking an undermanned team.
Credit the Pacers. After seeing how Embiid was attacking, they made a concerted effort to deny him the opportunity to get to his spots, in and around the nail, throughout the game. They also threw several long, physical defenders at Tyrese Maxey, including former Sixer Kelly Oubre. Maxey struggled even to get shots off, taking only five shots and attempting one free throw in the first half.
Even still, the Sixers built a 10-point advantage at halftime, which they promptly watched disappear after a nightmare third quarter. After winning the third quarter in their first four games this season, it seemed they had corrected their consistently slow second-half starts, but Wednesday’s matchup felt like a flashback to last season. The Sixers struggled on both ends, getting outscored 36-13 in the quarter.
Their first points in the third came just before the six-minute mark on a three by LeBron James, who followed up by dishing the ball to Maxey for a second triple. Throughout the season, there’s been a general lack of scoring aggression from LeBron, and though he’s had moments that have helped provide turning points for the offense, he’s been largely reactive as a scorer.
He’s 41, and while no one can rightfully expect prime Miami LeBron to walk through that door, the bar is certainly a good few steps higher than his performance so far. His vision as a passer has been great, but his approach hasn’t been dynamic enough to create open looks for his teammates, limiting the potential of the offense.
Without any sort of rhythm or bread-and-butter plays outside of Embiid isolations at the nail and the two-man game with Maxey, the Sixers largely devolved into my-turn, your-turn ball, allowing the Pacers to work their way back into and eventually ahead in this game.
Even with Embiid unable to get to his spots in the half court, the team was still able to rely on ol’ reliable, the Embiid-Maxey two-man game, to give Maxey enough room to come up clutch in the fourth, scoring an incredible 22 points while the team played solid enough defense to hold off the Pacers.
Despite Maxey’s late-game heroics, the game at no point came easy, as the Sixers were flustered by some late-game full-court pressure from the Pacers, which kept Indy in the game until the final buzzer.
The Sixers badly needed a quality shooting performance from anyone, really, but that is exactly what Simons was brought in to do.
It’s been a bit of a slow start for Simons, who was shooting 25.8 percent from the floor and 23.8 percent from three coming into this game, but he’s still working himself into basketball shape after missing the preseason with a hamstring injury.
“You can see now a little bit, not playing and not being able to play in preseason kind of held me back a little bit,” Simons said after the team’s Tuesday practice. Despite those struggles, Simons noted he felt he was getting good looks and voiced his confidence that they would eventually start falling.
He was right.
Simons knocked down back-to-back triples late in the first quarter, the Sixers’ first of the game. He would make six of his 10 shots from beyond the arc, every bit of which proved necessary for the win, as the rest of the Sixers shot just 7-for-26 from deep.
Not every game from Simons will be this explosive, but he is capable of exploding like this in every game.
The Sixers (4-1) will make a brief return to Philadelphia for a Friday night matchup against the Knicks as the NBA Cup begins group-stage play before traveling down to Charlotte the following night, marking the team’s second back-to-back of the young season.
Joel Embiid will only play one of the matchups, and LeBron is expected to do the same. Which game they play is a mystery for now. The team has consistently said that decision-making is solely medically based, but it will be interesting to see whether playing the Knicks and the NBA Cup factors into those decisions.
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