PHILADELPHIA — The Philadelphia 76ers had a tough time on the offensive end in a 118-102 loss to the Dallas Mavericks on Monday night. The Sixers did get off to a good start as they jumped out to an 11-point lead, but they saw it slip away once Dallas started to blitz Tyrese Maxey.
Overall, the Sixers shot 43% from the floor and 8-for-29 from deep. Maxey shot 6-for-16 overall and just 1-for-5 from deep. With no Joel Embiid to worry about, the Mavericks sent waves of defenders at Maxey whenever he crossed halfcourt.
Maxey did end up having seven assists on the night, but he also had three turnovers and he picked up two charging fouls. It was just not a great night against the blitz as the Mavericks had a lot of success in that area.
In general, the Sixers have to do a better job of making themselves available for Maxey to get the ball out, but he took the responsibility for the lack of success in that area.
“I think it’s more of me helping them,” said Maxey. “I got to give up the ball faster sometimes. It’s kind of our first time going through this, we’re all kind of learning together. I’m just trying to get the ball out of my hands and try to let my teammates make some plays and still try to stay aggressive as well by doing that.”
Maxey also had a tough time finishing in the paint. One has to give credit to Mavs big men Maxi Kleber and Dwight Powell, but when Maxey gets into the paint, he has to find ways to finish.
“Yeah, just go up to score, instead of looking for contact to get fouls,” Maxey explained. “I feel like the last two games when I drove and got bumped, I was looking for fouls, just trying to shoot free throws instead of just going in to score. I’ll work on that and fix that one.”
At this stage of the season, the Sixers have seen and practiced it all. Coach Nick Nurse has made sure his team knows what to do when they see blitzing defensive schemes and everything else they may see throughout the course of a game. They have to be better, at the end of the day.
“We should have definitely just made a quicker decision out of it.,” Tobias Harris added. “If they’re blitzing Tyrese, get the ball to the middle of the floor, take a dribble, take two dribbles, hit the next guy for an open 3, or a backdoor cut for a layup. We should have exploited that kind of how they were doing it to us when we were double-teaming them.”
That’s how the Mavericks scored all night. When Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving had the opportunities, they took advantage of any seam in the defense which led to open 3s for guys like Josh Green and Kleber on their end. The Sixers have to learn from their failures against the blitz in this loss.
“Whether it was Luka or whether it was Kyrie, and we got off the basketball, got to the next guy, and made the next play for a wide-open 3 or a layup,” Harris finished. “All things that when we go back and check the film later, we’ll figure out ways to get better at that, but we’re going to see different schemes now, we’re going to see different teams throwing different defensive lineups out there as well at us and we got to figure out a way to exploit that.”
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