Philadelphia has its time ahead of itself

The 26-16 76ers kinda won on Wednesday. The team hosted the Nets and it needed every bit of Brooklyn’s fourth quarter collapse to avoid dropping three in a row.

Net savior Spencer Dinwiddie missed 5-6 shots in the final quarter, Kyrie Irving missed 6-7 and called out his teammates after the loss, this was gonna happen wherever the Nets played on Wednesday, Kyrie’s just a real …

Philly’s hero was Tobias Harris, 11 points in the pullaway fourth quarter, but not all of it was pretty. Most of it was your typical Tobias Bailout Prod., jumping over someone just to get the shot off.

They’ve been doing it for a week.

Harris artfully cultivated this late-clock attack in 2019-20, but any appearances before January were understudy performances — it took a close contest and Joel Embiid’s absence to give Philadelphia’s guts-o-the-game scorer his finest shine on national TV. Tobias stepped into these sorts of attempts all season, he doesn’t mind the pressure or the drag on his shooting percentages, but he’s not the answer.

Philadelphia doesn’t have one, it’s not gonna get one, and the last time it had an Answer the question was “how can we get this guy to raise 26 shots when he was out doing the same until 8:26 this morning?”

What Philadelphia does have is time, a whole half a season before the playoffs hit, and the understanding that the Sixers are a little ahead in this game. PHILA acquired Josh Richardson and Al Horford before 2019-20, and it savagely blew up its roster midway through 2018-19 to acquire Harris, and Jimmy Butler. This is all new, still.

What’s grown in the year since then can’t be compared with the rings inside Denver’s trunk or Milwaukee’s heartwood, or even the relative fellowship of the emerging Pacers or always-around Magic. The Sixers have time, and the space in figurative terms, to develop into something greater than its parts.

The group isn’t better without Embiid, and there are no pins to push through after returning more cohesive than Kyrie Irving’s Brooklyn Nets, no sir.

The Sixers just have enough to slap you around. I’d schedule them against Milwaukee for Friday if I could.

It’s silly to anticipate as much: Milwaukee refuses to let anyone score around the hoop and the Embiid-less 76ers like to post THREE fellas up at a time — one loopy entry pass deserves another. And then another. It’s great.

In Horford, the Sixers have a big man that absolutely cannot and should not play alongside Embiid. Yet PHILA has the sweat equity of a half-NBA season to work off with those two, touch and timing hasn’t been established but cognition is there. Check back in spring, when you get to play the same opponent seven times in two weeks, the two could be on the court together for seconds at a time.

The slip slurps for Simmons, he’s still determining when and where to put rubber to road: Ben’s curls turn into commotion when he cuts right into tangled traffic, yet half the audience and every member of the Philly bench yells in protest when Simmons stands still.

It’s a delicate dive, picking his spots, but it’s also only January and (for once) Simmons knows what sort of team he’s looking at.

This — Philly’s 18th-ranked offense — can’t help but improve. The return may not lob some increased action on the board, don’t look for this crew to shoot into the top ten by April, but that’s not the point. The NBA’s regular season never is.

It’s the relationships we’re working on. This is a team full of vultures, just waiting to collapse onto an incoming pass.

Simmons is on an island, he’ll be that way for a while, it’s the strut he’s assumed. None of that may matter in the face of what Embiid brings to a particular table in a game-tilting third quarter, or in hot air’s range of who’s doing the most screaming.

Philadelphia has Josh Richardson for that now, all the yelling parts, upon arrival the 26-year old didn’t waste a second before calling around Sixers as he saw them. Josh is a two-way spirit that has until May to figure out how not to average 2.1 turnovers a game, he’s that voice that you hear when the offense goes clammy.

Horford isn’t nearly as voluble, he’s just not on the Celtics. Those distinctions count when you have to play the Celtics, and Al Horford isn’t on the Celtics.

The team’s struggles without Embiid should mend with the ascension of rookie Matisse Thybulle to the starting lineup. The slick defensive swingman pushed Tobias Harris (and/or Ben Simmons) into the power forward role against BKN, and the Sixers were better off for his presence.

