Joel Embiid leads Sixers with 27 points in preseason finale vs. Celtics

The new-look Sixers leaned on their established star pairing to close the preseason, running behind Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey in a 125-120 loss to the Celtics’ reserves. Embiid led all scorers with 27 points, while Maxey added 22 and six assists on just 11 shot attempts. Somehow, we got five minutes of preseason overtime after a full fourth quarter of garbage time, too.

The next time you see this group, they’ll be playing a game that means something, opening the season on the road against the defending champion Knicks. Here’s what I saw on Friday night.

Balancing the old and new

A game like this really drives home that it could take a while for the Sixers to realize their potential. The Celtics sat their first-string players and brought their primary backups off the bench, pitting the Sixers against a group of deep Boston reserves that may not even make their roster. And Philly still struggled early on, mostly because they’re still trying to figure out the balance with this high-powered lineup.

Across the two games with the (mostly) healthy starting lineup, there have been a lot of moments where the Sixers are just a half step off. LeBron missed out on multiple highlight-reel dimes by inches against the Celtics, threading bullet passes through tight spaces that his teammates weren’t quite ready for. Friday’s game felt like it swung between “making two too many passes” and “guy who hasn’t shot in three minutes HAS to get one up.” One of the biggest victims of this figuring-out process was Tyrese Maxey, which is funny to say about a guy who scored 14 points on five shots in the first half. But as everyone tried to take their share of the offense in the first 24 minutes, Maxey was left open for corner and wing threes at least three or four times on possessions where he was one easy pass away. Some guys you can justify pinning in the corner, but he certainly isn’t one of them.

Depending on your perspective, it is either a blessing or an indictment that they are still turning often to “dump it to Joel” when their initial reads break down. You can see Embiid trying to adjust to the role he’ll have to play in order to open the floor up for the rest of this group. Embiid has never wanted to be a high-volume shooter from three, and he got up five from beyond in Friday’s first half, often on slightly delayed releases that betrayed his internal desire to get closer to the basket. Naturally, Embiid was at his best when he was able to get closer to attack the basket, and the offense really started humming when they let the Embiid/Maxey two-man game shine. Even the threat of an Embiid/Maxey DHO is enough to make the seas part:

After that dunk, the Sixers came down on the next possession and got Embiid a practice shot from the free-throw line, running an Embiid/Maxey pick-and-roll as we’ve seen so many times before.

The goal, of course, is to develop all these combinations over the course of the year so that they don’t have to spam Embiid and Maxey to produce good stretches of offense. And that’s the immediate challenge in front of Nick Nurse’s group — how do you find the right mix of the old and the new? The problems the Sixers have are okay to have right now in mid-October, with dozens of games and months of basketball to figure out the right mix.

(Is this team going to be good enough defensively? That is one of my big outstanding questions, and I don’t think there’s a lot to meaningfully analyze there from two preseason games. Embiid has looked really mobile at times and uninterested at others, before we get to the commitment and mobility of the rest of the group. That is to say — I am not ignoring this, but I want to wait and see what “real” games look like.)

Checking in with Brown and LeBron

Everyone has talked about VJ Edgecombe as Philadelphia’s Swiss Army knife, but are we sure that won’t be LeBron James? I know it seems insane to say for one of the greatest players of all time, but playing setup man appears to be his first, second, and maybe even third priority on offense. And in fairness, it’s the area where he can make the biggest difference for the group, as he is streets ahead of anyone else on the roster as a creator.

The days of LeBron being undeveloped in the post are over a decade behind us at this point, and James spent a good chunk of Friday’s game backing down defenders, waiting for gaps to emerge, and then spraying blind passes to all corners of the floor. With a regular night’s minute count, he would have coasted to a double-digit assist game, but he took just nine shots in 25 minutes, allowing his younger running mates to do the bulk of the scoring work.

Funny enough, the Sixers got rolling as a group when Jaylen Brown had a chance to lead a bench-heavy lineup in the second, slowly incorporating the other stars one by one as the quarter wore on. Given the obvious personal stakes for Brown in this game, I thought he found the right amount of aggression without trying to settle the score by calling his own number every time down the floor. His patience and strength as a driver were big assets deep into the game, including when I thought he should have been seated on the bench in the fourth. If he had been able to knock down open threes, this could have been an easy 30-point night for Brown, and he picked up 20 points with eight rebounds anyway.

Most importantly for me, Brown had some good moments of two-man synergy with Embiid. In the first half, Philadelphia ran an off-ball action with that pairing that got Brown the ball moving downhill from the weak side, and with the Celtics shading toward Embiid rolling down the left, Brown used a hang dribble to pause and then explode through space for two points. With LeBron no longer in his “destroy every mismatch” stage that lasted 20 years, Embiid and Brown are the two biggest mismatch weapons the Sixers have on the roster. Figuring out how those two will share their preferred floor spots and play off of one another is going to take time and a lot of work, but developing it is going to be one of the keys to this season.

Other notes

— VJ Edgecombe might be the low man on the totem pole in this starting lineup, but in just one game without him in the lineup, you can see how he helps tie things together for both the top group and the reserves. His off-ball instincts are huge for a top five that draws lots of double teams, and his ability to slide into a creation role will take pressure off of Brown to carry backup units.

— Philadelphia’s one clear strength out the gate might frustrate some opposing fanbases — they’re going to draw a lot of free throws with this group, as we’ve seen across both preseason halves that featured the core Sixers. 26 first-half free throws is a hell of a number.

— Jabari Walker helped himself more than any other player on the roster this preseason, showing up night after night as a dirty work guy while sprinkling in enough offensive flashes to make it all work. He had some excellent pump-and-go drives against Boston’s reserves, a key skill for a player who will do most of his work from the corners and the dunker spot.

Justin Edwards had an almost exactly opposite preseason. Did nothing well consistently and looks miles away from being a rotation player heading into year three. Very concerning.

— Labaron Philon is a tremendously fun player, and way more polished as a playmaker than I think I expected at this stage, which could help him steal more early minutes than anyone could have guessed. His lookaway passes were a highlight of the preseason. That said, you can definitely feel his lack of size showing up already, with advantages he’s working hard to create disappearing in the blink of an eye.