Sixers: Good, bad, ugly from heartbreaking loss to Bucks

Bad elements of Sixers’ loss to Bucks

• Vintage Tobias Harris (the bad kind)

Friday night was something of a throwback for Tobias Harris. He looked timid and indecisive on offense and he sealed the Sixers’ fate with a mammoth defensive screw-up in the game’s final moments. Why was Wesley Matthews completely unguarded for the game-winning 3, you ask? Because Harris overhelped on Grayson Allen, who was well-defended and driving straight into Joel Embiid.

• Montrezl Harrell’s brief cameo  

It’s fun to watch Montrezl Harrell feast on third-stringers in the preseason, but he is a deeply flawed player who will struggle constantly in the face of upper-tier competition. Harrell played less than three minutes and that was enough, even for Doc Rivers.

• Georges Niang’s one-way play

Georges Niang was the first player off the bench (the result of Tucker matching Giannis’ time on the bench more than anything else). He ended up playing just eight minutes. Those eight minutes were quite bad. Niang is truly valuable in the regular season because of his volume shooting, but good teams with high-level athletes like Milwaukee are always going to give him trouble. He’s similar to Harrell in that way: fun in the games that don’t matter, but unplayable when the rubber meets the road later on.

• Transition defense

The Sixers evidently still can’t guard teams on the fast break. Especially when Joel Embiid decides multiple times per game that he’s just not going to get back on defense because he didn’t like the call.