The Warriors humiliate the Sixers in an embarrassing end to their West Coast trip

The Warriors humiliate the Sixers in an embarrassing end to their West Coast trip

The Sixers decided they had had enough of playing basketball on the West Coast and dumped a steaming pile of horse manure in San Francisco, losing 139-105 to the Warriors at the end of a grotesque performance.

Here’s what I saw.

The good

— Guerschon Yabusele, I will make sure the people of Philadelphia remember you. I appreciate the smart putbacks and rebounding even when your team is in trouble.

The evil

– If the Sixers have a worse defensive performance this season, I find it hard to imagine. Even with the low expectations of a back-to-back scenario, the expectation was that they would make the most of the legs they had with the team in desperation mode at the start of 2025. No!

Choose a man from the list and you can find out what he did wrong. Golden State definitely destroyed The Sixers suffered setbacks in this game, even on possessions that seemed to be going well for the Sixers. For example, Embiid picked off Steph Curry at a switch while the Warriors guard was on his way to the rim, and he pushed No. 30 back to the rim before Paul George scored a double. They had Curry stopped in a good spot until Caleb Martin completely lost his man and was flat-footed when Curry hit a pass for an open layup.

Like most of this season, Philadelphia’s transition defense was atrocious. This is the only area where I’m really going to call out Embiid because he had some brutal, half-hearted possessions at running back in the first half, and you can’t afford that when you’re playing a Curry-led team. Even if he’s not the guy who ultimately takes the shot, Curry will drag defenders down the field with him and create space for drives early on offense. With Embiid only partially in the game and his teammates following suit, the Warriors scored points that would have been considered embarrassing had the plays occurred once or twice. Dear reader, this happened far more often.

You’d be hard-pressed to find five or more plays in this game where the Sixers required a perimeter player to do a great job handling a ball screen. Lazy effort.

— If I had been harsh on Maxey after the Sacramento loss, I probably should have saved my real vitriol for that despicable performance. If there was an obvious fatigue-based excuse here, one might say he could get away with a warning, but his mistakes were largely errors of execution. This was a guy who didn’t have it, couldn’t find it, and buried the team with suspicious decisions. He shot when he should have passed, passed when he should have shot, and so on.

Thursday’s first half featured three of the worst layup misses I’ve seen from Maxey in his career. We’ve gotten used to watching role players like Caleb Martin smoke layups without anyone challenging them, but Maxey can usually be counted on to make the free shots. Not so in this case, and unfortunately those open or open layups made up a pretty big portion of his shot attempts.

I’m also getting tired of listening and watching him complain about calls he’ll never get. You might be upset that one of “your guys” doesn’t seem to get a chance, but there’s no grand conspiracy against Maxey as a player that’s stopping him from getting calls. He ends up on the baseline and keeps looking up at the sky and at the refs, and that’s because he doesn’t initiate contact well enough to cause fouls. Teams have found effective ways to defend him inside the arc since he has limited options as a passer, making it easier to time rotations and contests accordingly.

While his defensive stats look great after this game, I thought he was a big part of their early struggles in that regard. I will Give him some grace after playing 42.5 minutes the night before, but early in this game he was lazy on closeouts, allowing the Warriors’ shooters to get hot and stay hot.

– I’m going to write a few nice words about Joel Embiid and then use them to highlight a negative point. Ready?

Aside from a few issues, which we’ll address below and which won’t go unnoticed, overall this was a good outing from Embiid. He returned the ball better than he has in most seasons, he moved in space effectively and, after a difficult start from the field, he eventually got into the game from the free throw line. Embiid deserves to be held accountable for his lack of effort in transition defense, but I think that was the only area where you could say his “will” level didn’t match the pace. Otherwise, I think he was committed to getting them involved in this game again, even though it was clear they were trying to climb a mountainside in tennis shoes.

So the problem lies in Philadelphia’s approach to this season. They continue to stick with the vaunted plan that keeps Embiid from playing in consecutive and congested parts of the schedule. That might have been something that could have gotten away with had Embiid not missed the opening period of the season (plus more time) and the Sixers falling well behind the conference leaders in the standings. But the Sixers are sharing the baby right now. They’re still selling the idea that they’re doing things with the playoffs in mind, but remain outside the playoff picture as there are still many hurdles ahead. You lose without him and then you absolutely have to win the games with him so they don’t start this cycle of torture we’re all going through right now.

Let’s go with the Sixers and assume that they can make the play-in games with a pretty bad record. What have you seen from this team that suggests they can get into a vital situation and rely on them to win an important game or two? What did you notice that said they would buck the trend throughout NBA HISTORY of going from a low-seeded team to a team that can win a title? This is a team that still acts as if that goal, the championship goal, is all that matters. Great, but that means you can’t pick and choose the games that matter for the rest of the year. You either prepare to compete with the big boys or you don’t.

– Speaking of dubious approaches, I understand he’s not the ideal man for the job, but Clippers fans probably laughed it off when they saw Paul George hanging around on the floor while Jeff Dowtin was tasked with guarding Steph Curry.

The ugly

– I’ll mention again that Kyle Lowry is useless in a Sixers recap. I’ll probably repeat it for the 25th time: I don’t blame him for being ineffective as a small guard in the middle of his 30s. I blame the coach for using him and relying heavily on him.

We’re at the point where I think having another playable Guardian here is a borderline requirement. From a basketball perspective, it’s the right thing to do because they’re sorely missing out on Jared McCain’s performance, and it’s the right thing considering it may be the only way for Lowry to make the bench all the way. The nurse using him in the second half was pure comedy, but at least it didn’t last long I guess.

— Here’s a bigger question about the head coach: I’m not convinced he’s the right guy style of the coach the Sixers need for this team. That doesn’t mean he’s a bad coach, it doesn’t mean he won’t have success here, but I’m starting to think he’s a strangely good fit for the team and the needs they have.

Nurse is basically a guy who wants to play simple, flowing basketball. I don’t think that’s inherently a bad thing, and in fact I’d like to see teams play on a broader level. They let smart and talented players find their way through possession. The problem is that the Sixers don’t have a collection of high-IQ players or experienced passers. As a team they don’t see the field well, meaning many possessions end with an isolation attack or a player looking for a substitution after the initial intertwining of DHOs goes nowhere.

What they seem to need is an offense that makes them more open, that is more deliberate with their actions and movements off the ball to create some kind of synergy that goes beyond “let’s hope the talent wins.” There are definitely some favorite games that the Sixers host, and I even like some of them. I pointed out that in recent postgame shows they’ve been using a flare screen for a PG look from the left wing. They have a HORNS look for a duck-in or fake duck-in that has worked relatively well early in games. But there are long stretches of games where they just fall back on the aimless style of letting the stars work. Embiid’s attack points are too far away because of what they execute (or don’t execute), one of many issues hindering the offense.

Maybe this will work in the long run if they play regular games and everyone stays healthy. Even then, the Sixers need to get the right people on the field, and Nurse hasn’t been particularly good at that. Kyle Lowry, it bears repeating, started again. Guerschon Yabusele, who was one of their only positive players in the first half, only played 11 minutes. Eric Gordon had one of his best performances in months and didn’t make his first appearance until nearly halfway through the second quarter.

Fans always want blood when something goes wrong, especially the coach’s blood. And I’m generally not one to demand such a thing, as I list coaches at the bottom of the general blame list. Don’t do it here. These are just a few thoughts I can’t escape while watching the Sixers right now.

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