Sixers climb out of 29-point hole in stunning comeback win over Cavs

Behind 32 points from Tyrese Maxey and a hellacious defensive effort in the second half, the Sixers overcame a 29-point Cavs lead to win 114-106 in their opener, opening the season 2-0. If you weren’t ready to jump on board with this team after the ring night stunner in New York, they did their best to bring on any remaining doubters in game No. 2.

Here’s what I saw.

A tale of two halves

The Sixers’ offense wasn’t good against the Knicks in the opener, but they were able to play elite defense for long enough to buy themselves a chance to win. They had no such luck in the first half against Cleveland. Their offense was markedly worse against the Cavs, and the visitors punished them for a lack of seriousness by blowing the game open early and coasting into halftime with a big lead.

Plenty of blame to spread around. Joel Embiid is going to be the target for a lot of people, particularly the arriving LeBron fans, and he didn’t do a lot to help himself in a poor 24 minutes to start the game. Just 3/10 from the field, Embiid has come out of the gate slow as a scorer, in part because he is struggling to create separation as a midrange shooter. That has been an on-again, off-again problem as he has declined physically over the last few years, with Embiid unable to threaten a blow-by to keep defenders honest. Truthfully, I think it’s a bit baffling that he has gained mobility on the defensive end while being this restrained on offense, though I expect it’ll level out over time.

But it wasn’t like LeBron James was lighting the world on fire, either. He had five turnovers in the first half, with multiple giveaways in transition in spots where a younger LeBron would have simply hit the turbo and run past people for dunks. Instead, as you watched the gears turn in his head a bit too long, he gave Cavs players time to get back and deflect his pass attempts, turning what should have been easy runouts into Cavs scores the other way. And his ineffectiveness as a scorer continued into night two, with LeBron making his first three before tailing off dramatically from there.

In their current form, Joel Embiid and LeBron James are a bit too creaky to anchor lineups with Jaylen Brown and Tyrese Maxey both on the bench. Nurse is probably going to have to tinker with the rotations quite a bit before he lands on a final plan, of course, and the problem on Thursday was that adding Jaylen Brown to backup lineups, or any lineup, didn’t do anything to help the older, creakier vets.

The first half was a borderline parody of all the things a Brown detractor would have said to justify Boston trading him. He was a black hole on offense, bogging down possessions by dribbling forcefully into the chest of his defender without gaining much ground. In rare moments when he picked his head up to try to make a play, he was on a completely different page than his teammates, throwing passes around their ankles or entirely out of reach. But I would have rather had him moving the ball than shooting it with 3.5 seconds on the shot clock, which felt like the inevitable conclusion of 90 percent of the possessions he was involved in.

The only thing the Sixers had going was Tyrese Maxey. Maxey’s speed crushed the Cavs when they actually put the ball in his hands, a theme that would ultimately show up in Philadelphia’s huge comeback push.

They would all pick themselves up off the mat after halftime. Philly ran a nice designed play for a Brown spot-up three in the corner, picked up a hoop-and-the-harm from VJ Edgecombe in transition, and capped off a one-minute flurry with a LeBron bucket on the break, sending the crowd into hysterics.

Philadelphia’s defensive intensity turned up in a big way in the third, aided by Cleveland losing all composure against a more forceful Sixers unit. Once again, the Sixers moved Joel Embiid onto a wing and used LeBron to guard one of Cleveland’s big men, a gambit that worked for the second consecutive game. Peyton Watson completely fell apart with more opportunity to handle the basketball, and Cleveland’s primary ball handlers weren’t coping much better. The Sixers brought their pressure much higher up the floor, too, with Tyrese Maxey playing close to full-court pressure on a few possessions, nearly forcing old buddy James Harden into an eight-second violation.

(Even LeBron, who is 41 years old and has been through and seen it all, seemed to shift into a “we aren’t losing this damn game” mode in game two of 82. He made several huge plays on defense in the second half, showing up at the right place at the right time with a swipe to knock the ball into the hands of a Sixers player.)

On top of the increased intensity on defense, Maxey was their primary option in the halfcourt, with the Sixers running screen-and-screen action with Maxey, Embiid, and VJ over and over again, setting Maxey up for a handful of speed moves to the rim and causing chaos for the Cavs in the middle of the floor. It felt like he was going to be the guy who ultimately pushed this in Philly’s favor in the second half, and he did end up closing the game out, climbing over the 30-point mark with heroics in the final minutes.

But it was ultimately Embiid who took center stage in the middle of the fourth quarter, scoring an and-one through Evan Mobley, dribbling past Harden for a bucket off the glass, and cashing the midrange jumper that put Philly in front for good. And as Embiid went to the bench for some rest, it was Brown who took over from there, absolutely roasting single coverage from Watson and Sam Merrill to push the lead out to seven points before the Avengers reassembled for the stretch run.

And perhaps that is the lesson of this game that we’ll relearn many times over this season. Maxey was the best player for most of this game, yes, but the beauty of this team is that they come at you in waves. You think you’ve contained or at least gotten a break from one guy, and then another future Hall of Famer checks in at the scorer’s table and goes on a personal 7-0 run. You think they’re dead in the water, and then they ratchet up the pressure for four minutes and throw a 20+ point lead into a trash compactor.

I thought opening night was going to be enough to put this team in the hearts and minds of Philadelphians everywhere. After this comeback effort, you are already starting to dream of a once-in-a-lifetime season. If they can shrug off a bad half this easily, imagine what it looks like when they put it all together for 48 minutes.

No backup plan

As off the pace as Embiid was in this game, the Sixers have nothing close to a plan to replace him or hold down the fort without him. Backup center was a concern before Ariel Hukporti went down with an Achilles injury, and Adem Bona’s start to the season has only heightened the despair over how they navigate the minutes behind and without Joel.

Bona looks like the exact same guy we saw last season, which is to say that he’s hyper athletic and out of control. His tools work against him as much as they work for him, with his estimation that he can make almost any defensive play dragging him into silly fouls and sloppy closeout attempts, as was seen when he jumped over the top of Evan Mobley in his first car crash foul of the season. Even setting that, he was just off the pace of this game, and the backup groupings they had out there with him drowned on defense.

Dean Wade’s absence loomed large in this game, because the Sixers really could have used another switchable, hard hat type of player on the floor. Anfernee Simons battled his ass off on the defensive end, fighting through screens and playing his part, but he couldn’t hit anything on Thursday, and he capped off the third quarter by missing a three after Mario Hezonja posted him up and scored a bucket from the mid-post.

Kentavious Caldwell-Pope looked on his way to a statless game but would eventually hit a huge three in the second half, bolstering his case for minutes after 25 minutes of competitive, fiesty defense. You can certainly see why he has earned trust from Nick Nurse in a hurry.

Other notes

— Missed free throws loomed large in this one, with every starter who stepped to the line missing at least one on Thursday night. Embiid even had a trip to the stripe that returned 0 points, a rarity for a guy who has lived at the free-throw line for a good chunk of his career.

— The crowd on opening night was better than some playoff crowds the Sixers have had in Philadelphia. Ear-piercing noise for the entire second half.

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