1. Miami hasn’t seen the full-strength Philadelphia 76ers during the regular season with Joel Embiid having missed all three matchups, and the same goes in the other direction with Jimmy Butler missing each game as well. Those absences may have taken some juice out of the storylines, but these teams came into the night tied in the standings at 37-30 and each contest has been highly competitive.
Tonight was no different, with Tyrese Maxey coming out of the gates firing on his way to 17 first quarter points while Bam Adebayo did his best to match him. Maxey’s run was enough to get his team out to a 31-21 advantage, but the HEAT ran off a 10-0 run of their own stretching into the second quarter using their press-zone to stymie a Sixers bench group that started small and eventually went even smaller with KJ Martin at center. It wasn’t pretty, both sides hovering around an Offensive Rating of 100, and it certainly didn’t feel like a postseason preview, but bodies were flying around with players on both sides making second and third effort plays. Philadelphia, with Kyle Lowry now in uniform, eventually found the creases in the zone and thus their own footing to take back the lead, 51-49, going into the break, but the HEAT, with Adebayo putting up a two-quarter line of 19-9-5, were a couple of bad turnovers and missed shots at the rim away from a decent lead of their own.
The upper hand went to the Sixers early in the third, back-to-back threes from Lowry and Mo Bamba putting them up 63-51 with a 12-2 run as Miami struggled to find good looks on their own end. Another Miami timeout followed just a couple minutes later as the Sixers scored a pair of buckets in scramble situations, the lead up to 17 at that point. Miami, on a back-to-back, stuck with it, a few scores allowing them to set back up in the press-zone again, but Maxey held out the stiff arm to keep Miami at bay even with Adebayo hitting his fifth consecutive three. Still just an 11-point game after a Highsmith three in the corner, but that was short lived, Sixers up 14 going into the fourth with Duncan Robinson out for the game with back discomfort.
A Thomas Bryant three bounced sky high and in to open the fourth to give Miami a little traction, the lead soon after down to seven with the zone again bothering Philadelphia’s bench unit. Back-to-back pullup threes from Terry Rozier followed, Miami hitting jumpers and forcing turnovers, and so it was tied. Clutch minutes followed, Philadelphia jumping up six as the HEAT sent double teams at Maxey, Lowry (16 points on 11 shots) making plays on both sides of the ball as he and Maxey handled the zone with more poise than the backups. Caleb Martin stole the inbounds with the shot clock about to turn off and Jaime Jaquez Jr. had a corner look with Miami down four, but it bounced off and the Sixers closed this one out, 98-81, as Philadelphia moves up to No. 6 in the Eastern Conference.
2. As the Sixers won this one with an Offensive Rating of 102.1, we can clearly designate this one as a defense-forward game. By that token, it featured an interesting feedback loop where Philadelphia consistently scored against Miami’s man-to-man, Maxey (30 points on 24 shots) proving himself a terror to the point that the HEAT had to send double teams his way down the stretch just to get the ball out of his hands. Both of Philadelphia’s major runs came against man coverage, those scores slowing the game down for Miami and forcing them into the halfcourt where they faced a much more physical defense than they saw the previous two games in Detroit. Lowry proved himself a significant addition in that area, swiping down at every ball within range while Batum – a larger defender than Robinson typically sees – aptly switched off his man to sink into the paint on drives, the Sixers’ big men otherwise zoning up behind most isolations and post-ups.
The loop reversed itself whenever Miami put a couple scores together. Those scores allowed them to setup their press-zone, shrinking Philadelphia’s shot clock or otherwise creating turnovers – at least three of them in the backcourt – as the Sixers bench units, and their lack of ballhandling, struggled against the pressure. Those turnovers pushed Miami out into the open floor and in turn created their own best runs of the game, early in the second and fourth quarters.
With both Butler and Embiid out it’s impossible to glean much of anything as far as what a postseason game would look like between these teams, but Philadelphia’s physicality and the way they were able to communicate switches off and on ball to clog the lane are both worth keeping in mind, as are the Sixers issues against zone – which Lowry did help assuage.
3. Adebayo (20 points on 10 shots, 13 rebounds, six assists) was again holding Miami together on both ends for most of this one, protecting the rim with vigor while also closing out on shooters as Maxey and Lowry collapsed the defense, but he also didn’t take a single shot in the fourth quarter. That’s rarely the fault of a center, especially when Adebayo had been so aggressive – again, hitting two more threes – earlier on, and the important context is that Miami was making a comeback bid and so they were hunting threes and playing in transition as their press forced turnovers and the zone forced misses. No grand conclusions on this one as some film review is necessary to see exactly what the Sixers were doing to keep the ball out of his hands – he was plenty involved as a screen setter – but we can safely say that all the bodies and arms and legs in the paint played their part in limiting Adebayo’s touches, especially once the Sixers established that they would send double teams at him in the post almost regardless of matchup.