The Sixers NEED This One...

Tuesday night, the Sixers had Boston right where they wanted them. Tied 79 with three minutes left in the third quarter. Then Boston, as we all know, seven threes in under six minutes. A 21-3 run. Sixers never got close again. Boston finishing 22 of 49 from three versus the Sixers going just 11 of 37 on Thursday. The Raptors walk into that same building and they bring a different kind of problem. They don't necessarily beat you from three. The Raptors so far, just making. shy of 32% of its threes. What they do is chase their own misses. 14.8% off, or 14.8, not percent, but 14.8 offensive rebounds per game. That's one fight that the Sixers have lost all season. So I got to ask, can the Sixers in a day of practice and watching film and whatever, fix both of their offensive shooting issues and find that fight in them to fix their offensive rebounding? We're going to find out one way or another tonight. Every Sixers loss has largely looked the same as we've gone on this season. Nine wins, they're shooting 35.5% from three, in their losses just under 27%. Detroit, Cleveland, Boston, they held them collectively to being 28 of 104 from three. And they took 34.7 of those threes a game in those losses and 34 in the wins. So they're shooting it about the same volume, just not at the same accuracy. The looks were there. They just didn't go in. The rebounding kind of seems to tell the same story. I've said all season long. They need to keep it close. In the wins, they get out-rebounded by about two a game. In the losses, it's up into the double digits at about 11 per game. Detroit beat them on the boards by 17. We all remember how that went. Cleveland by 14. Boston, it was close by one, and that's where I'm not crashing out about that game because how can you plan on Paul George being electric like that from three? You just can't. Back in October, Milwaukee... crazy already saying back in October, but Milwaukee out rebounded the Sixers by 22. We still won. That was though. The highest three point shooting of the game or of the highest three point shooting game of the season. So it certainly seems like the threes are where we need to start in terms of fixing it tonight, because I guess hypothetically, if it goes through the net, we don't need to worry about offensively rebounding it. Just talking who is shooting it. We will have to watch this tonight as we grow a larger sample size. It's now about... Really being able to make some assessment. Embiid, he is 4 of 33 this season from 3. 12%. LeBron James is 9 of 38. So combining the two of them are shooting about 18% from three and are supposed to be two of our biggest offensive behemoth-type names. KCP has taken exactly as many threes as Embiid, and he's made 15 of them, although KCP did not score in the last game. Anthony Simons, he's shooting darn near 40% from three. Jalen Brown is at 38%. Maxie is at 36%. So we have some shooters. We just maybe need to adjust the sample size. On Thursday, Philly needs Maxie. We need him hitting his shots. And I think that you could all argue with me that, well, yeah, or maybe not argue with me, you could agree with me. Yeah, that's dumb and reductionist. That's also a winning team is they find their guy and they feed their guy. Brown and Vijay Edgecombe, they were a combined one of eight last game. VJ is still at 36% this season. I'm throwing a lot of numbers here. The last outing was bad. Anthony Simons was only 3 of 7 off of the bench, but he was the majority of the scoring from the bench. Boston, on the flip side, as we've covered, 22 of them, Peyton Pritchard and company coming off the bench going crazy. So Thursday is the night to start with fixing the offensive end of it. Also, like we said, You got to start rebounding well, but against the Raptors teams are shooting almost 40% from three Philly is averaging. Like we said, almost 12 threes made a game. And so can we challenge them to up that? And we get after, does this need to, is this the game where we get Embiid finally to feel and find his stroke from three? Or is this one where we need to see some corrections from last game and see... A way higher feeding of Maxie and Vijay and then have like JB and LeBron in the middle and then just tell MB, look, man, you've lit it up from the free throw line. Go back to that. Talking about the rebounding, while it wasn't ultimately the problem against Boston, it has been a problem and will continue to be a plot line, if not a problem, all season long. On the season, the Sixers are being out-rebounded We are losing in that category in aggregate. We are grabbing 43.3 a game. We are giving up 47.3 a game. And while that is kind of potentially a slow leak, it is a consistent deficit that we have. And over the last three seasons, it is something where on the offensive side, and I don't know how much you can really compare. This team versus the last three seasons, but the Sixers have ranked 26th, 30th, and 27th in terms of offensive rebounding. And that's something that Bob Myers addressed before the season, saying that they needed to get better at. Maybe Herbie Porty was going to try and really be a big part of that formula. He's not available. 