Sixers Fire Wildly at Bucks in Defeat

By Sean Kennedy (@PhillyFastBreak)

Milwaukee 97, Philadelphia 77 – Box Score

One good thing about the NBA is the games keep coming, and when you have a bad performance, it’s not like the NFL where you have the stew in the stink of it for a whole week. On the other hand though, when a team is coming off a dramatic victory like the Sixers were against Cleveland Monday night, it might be to have a while to relish that win, because after a dumpster fire of a performance against the Bucks Wednesday night, the win against the Cavaliers feels like a different season.

In a sloppy game in which two of the most turnover-prone teams in the league played to form with at least 24 giveaways a piece, it was the actual ability to place the ball through the hoop from varying distances that proved to be the difference. While the Bucks shot 54% from the field and 8-17 from three, the Sixers seemed completely flummoxed by the concept, going 30% overall and a laughable 2-25 from three (that’s 8%, about what Tony Wroten shoots from three-quarters court). After a countless number of those long misses, the Sixers treated transition defense like a college student view class attendance on syllabus week, entirely optional. Coach Brown ran out of timeouts midway through the fourth quarter because he was so exasperated by the lack of effort getting back defensively.

The duo of Brandon Knight and Khris Middleton tied for game-high honors with 18 points, shooting a combined 13-21 from the field, including 6-9 from three. Middleton was very active defensively, recording 5 steals and leading a number of the run-outs the other way that doomed Philadelphia. An 11-0 Sixers run in the third quarter cut the deficit to 14, and it looked like they might still make a game of it, but things only got worse from there. The final score isn’t even indicative of how bad things progressed, as the Sixers trailed by as many as 31 in the fourth quarter before a garbage time surge.

Let’s Start with the Positives:

• The main reason this game wasn’t a total eye-clawing disaster was the inspired play of Nerlens Noel. The Sixers rookie finished with 13 points, 5 rebounds, and 2 blocks, with the majority of those numbers coming in the first quarter where he was everywhere on both ends of the court. There was one sequence when Noel blocked Johnny O’Bryant and then, on the ensuing Sixers possession, followed up a missed shot with a fierce put-back dunk while getting fouled.

When the Bucks threw Jared Dudley in as a stretch four and tried to have him guard Noel, Nerlens actually backed him down in the post for easy points. He largely disappeared when the game got out of hand, but for a while there, fans received a glimpse of what ‘Nerlens Noel, effective two-way player’ looked like, and it was glorious.

• The other guy that really stood out in a positive way for the Sixers was JaKarr Sampson, who continues to look like things may be starting to click for him at the NBA level. Sampson finished with 11 points on 5-7 shooting, 7 rebounds, and 5 assists, somehow going +16 on the night. He’s always played with a frenetic energy that you like to see out on the court, but lately, he looks like he knows where he’s supposed to be rotating defensively, and what cuts and reads to make on the offensive end. I was very critical of the Sixers keeping Sampson around early on, but I suppose it’s possible for a 21-year-old to improve and he may prove me wrong.

Now for the Bad:

• With reports that the Sixers are fielding calls about trading Tony Wroten, and with a Clippers scout reportedly in the house to watch him, ol’ Wreckin’ Ball forced the action even more than usual, and not in a good way. Wroten finished 4-19 from the floor (including 0-7 from three) for a game-low -22 plus/minus in just 23 minutes of action. When he was driving the lane last night, he often looked like an old cartoon where the legs were spinning forward so fast that the upper body got left behind. I don’t know if he was trying to make a good impression for scouts, show the Sixers brass he’s worth keeping around, or simply jazzed up from hitting the game-winner on Monday night. Whatever the cause, Wroten was playing at a 15 and needs to bring it back down to his usual 11.
• Coming off one of his better performances of the year against the Cavaliers, Michael Carter-Williams backslid into the shooting stupor that plagued him over the holidays. The Sixers point guard was more than halfway to his notorious 2-20 performance, going 1-13 (0-4 from three) against the Bucks. The outside shot wasn’t falling, the mid-range jumper was drawing only iron, and the ‘drive to the hoop and then loudly complain to the refs when they don’t call a foul’ move only succeeded in making me shake my head in exasperation from the couch. In an interview before the game, opposing coach Jason Kidd said MCW had all the tools of a great point guard and the shooting would come. It’s looking more and more like that may never be the case.
• Usual rainmaker Robert Covington had his worst shooting performance as a Sixer, going 1-9 from behind the arc and 1-11 overall. Big Shot Bob was covered by Giannis Antetokoumpo for large swaths of the game and understandably struggled with a 6’11” swirling mass of long-limbed fury hounding him all night. The Sixers did set up Covington for wide-open looks on a few occasions but the shot simply wasn’t falling. Everybody has an off night now and again, so we’ll just chalk this performance up to that for now.

The Sixers will be back in action Friday night in Brooklyn. They’ll probably spend the next couple days searching for somehow, someway to slow down the force of nature that is Mason Plumlee, after Coach K’s boy eviscerated them to the tune of 18 points and 10 rebounds in their last meeting last month.

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