The Philadelphia 76ers began their preseason schedule for the 2021-22 season on Monday when they took on the Toronto Raptors up in Canada and it was a bit of a new era for them. While they still have a lot of their mainstays, they are moving on without the services of Ben Simmons who is essentially out of the picture.
It was clear that they missed Simmons a bit on Monday as they looked out of sorts in a 123-107 loss to the Raptors to open up the preseason. Of course, it did not help that they were also missing Joel Embiid and Tobias Harris, but they looked a bit unorganized to open up the exhibition slate.
Andre Drummond led Philadelphia with 19 points, 14 rebounds, and four blocks as he played with a ton of energy all night, Seth Curry had 14 points and four steals, Tyrese Maxey had 10 points, and Furkan Korkmaz added 13. Isaiah Joe also added 18 points and some nice plays on the defensive end as well while Paul Reed added four points and 11 rebounds with three blocks on the night.
Here are the observations from the preseason opener:
Energy from the bigs
The Sixers obviously had to start Drummond and Georges Niang in this one, but their energy and activity are a positive that Philadelphia can take from this one. Drummond, especially, was active early and had 11 points and six rebounds in the first quarter. He even knocked down five of his six free throws in the opening quarter which is impressive for the notoriously bad foul shooter. He is going to be a nice backup behind Embiid considering how cheap his contract is.
As for Niang, he looks like he can be a good addition to this team’s bench. There were a few instances where he pushed the ball up the floor and he looked competent while doing so. He also showed an ability to put the ball on the floor a bit and drive to the basket which is something that is so helpful from a big in this league. In normal circumstances, both of these guys will come off the bench and give the team a boost in doing so.
Multiple ball-handlers
As promised throughout training camp, the Sixers are going to rely on others to handle the ball and initiate the offense with Ben Simmons no longer in the picture. Maxey was the primary option in this one, but Curry brought the ball up as did Shake Milton and even Niang. The problem with that is the Sixers did not exactly look organized out on the offensive end of the floor as they had a lot of issues getting into sets.
Without Simmons, the Sixers do not exactly have one true ball-handler so this will continue to be a work in progress as the season goes on. Philadelphia needs to find a solution to this problem, but on the flip side, this is only Game 1 of the preseason. There are still three more preseason games and a lot of time left to really figure all of this out.
Disjointed defensively
Again, considering that this is just the first preseason game, this is not much of a surprise. Without Simmons, there will be an adjustment period on both ends of the floor and with Embiid not playing either, the Sixers were missing their defensive anchors. All night long, there seemed to be some confusion in what schemes were being used and how they wanted to defend out on the floor. The Raptors drilled 12 triples through three quarters and they had a ton of open looks all night long which then led to a lot of looks at the rim.
That is going to come with a lot of the newness the Sixers have at the moment and they will need to work through all of that. Under normal circumstances, Embiid probably cleans up a lot of their mistakes, but on the nights Embiid can’t play, there will be more pressure on everybody else in order to get the job done on that end of the floor.