12 games into the season, though, it has not gotten any better for the Sixers. Demba Ba, he is also going to be out on this one. He hasn't played since November 1st or November 4th. As much as y'all want to clown on my boy Bamba, since he's gone, we have lost and not looked great on the boards. And Dean Wade has stepped up a little bit. He grabbed nine of them on Tuesday. It's Tuesday and. That's great, but Dean Wade's not a, not necessarily, if Dean Wade is a big, he's not, he's a small ball big, and it's great to see that other people can step up, but that feels like maybe that's a mathematical likelihood. Um, We grabbed 20 offensive rebounds against Chicago. We won that game by six. No other games have we gotten past 13 of them, so. This is now, though, we're facing the worst possible opponent for that. Like I said, Toronto is really good at getting their offensive boards back. 10 or more offensive rebounds in all but one of their game. 22 of them being their season high against the Lakers. They did that without Scottie Barnes. He has had 15 a game that he's been in there. It's been something where Jacob Poeltl is getting rebounds for them. Colin Murray Boyle. Like, they got A grip of dudes who are crashing the boards in a very impressive fashion for them. Looking at the injury report, like I said, again, no bonus still. Obviously, no Huck Porty. The Dom Barlow injury continues to be a lingering one. He feels perpetually 10 days out, and there isn't any major reporting, it seems, on exactly what is going on there with getting him healthy. It just seems that he is... He's just hurt, Embiid's plantar fascia management. I think he should be good to go for for close to if not full minutes given that this is a week of no back-to-backs on the other side. That's where the injuries are a little bit bigger. And I guess maybe that's always optimism for us, Scottie Barnes. He's out with a left groin strain. He's their leading scorer. He was averaging 23 and a half a game. He is missed for a couple weeks, like Kawhi Leonard is out with left knee management quote Quote, unquote, or Just doing his thing or whatever. He's only played in two of their 10 games. Nate Biddle and Trace Jackson-Davis are out too. So certainly a lot of names on there for Toronto. So let's talk about what Embiid's going to be up to. He's going to be taking on Jacob Poeltl. Off-lit names. I know our guys. I barely know my own name sometimes when I'm covering this much sports. But he has missed two games with a left shoulder problem at the start of the month. He's played since then. Embiid has averaged, if you look back at his history against Toronto, I want to. almost 30 points a game. His scoring is way down this season. He's in. It'll be interesting to see, though, if he, like I said, Does he start to try and light it up and finally find his stroke from three? Does he bring it in for some more jumpers? His numbers from the free throw line have started to explode the last couple games. Does Embiid just focus on getting fouled and getting back to it like that and generating whatever he can offensively there? Scoring isn't necessarily entirely his job, so I'm also fine with Embiid. If you want to shoot less, maybe if not you want to shoot less, but if coach wants to tell you to shoot less and just crash those boards and spend your energy on that end, I ain't going to hate it. Next essential matchup to watch is going to be Tyrese Maxey Jamal Murray, look, again, bad at names. Maxey is our leading scorer, is still on the MVP candidate tier. I'm not going to let the last game eat into me at this one. He is certainly going to be somebody that we need to feed, like I said, from beyond the arc, and just give a lot of the offensive touches to help get us right in this first half and get our scoring percentages up and just that see the ball go through the net kind of stuff. Jalen Brown is going to be matched up on RJ Barrett. It'll be interesting to see what Jalen Brown can do in terms of recovering from his worst plus minus of the season of his Sixers career. Last game, this one's big. It's at home, so in the friendly confines, see if he can't figure a way to just flush that last one out and make a bit of a statement. So all in all, I got to be optimistic. I got to say that this is one we can win, but this is one where you start to... I said we were going to do this in 10-game sample sizes. Packed up and finished the first 10-game sample size. That was all hype, all heart, all good vibes. Now it's time to see how the team can adjust to some turmoil in this next 10-game sample size. Let me know what you think about the game tonight. Like, subscribe, comment, share, follow. All those other YouTube-y buttons. Until then, we'll be back with post-game reactions. Go Sixers. Have a great rest of your day.