The Athletic NBA Daily
Sixers Big 3 debut in loss | Hartenstein returns in Thunder win
Thu, 21 Nov 2024
The Philadelphia 76ers season could not be off to a worse start. Dave DuFour and Es Baraheni react to the Sixers loss to the Grizzlies and the return of Isaiah Hartenstein for the Oklahoma City Thunder. Then, The Athletic’s Sam Amick joins the show with more from behind the scenes in Philadelphia and the Brooklyn Nets trade buzz. In the mailbag segment, Es and Dave discuss possible Jakob Poeltl trades and their favorite chocolate bars.Host: Dave DuFourWith: Es Baraheni, Sam AmickExecutive Producer: Andrew SchlechtAudio Producer: Grayson Moody Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Chapter 1: What happened in the Sixers' latest game?
Good morning, everybody. Good morning. Another night has passed in the NBA. And look, I said we weren't necessarily going to panic about the Sixers yet. But man, I think it might be time. Yeah. Tyrese Maxey made his return to the starting lineup to the team. We had the full big three out there and it was a disappointment.
They drop a game to the Grizzlies that they definitely should have won us without John Murray. No John ran out there for the Grizzlies who have been banged up. Even the guys who were on the court for the Grizzlies, Desmond Bain just got back out there. You know, it's just, it's a bad, bad loss for the Sixers.
Chapter 2: Why is the Sixers' offense struggling?
It's not even bad. It's terrible. It's a terrible loss for the Sixers. Not I mean, the other two are 12, by the way. Right. And there's still three games back of a playoff spot because the which is funny about this whole thing. Yeah. But look, it's terrible for multiple reasons. One, the offense that we talked about last time on the podcast and it being just a disaster continues to be a disaster.
And that was with Joel Embiid having a quote unquote bounce back game. Right. He performed. The box score says that he played better. The numbers were there. He got to the free throw line more often, but still doesn't seem like that effective MVP type of player. Right.
He was in midseason form, though, getting to the free throw line, including shoving Jaron Jackson to the ground. Yeah. and intentionally tripping himself over him at one point. I mean, so the, the, the grift skills look like he's in mid season form, but he looks out of shape. I mean, obviously, which we all expect. So he's ineffective, but as like the offense, they weren't really running anything.
It didn't seem like there was some sort of plan to put these guys in a position to succeed. And, And I know they haven't played together. We're going to talk about the chemistry all year long because it seems like they're going to struggle to be in the lineup together, especially with Paul George. George had to leave the game.
He hyperextended that same left knee that he already had an issue with, although Nick Nurse said after the game. But, you know, we don't know how much we can even believe anything coming out of anyone's mouth there right now. Nick Nurse says after the game that they thought about putting him back in but decided not to.
Again, take that with a grain of salt because I just don't know if anybody knows what's going on. But offensively, they ran nothing.
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Chapter 3: What are the implications of Joel Embiid's performance?
Yeah. I mean, look, the Sixers in general over the last few years have been a very isolation-heavy team, right? It's natural when you have a player like Joel Embiid to run through isos because he's such a hard player to stop in isolation settings. But at the same time, you hope to weaponize some of the off-ball shooting of a Tyrese Maxey, of a Paul George, even Jared McCain, who is –
who continues to be electric for this team, you hope that they can weaponize that with some off-ball movement. They haven't. It's just everybody stand around, watch Joel Embiid, try to draw help, and then try to knock down your shots. It creates an environment where it's like, what are we even trying to accomplish on the offensive end?
Are we trying to get Joel Embiid his numbers, or are we actually trying to win basketball games?
And that see that that is really the question, isn't it? Because, like, again, you're going to have a bunch of people walking around saying, well, Joel, you know, he had 35 points. He was plus seven. Yeah. And he had 14 free throws. Let's not forget that part, by the way.
Yeah.
But there were a lot of times where he was, you know, was throwing up some garbage like he looks like he doesn't have his legs. Sure. And that's everything. And I'm trying not to judge him based on how he looks, because it's clear they're trying to make him play his way into shape. As much as I disagree with that, I just think you've got to play your your best players.
