The Philadelphia 76ers slipped to 0-3 through the preseason, and they didn’t look all that great while they were doing it.
Both teams in this game sat four out of their five presumptive starters: Kyrie Irving, Marcus Morris, Gordon Hayward, and Al Horford for the Boston Celtics, and J.J. Redick, Robert Covington, Joel Embiid, and Markelle Fultz (who did play limited minutes off the bench) for the Philadelphia 76ers.
On paper, this should have been a close matchup. On the court, it was not.
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The Celtics seemed to make all the tough shots, and they killed the 76ers on the boards. On offense, the 76ers had poor spacing and minimal driving lanes.
Small sample size alert, but playing Saric and Simmons at the three and four didn’t seem to work too well. When paired with Okafor and even the somewhat-sweet-shooting Amir Johnson, Simmons and Saric couldn’t get much going.
This isn’t really either of their faults. Up to this point, both Simmons and Saric have looked better playing with only one other traditional big man. But it’s preseason, so it’s understandable for Brett Brown to experiment, and obviously a sample size of ten minutes isn’t enough to make a conclusion.
Personally, I’d love to see small-ball lineups with Simmons or Saric as a point center with NO other traditional bigs, but that’ll be tough to do with Embiid, Okafor, Holmes, and Johnson on the roster.
Anyway, back to the game. There were some moments of pretty ball movement, especially when Simmons and Saric were out there together, but overall the offense was pretty stagnant. Bayless and McConnell added some nice juice to the offense, but as evidenced by the final score, we didn’t do a great job of getting points on the board.
We really missed Redick and Covington’s shooting tonight, when nothing was really falling. It would’ve been nice to finally have Embiid back too, but he should come back pretty soon.
Until then, we’ll just be praying that Fultz finds his jumper and Simmons can find ways to mesh with the other players out there.
Next: Can Jahlil Okafor find a niche with the Sixers?