Sixers president of basketball operations Daryl Morey and Rockets general manager Rafael Stone watched Wednesday’s game at Wells Fargo Center together, chatting and viewing the action about 15 feet from center court.
Morey saw his current team top his former co-worker's squad in a 118-113 win without Ben Simmons, who was sidelined by an illness, as the Sixers hung on to win despite a shaky fourth quarter after leading by 26 points at halftime.
Joel Embiid returned after sitting out Monday with back tightness and recorded 31 points, a season-high nine assists and 11 rebounds. Seth Curry (25 points, five assists) and Tobias Harris (24 points, 15 rebounds, five assists) were the 19-10 Sixers’ other main offensive contributors in Simmons’ absence.
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The Sixers’ next game is Friday at home against the Bulls. Here are observations on their victory over Houston:
Thybulle in his element
Matisse Thybulle started for the first time this season and was highly effective shifting the game’s momentum early on in that role.
As he showed during the Sixers’ comeback win over the Pacers on Jan. 31, Thybulle’s college success in a zone defense certainly translates to the NBA. When the Sixers went to a zone in the first quarter after a rough defensive start, Thybulle stole the ball from John Wall twice and produced six transition points off of those thefts, a Danny Green three-pointer and a triple of his own.
His quick hands and sense for how to create trouble for the opposition are exceptional, and those talents shine when he’s roving menacingly at the top of a zone.
“When you’ve got Matisse in the game, I feel (zone is) our best defense," Embiid said. "He gets his hands on everything. I think he has the potential to be the best defender in the league — just the way he moves and the way he reads on defense, and he’s got great hands.
"He’s one of the reasons why we do it. We did it in Indiana in that fourth quarter and he completely changed the game. Tonight, we basically did it the whole game. He was all over the place. I think he has a chance … when it comes to All-NBA Defensive Teams.”
First-half minutes for Joe
Shake Milton, who missed his fourth consecutive game with a left ankle sprain, went through a pregame workout. Though head coach Doc Rivers offered no timeline for Milton’s return, it doesn’t seem the Sixers’ sixth man will be out for much longer.
Isaiah Joe had a brief fourth-quarter spell in the rotation during the Sixers’ loss Monday, which seemed largely a byproduct of the bench’s overall ineffectiveness and Furkan Korkmaz’s shooting woes. He appeared a lot earlier against Houston, checking in during the opening period and playing solid basketball.
The rookie found Thybulle for a layup in transition, knocked down a corner three on his first try, and drew an offensive foul on Eric Gordon after picking up full court to begin the second quarter. He finished with three points on 1-for-6 shooting and two steals in 12 minutes.
NBA
If nothing else, Joe might assist in increasing the Sixers’ low three-point volume, something that’s been a deficiency for the team. We’ll see if he’s still in the mix once Simmons is back.
“Of course I probably won’t have the green light I had at (Arkansas), but the team is bringing me on for a reason and that’s to shoot the ball,” Joe said in November. “They’re not going to bring a shooter on a team to not shoot the ball. That’s what I’m going to do.”
Curry, Embiid, Harris and Korkmaz all spent time handling the ball for the Sixers, who had no true facilitator without Simmons. They still played decent offense against both man-to-man and zone defense — at least in the first half — with their 32 points off the Rockets’ 18 turnovers a big help.
When Curry headed to the locker room in the first quarter to address a hand injury, Harris stepped into a point forward role, which he enjoyed.
"I just have another All-Star point guard in front of me in Ben Simmons, so once I take his spot at the position it’ll be mine for the taking," Harris said with a smile. "Slowly but surely.”
The Sixers’ 23 giveaways allowed Houston to stick around and make things interesting down the stretch. Rivers didn't think the fourth-quarter turnover problems were because Simmons was unavailable to run the show.
“Not tonight," he said. “There are nights like that, but I thought tonight we just got sloppy. We really had some unforced turnovers that you don’t like. The one thing about Houston and teams like them, they’re going to keep throwing the ball at the rim and if you turn the ball over, you’re going to allow them back in the game. I didn’t think it was the pressure; I thought it was more us, and we had a lot of self-inflicted wounds.”
Embiid works through back issue
Embiid wasn't quite at his best in the first half against a depleted Rockets team missing Christian Wood, Victor Oladipo and P.J. Tucker, though he was nevertheless very good in this game.
His back looks to be a lingering concern. He bent down to stretch in between two free throws late in the second quarter, then appeared to be in discomfort and moving gingerly on his way back into the locker room at halftime. Embiid played just fine to open the second half despite the physical issues he was dealing with, scoring twice inside on DeMarcus Cousins and converting a fadeaway jumper.
“I wanted to give it a shot for five more minutes (after halftime). Obviously, things changed and I had to adjust to it. … It was pretty tight, but I’ll be fine," Embiid said.
He confirmed his back has been bothering him since he took a hard fall after a flagrant foul by LeBron James in the Sixers' Jan. 27 win over the Lakers but indicated he's able to cope with it.
"It’s not alarming," Embiid said. "As NBA players, we play every single night and the body is just sore and you’ve just got to take care of yourself. It’s normal. It’s just tightness. As the days go, some days it’s tighter than usual, some days it’s not.
"Obviously, in Utah, and even during the Suns game and after the Suns game, it got tighter than usual. Today, especially when we started the game, it was tighter than usual. ... I’ve just got to go home and continue to do what I’ve been doing and I’ll be fine.”
Embiid’s health is obviously paramount to the Sixers’ success. One illustration of that fact is the team entering Wednesday’s game with a net rating 20.7 points better when he was on the floor than when he was off it, per Cleaning the Glass.
That’s an extreme figure, but it doesn’t feel like an inaccurate representation of Embiid’s impact. Embiid should be named an All-Star starter Thursday night for the fourth time.