I don't know if he's going to be one of them, especially in the defensive end some of the time. But at this point, Paul George only plays 17 minutes in this game. Tyrese Maxey puts – he's in there for 20. And look, he started out the game. I thought his energy was good. He looked okay physically, but he had a rough game, especially down the stretch.
It's funny you say this. I completely agree with you, but it's funny you say this. And it's funny that their opponents are the Grizzlies because – What are the Grizzlies so good at? Guys are injured. Guys are hurt. Taylor Jenkins is going to coach up his players. They're so good at finding those diamonds in the rough. The Santi Aldamas, the Scottie Pippen Juniors, the Jay Huffs of the world.
They're so good at uplifting their players and also adhering to the styles of those players. It's square peg round hole situation with the Sixers and their offense and the way that stylistically some of their players like to play. And that's why when you see McCain thrive, you're like, OK, this is a guy who clearly can thrive in any setting, which is why he's such a talented player.
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Chapter 4: How did Isaiah Hartenstein impact the Thunder's game?
So we had to get our man, Sam Amick, senior national NBA writer. He's the guy who's got all the behind the scenes info. Sam, welcome back to the show. We want to jump right in here. Because this is, I mean, there is so much smoke coming out of there right now. The building's on fire. It's fire. The building is on fire. We can see the smoke from miles away. We know all the story now.
At this point, they had the players and coach meeting post-game. It took forever for them to have this time. Tyrese Maxey calls out Joel Embiid on being late. Numerous other things, maybe Tyrese Maxey showing his leadership of the team there. But this is 13 games into the season that we're already having like a team meeting. Joel has not looked great in the very few games that he's played.
It's a giant mess, Sam. What do you make of it from being able to read the tea leaves, see a little bit on the inside, and then obviously all the stuff you know on the outside?
Yeah, guys, it is a mess. I would say, man, if I was advising the Sixers as an unpaid consultant, I would say if you just would have done your media responsibilities after the game first and then had the team meeting, then none of this probably gets out because, you know, when you don't talk to the media for an hour, after the game, which is what happened.
There are rules in place that that, you know, kind of raises alarm bells and and all the reporters on hand scurry around and try to figure out what's going on. All the reporters at home. We're talking about an hour. What's going on there? Well, and that's the thing is like, you see the tweet, I saw it from Gina Mizell, shout out to her new blue sky account, Philly inquirer.
Like she put that out there and then, yeah, you start making phone calls and trying to figure it out. So interesting times indeed, Tyrese Maxey decides to take the microphone, so to speak with the team and tell the big fella that he's just not, you know, being the leader that he needs to be. And you're talking about timeliness and professionalism and, and just the way that you move off the court.
So that is such an interesting choice for me to see Tyrese make because he's five years in, he's 24 years old. To me, it's him sending a pretty direct message that it's time for somebody to lead this group. And I applaud him for it. And the best thing, and to his credit, is that Tyrese and Joel, by all accounts,
are very tight and remain very tight, and that Joel is looking in the mirror to an extent here, and that he gives Tyrese that kind of space to have that voice because they had mutual respect. But 2-11 is just wild. I don't know how else to say it. I can't believe that they've lost this many games. I know the East is not as good as we thought it was going to be.
Maybe they can catch up here a little bit, but yeah, tough times.
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Chapter 5: What went wrong during the Sixers' team meeting?
I don't have a great sense of what his frustrations are schematically. The only thought I had there is that if you go back to last year when Nick Nurse was new on the job, Nick wasted very little time making it clear that he was going to try to push Joel to be at his best. You remember the little subplot about how the Sixers decided to go have training camp all the way in Fort Collins, Colorado,
by all accounts and I was actually there there was like a little passive aggressiveness there where it was like oh by the way Mr. Jokic the guy who is a champion and keeps winning that MVP award over you is right down the road and the guy that at the time people you know kind of felt like Joel was ducking so Nick
has shown this willingness to even get, kind of needle his guy a little bit to get him to that next level. So I think there's a natural friction at times between them. And even friction is probably the wrong word, but attention. Beyond that, I just think that the physical stuff remains very confusing to me.
