How close are the Sixers? They know it's all about adjustments

Playoff series are often decided by adjustments, then adjustments to those adjustments, and so on.

With seven games left in their regular season, it’s clear the Sixers still require self-adjusting.

That’s not an indication that losing double-digit leads to the Suns and Bucks portends a pre-playoffs skid. In fact, the Sixers’ remaining strength of schedule is the NBA’s easiest, per Tankathon. 

It’s also not an apocalyptic pronouncement about the team’s postseason chances. The Sixers have a shot, and the vision of everything clicking into place exactly when it needs to includes a James Harden similar to the player who showed up Tuesday night. 

Harden missed a potential go-ahead three-pointer over Brook Lopez on the Sixers’ final meaningful possession of a 118-116 loss to Milwaukee, but he took 10 long-range jumpers and 12 foul shots in a 32-point performance, passing 30 for the first time as a Sixer. 

“Just more aggressive tonight, more comfortable,” Sixers head coach Doc Rivers said. “We had a good talk today, James and I. He’s trying to fit in and get guys going and I told him, ‘No, thank you.’ I said, ‘You’ll get going and we’ll figure it out. We just need you to be you. Don’t worry about everyone else. As long as you and Joel (Embiid) are in the right spots, we’ll figure out everyone else. But we need you to think of yourself as a scorer, not the way you played in Brooklyn where you were a point guard trying to run the team.’

“We want him to be the James (he’s been), and tonight he was. That was a big step for us. I think that was really good.”

Perhaps the most optimistic slant on the Sixers through 15 games with Harden is that the team’s issues are amorphous yet easily fixable. Learning and embracing roles doesn’t sound that difficult, right?

That stance isn’t delusional, but it excludes some of the Sixers’ significant problems related to factors besides attitude, confidence and the like. For instance, when Milwaukee double teamed Embiid in the post and Harden found himself with catch-and-shoot opportunities, those looks weren’t in his wheelhouse. 

“We showed him some film of the Phoenix game and I think the Lakers game,” Rivers said. “The ball swings ... he’s never had that when he’s getting the ball swung to him — and he rarely shoots them. So we’re getting used to that. 

“He spent a ton of time after (shootaround) today working on spot-up shots. And he was laughing. He said, ‘I haven’t had a spot-up swing in … ever.’ So now he’s getting them and that’s good, because he’s a great shooter. It’ll work out for him.”

For Harden, pick-and-roll playmaking is far more familiar. Adaptation is also necessary there, though. Milwaukee and Phoenix switched on the Harden-Embiid pick-and-roll more than past opponents. The move created advantageous individual matchups for the Sixers, at least initially, but it also required Embiid and Harden to decisively identify the best attack.

It’s not a bad thing, but surveying the floor from the top of the key against a 6-foot-3 defender like Jrue Holiday is unusual to Embiid, who posted 29 points, 14 rebounds and seven assists but got spectacularly blocked by Giannis Antetokounmpo after rebounding Harden’s late long-distance miss. After Antetokounmpo’s 40-point gem, both he and Embiid are averaging 29.9 points. LeBron James’ 30.1 per game lead the league. 

“It's a read. Obviously (Harden is) a good iso basketball player, so we want to give him as much room as we can,” Embiid said. “And then I also have the mismatch. So I think that’s when it comes down to execution; we’ve got to know what we’re doing. And in some situations, the iso can be good. In others, the other matchup could be good. But really the whole night, especially for me, I just tried to make the right plays over and over. They just kept doubling me everywhere on the floor, really, and I just knew that was a game where I had to make plays for others.”

So, when Embiid and Tobias Harris identified “execution” as their primary takeaway from the narrow defeats to last year’s NBA finalists, it was more than an inoffensive buzzword. The Sixers aren’t a million miles from beating elite teams in seven-game series, but they’re aiming for many-faceted improvement. 

“You can obviously see it from the Phoenix game, and then today, as well — execution, composure,” Harris said. “Two games that we were in and that we believe we should’ve won. We’ve got to go back to the drawing board and figure out how we can sharpen up our coverages defensively. Our communication, that’s the biggest thing. And then offensively, we had some looks that just didn’t fall for us and we know we can make those.”

Some of the team's defensive concerns are larger than needing to talk more and give consistent effort. The Sixers have been testing a variety of lineups and schemes — zone; switching one through four; occasional blitzing; Danny Green closing one game, Georges Niang closing the next. 

That’s not an excuse, but it does make active, precise communication trickier. 

“A little bit,” Harris said. “We still are trying to build that and come together on that end chemistry-wise — different matchups out there, and different schemes for sure. It’s just something we have to get used to, and be on the same page and solid. But it’s nothing that we can’t do. We’ve shown we can do it throughout the course of our time being together.”

In terms of player capacity, the backup center spot jumps out for negative reasons. 

DeAndre Jordan lost his rotation place for a night and Rivers used the 37-year-old Paul Millsap on Antetokounmpo during Embiid’s breaks. Rivers said the Sixers “almost went with Paul Reed.” Opting for the veteran over the athletic 22-year-old led to ceaseless Antetokounmpo scoring and a second-half Bucks surge while hammering home that great games from the Sixers’ stars might not always be sufficient in the playoffs. 

At the end of the night, Harden didn’t sound at all discouraged by the back-to-back losses. 

“Great test for us — great,” he said. “We didn’t win both of the games, but we really gave ourselves a chance and played some pretty solid games. We just had some lapses throughout the course of the games — tonight in the fourth quarter and basically the second half of the Suns game, and they took advantage of it.

“I think there’s some things to work on, some things to be mindful of, and just continue to get better. We’ve got six, seven games left until it gets real.”