Jimmy Butler made his debut for the Philadelphia 76ers on Wednesday night. While showing some promising flashes, the team coughed up a 16-point lead and the Orlando Magic came back to win the contest.
There was a ton of excitement surrounding tonight’s game, as it was the start of a brand new era with Jimmy Butler in the fold. The Philadelphia 76ers looked good for the majority of the game.
But, the Sixers are the Sixers. The game quickly went from promising to very frustrating within a few short minutes.
The start of the game looked promising as Joel Embiid knocked down three three-pointers in a row, and looked to be clicking on offense. Jimmy Butler looked good early on as he hit a bunch of lay-ups and dunks resulting from his off-ball movement.
During the second half the Sixers had trouble playing defense, especially against Nikola Vucevic. Embiid did an okay job defending him, but the team really had no answer outside of him when it came to Vucevic.
In the third quarter, the teams went back and fourth for the most part. It wasn’t until the middle of the third quarter that the Sixers began to pull away with a decent lead. The team was able to put themselves up double digits going into the fourth quarter, which is typically a good thing.
The Sixers went on an insane scoring drought in the fourth quarter, allowing the Orlando Magic to put together a 21-0 run. There are many reasons why this happened, but the offensive sets tonight were absolutely horrible.
Embiid ended up setting for too many outside shots and the Sixers didn’t run any plays for Jimmy Butler (who is the leading fourth quarter scorer in the NBA).
While tonight’s game showed a ton of frustrating elements for the Philadelphia 76ers, there were some positives to go along with it. Let’s check out some grades:
While this loss is disappointing, it’s important to remember that this was the teams first game implementing a major piece in Jimmy Butler. The team will learn from this and bounce back.
Going forward, Butler needs to have some offensive sets created for him. The Sixers didn’t use him in many on-ball situations, which I would imagine will change very shortly.
Luckily, the Philadelphia 76ers will come home for a Friday night game against the Rookie of the Year runner-up Donovan Mitchell and the Utah Jazz. The Sixers will look to go 8-0 at home and remain undefeated