I was in France watching Joel, obviously had some games where he didn't look great, finished very strong. But talking to Team USA people, the more important thing is he didn't miss a practice. He didn't miss a shoot around. He didn't miss a game. If he didn't play, it was because Steve Kerr chose for him not to play. So to go from that,
to left knee injury management being such a massive story this season, it feels like he had some kind of a setback in between there, because he just obviously doesn't look like himself.
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Chapter 6: How can the Sixers improve their team dynamics?
Yeah, I mean, look, and I would say this, it brings a little hollow for me when I hear Joel talking about... being used improperly. I mean, he is as heliocentric as you can get without being, you know, a 10 assists a game guy. And he was on a run before he got hurt last year with Nick Nurse and that offense that they were running. And he was on another MVP pace. So,
He has been used totally fine by Nick Nurse. And I think that to, you know, to be fair to him, he looks awful physically. And I imagine he probably feels pretty defensive.
But, you know, the things that Tyrese Maxey is bringing up, I mean, I don't want to be the guy who talks about leadership, but frankly, like it's a little bit disappointing that like Embiid with his status in the league, he's an MVP. You know, he is the franchise. He's the process. How long has he been in the league too, right? Like.
You know, why isn't he at this point in his career, you know, expected to lead by example to a certain degree? You don't hear about Kevin Durant, you know, being a big rah-rah leader, but he shows up on time and he's in heavy practice and he's at as many games as he can, even fighting through, you know, his advanced age and injury history.
So I just think that the standards have been lower for Embiid for years now. And finally, like this is where, and it stinks that he's in Philly because it's going to get dark fast if he's not out there playing, you know, with the fans.
I do think that it is nice to see that there are people within the organization trying to hold them to account before it gets too late, because frankly, they had a really loud summer to come out and lay this dud, you know, to start to start the year. And I started thinking to myself, OK, in your piece, you guys laid it out. Daryl Morey, Nick Nurse, they're safe for now. And we always say for now.
But at what point are they not? And at what point do you just start to look outside? Like, do we need to pivot? You know, there's a lot of people who are very into Jared McCain and what he's done. And they see this as an opportunity for the franchise to just take a different direction. I don't even know what that looks like. No one spelled it out in a way that makes any sense to me.
But, you know, something is going to have to change at some point. They either have to be better with what they've got or they're going to have to improve outside or people are going to go.
No, that's all on point, Dave. And I feel like to add to it, this is one of those stories for me that once it comes out, I feel like within the past 24 hours in my circles and just media, it's almost like we're kind of taking some blunt of criticism from people around the league who are, I'll just be totally honest with you, who are saying, man, you guys have been going easy on him for years.
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Chapter 7: What are the potential trade talks involving Jakob Poeltl?
The last line of that column said that Sean is going to have a lot of possibilities to sort through at the deadline. I think that is a very fair and safe statement.
Yeah, they've been a team that has played every good team really tough. So, I mean, frankly, just personally, I hope they don't. necessarily blow it up, because I like a good team full of role players who overperform, and I think Jordy Fernandez, pretty good young coach, and so I'd like to see him get a chance. Sam Amick, go and read him at The Athletic. Thank you very much.
He gives us all the inside info, and that's why we know what the heck's going on behind the scenes. Coming up after the break, S and I are going to answer some listener questions again.
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It's time for what I think is going to become my favorite part of the show. Listener questions. We got a bunch of questions responded on Twitter to our call for questions the other day. So we decided we'd pick a couple more. Shout out to basketball. question and a non-basketball question because, you know, we're trying to have some fun around here.
So we got a question from Peace Key, at Peace Key, over on Twitter. And this feels like a question really kind of built for you, S, because... It's a Raptors question. So what is Jakob Pertl's trade value? I have a feeling you're going to have an inflated sense of what his trade value is.
No, I actually don't think so.
Three first round picks. Is that where you're starting?
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