3 observations: Ben Simmons, shorthanded Sixers fall to Grizzlies

The Philadelphia 76ers were feeling good about themselves following a two-game home sweep of the Miami Heat and the return of a few main players, but they then head into the weekend road trip without star big man Joel Embiid as well as their key reserve Mike Scott.

They were not able to generate enough offense without Embiid and they fell to the Memphis Grizzlies to begin their quick road trip 106-104. They turned the ball over 22 times including a crucial one late and they were not able to keep up without the big fella in this one.

Shake Milton was terrific once again scoring 28 points to lead Philadelphia, Tobias Harris had 21 points, Ben Simmons had 11 points, 16 rebounds, and nin3 assists, and Tyrese Maxey added 12.

With that said, here are the three observations in this one:

Familiar issues

Turnovers and transition defense. The Sixers will continue to have these specific issues until they get everybody back healthy and they can continue to grow as a team. They had 10 turnovers at halftime led by five from Simmons and the Grizzlies had 10 points off those turnovers to lead it by six at the half after Philadelphia had a lead most of the half. As far as transition defense is concerned, Memphis ran even on makes and they used the athleticism of Ja Morant and Dillon Brooks to get easy hoops. There were times where the Sixers were just confused on who to pick up and that is where chemistry needs to come in. Unfortunately, Philadelphia continues to have players miss time and they have not been able to get their chemistry down pat just yet. Once they finally have a full complement of players, they will fix these issues over time.

Half court offensive issues

This can be attributed to not having Seth Curry and Embiid, but without both of those guys, the Sixers could not get into a rhythm offensively. If they don’t have the sharpshooting of Curry, then they need to be able to dump the ball down to Embiid and let him go to work. When they don’t have either of them, they don’t have the spacing that Curry provides and they don’t have the physical dominance of Embiid in the paint to lean on. In this case, they struggled to get into their sets and they could not run anything cleanly.

Aggressive Ben

This has not been there with Simmons since he returned from his two-game knee injury absence. Even in the first quarter of this one, he was being hesitant not really looking to score and he had some of those bad turnovers. In the second quarter, he went to the basket a lot more scoring nine points, making both of his shots, and he got to the foul line five times knocking down all five of them. Overall, his timing does seem to be a bit off since his return. Other than the first game with the Miami Heat where his aggressiveness was just not there, he has been doing mostly the same things offensively, but he seems a split-second off with his shooting and even his passing. He still put up a stat line normal for his status, but the turnovers were just bit much and he had trouble finishing at the rim.