Forward Mike Scott started until recently but he can’t out-rebound a cloth cap, the Sixers badly need to run off boards and the band was tired of waiting for Scott to dig things out.

Matisse don’t crash but he defends better than most other people in professional basketball, including the good colleges. Thybulle’s is a spark that that delivers well beyond its flashpoint.

It’s in this movement that the Sixers will find release. Joel Embiid will never be comfortable among this lot because no NBA center will discover serenity within this culture. You can zone all to shit now, the league legislated Shaq out of its system nearly two decades ago and Embiid is going to have to make sense of it all.

While Joel mends, Simmons gets to watch and learn.

He gets to feel things, understand how the brunt rubs up. It’s all for later, but some of it is for right now:

The defense won’t be the problem in Philadelphia, this was confirmed as much on Wednesday with Thybulle and Richardson making life hellish for Kyrie Irving’s outstretched arms.

The trick will be surprising the opposing defense, without Philadelphia surprising itself.

This is the road to familiar.

JEFF TEAGUE WAS TRADED

To Atlanta.

The first thing I thought of was, “oh, man, the Timberwolves hated Jeff Teague.”

Then I log on and look, ahahaha:

It was like this, all season.

The Timberwolves woulda traded him for Allen Crabbe, if they could.

The Timberwolves traded him for Allen Crabbe, as it turns out, the mild swingman has a massive ($18.5 million) expiring deal and Atlanta’s league-lowest payroll doesn’t mind taking on the added expenditure of Teague’s expiring $19 million contract.

The Hawks also got Treveon Graham in the deal because Treveon Graham didn’t work out. The Timberwolves preferred open roster spots to the both of ‘em, room for further trades, great news if you like Tyler Johnson.

Jeff Teague is really good at passing the ball to Josh Smith and jogging toward the other side of the court.

He’s still basically the same player that you remembered from before he went to Minnesota, nobody watches Minnesota, and Teague (13.2 points in 28 minutes per game with the Wolves, 38 percent from deep and 45 percent overall, 6.1 assists) probably turns it up a notch with ATL’s orthodox band of emerging reserves.

Adrian Wojnarowski, who broke the news, used on/off numbers to explain the transaction, the lead story used big stats because this is 2020 and we’re in the future:

“The Hawks have been scouring the marketplace for a backup point guard to ease the burden on Trae Young. The Hawks have an offensive rating of 108.2 with Young on the floor and 90.7 off it.”

The Hawks will have an offensive rating of Boring As Shit with Jeff Teague back in the fold, but the deal will at least free up Kevin Huerter to steal more of his teammates’ rebounds.

DUNKS AND BUTTS

Just a bunch of dunks from dudes with butts, Eighties Butts, it was the style.

Barkley, Doc Rivers, Tim McCormick, certainly Roy Hinson. So many butts.

Yes I have consumed generic DayQuil.

One of my favorite things about Dominque Wilkins was the way he went, “I didn’t really just beat you, but I’m still gonna shoot,” right before pulling up. If you listen closely you can hear it.

Otherwise the game is mostly butts.

11:35

Nobody I’d rather play with more, and less, than Teaneck’s own Kyrie Irving … Dwane Casey says his Pistons are “auditioning for 29 other teams” and I’ll tell you nothing but this, all this guy can see is 29 thumbs pointing toward Paris, TX … I stole, this bit … Debate Wrap-Up? I’d rather draw my own bath … Looks like these Rockets ran red from the rockets’ red, glare … Watching me eating crab legs is hilarious … It doesn’t get any better, than Darrell Armstrong vs. Aaron McKie … Trade possibility nobody else is talking about: Detroit big man Andre Drummond … I still can’t believe, what happened in that last game … John Sununudon’t, Washington is at it again … I was never able to teach my son, Cannon, cursive … Two words one legend: Boz Scaggs … Every last one of George Kennedy’s radio ads were lies, all lies … I’ll leave you with this: Walt Williams.wmv.

LIDO SHUFFLE

One of our better bits of confirmation regarding the strength and scope of PorcaroPower.

The study is ongoing.

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