After dropping two games in a row on the road, the Philadelphia 76ers returned home and made a lineup change. They turned to rookie Matisse Thybulle after Mike Scott had received a start in place of the injured Joel Embiid for three games.
The lineup change paid off as Thybulle had four blocks and two steals in 26:56 of playing time and his individual defense on Brooklyn Nets star Kyrie Irving was impressive. Thybulle held Irving to one point on 0-for-2 shooting ad he was part of a big fourth-quarter effort in order to hold off the Nets in a big win.
“It’s cool, it’s kind of been a process of just earning his trust,” said the rookie. “I think at the beginning, I didn’t deserve a lot of it and he’s allowed me to play through a lot of mistakes.”
The one drawback was that he did have five fouls on the night. So even though he had an impressive night back in the starting lineup, there are still some things that he has to work on to continue to grow as a player.
“You want to polish him up, not wind him up, he doesn’t need to be wound up,” said coach Brett Brown. “He’s a ball of energy and you’ve just got to remind him, I thought he did a pretty good job of stalking and he had some that weren’t fouls, he still hit people as they were rising up into a shot, but we saw after he played 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 games, we saw the progressive growth in his judgment and not leaving Joe Harris in the corner and trying to make a play off the ball as an example.”
The good thing that has been shown with Thybulle has been that he has made strides in that area. He has continued to take big steps forward in the foul department. He was committing 2.2 fouls per game in November and it then dropped to 1.4 fouls in December before missing seven games with an injury. He knows he has to continue to grow in that department though for the team to have success.
“Make those mistakes so that I don’t have to make them at times like this in the fourth quarter of big games against talented players,” the rookie added.
The thing is, he is so gifted defensively. He has the chance to be a consistent member of the All-Defensive Team going forward in his career. He just has to continue to grow his NBA education.
“I think that his length and his bounce,” Brown added. “I want to polish that up and encourage him to make plays and he did. We’ve just got to make sure that it’s not at the expense of whacking people and sending them to the line.”
The Sixers will host Zach LaVine and the Chicago Bulls on Friday so that will be another challenge for the Sixers to battle against. [lawrence-related id=23626,23611,23616]