Sixers Play Spoils National TV Appearance Against Lakers

By Sean Kennedy (@PhillyFastBreak)

Los Angeles 100, Philadelphia 89 – Box Score

The Wells Fargo Center was packed to the gills Friday night with three groups of people:

a) Fans there to see the Lakers, perhaps not realizing Kobe has retired and they’re free to jump on the bandwagon of the next great team.

b) People there to see and cheer Allen Iverson on the night the team honored him for his induction into the Hall-of-Fame.

c) The usual crowd hoping to see signs of progress from this young Sixers team.

Unfortunately, it was only the first two groups who went home satisfied, as the Sixers appear to be completely adverse from looking like a professional basketball team when playing on national television. After getting blown out by Minnesota in a game they ended up losing by 24 on TNT earlier this season, casual NBA fans might have quickly turned the channel from ESPN when the Lakers jumped out to a quick 13-0 advantage here. Things didn’t get much better as the Sixers deficit ballooned to as many as 22 points in the third quarter before a late run made the score respectable.

Brought in to provide the kind of stability that would render these blowouts a thing of the past, the Sixers starting backcourt of Sergio Rodriguez and Gerald Henderson had a terrible night. The pair shot 2-11 from the field (0-5 from three), and each had a pair of turnovers where it seemed like each one led to a Julius Randle breakaway dunk. Randle finished with a career-high 25 points on 10-13 shooting, to go with 9 rebounds, 4 assists, and 3 steals; he was easily the most active player on the court from either team.

Of course, it takes a village to lose this badly and Robert Covington, Dario Saric, and Ersan Ilyasova shooting a combined 2-18 from three certainly didn’t help matters. More critically though, the two centers experiment looks to be a disaster that the team should scrap immediately. The Sixers were blown off the court by the Lakers in the twin towers lineup; it wasn’t until Brett Brown shifted to lineups with Ilyasova and Saric as the only two bigs, and then Embiid with four shooters around him, that the team looked watchable again, cutting the 22-point Lakers lead down to single digits.

Even on top of the fact that it was just one game, the situation is undermining the goodwill of Philadelphia’s franchise player. Here’s a comment from Joel Embiid when asked about playing alongside Okafor.

Embiid: "I thought we had a bad defensive game. I'm the type of guy, if I play defense, I want everybody around me to do the same."

— Derek Bodner (@DerekBodnerNBA) December 17, 2016

Does that sound like somebody happy with his current situation? Last game, Embiid said how he hated being stuck on the perimeter. The team tried to switch things up more and have Embiid inside and Okafor outside some (which doesn’t work because no one will honor Okafor on the perimeter), but there were still multiple consecutive possessions where Embiid never stepped foot in the paint. The defense is an entirely separate issue that Embiid felt compelled to bring up this time around.

These are the first seeds of doubt toward what eventually happened with Nerlens Noel, who only played 8 minutes and was not happy about it after the game.

Noel (continued): "That's crazy. That's crazy. Need to figure this shit out." #sixers https://t.co/7pHlZGuOad

— Derek Bodner (@DerekBodnerNBA) December 17, 2016

Noel looked good in those 8 minutes. He had this gorgeous spin move, which admittedly, was his only made field goal in 4 attempts.

The spin n the hook for ✌🏼 pic.twitter.com/FoThnKtPom

— Philadelphia 76ers (@sixers) December 17, 2016

But Noel also had 5 rebounds and a block and was very active defensively. He’s right! He should be playing much more than 8 minutes. But because of the situation with the Sixers roster right now, that’s likely never going to happen here. And that’s sad to think about.

So even more than the team looking terrible and losing badly at home to a not-great Lakers team, the Sixers need to figure out what to do to get back to the happy, go-lucky Embiid of the first month of the season. He is the Process; he is the future. Act accordingly.

The Sixers will be back in action Sunday night against Brooklyn.