Jaylen Brown, Tyrese Maxey lead Sixers to narrow win over Bulls

Jaylen Brown scored a team-leading 29 points to go with 27 points for Tyrese Maxey, leading the Sixers to a 127-121 victory over the Chicago Bulls. Philadelphia moves to 9-2 on the season despite a fairly pedestrian performance to close out their three-game road trip.

Here’s what I saw.

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The Sixers looked like a team ready to give one away in the first quarter at Chicago, making a ton of avoidable mistakes as the Bulls raced out to an early lead. Tyrese Maxey played some of his worst and most undisciplined defense of the season, conceding back cuts and open corner threes with his gambling; LeBron James threw the ball away multiple times to squander transition opportunities; and Joel Embiid was shockingly poor on offense, completely out of sorts with his jumper. Chicago’s up-tempo approach took advantage of those facts, with the Sixers barely escaping the first quarter with a one-point lead.

The biggest thing that changed in the second was LeBron, who played with an edge when he checked back in for his second shift of the game. There was not much more to it than grown man hoops, with the wily old veteran challenging young and thin players like Noa Essengue to try to stop him from touching the paint. Mission unsuccessful — LeBron would score an and-one layup through contact, draw two more free throws, and then transfer that success to the perimeter, nailing a trail three around the midway point of the second. He capped off a brilliant individual run with a teardrop in the lane, building the Sixers a comfortable lead with Embiid on the bench.

The three younger stars are, mercifully, doing what they need to drive this team on offense. Tyrese Maxey had one of his easier high-scoring games of the year, picking the Bulls apart in transition and second-side situations for easy bucket after easy bucket. With the offense mostly running through the others in half-court possessions, it was awesome seeing how outsized an impact he can have as a play finisher and roaming threat, with Maxey scoring on everything from straight-line drives against closeouts, spot-ups out of Embiid post-ups, and pull-up jumpers out of DHOs.

VJ Edgecombe has not made the progress we were hoping for as a halfcourt creator and finisher early this season, but the good news is that his jumper has come around in a big way after a pair of game-clinching shots against the Knicks and Hornets. Sunday was another crisp night for him from deep, and if he does nothing else except reliably space the floor and crush teams in transition, he will have done what is required of him on offense for this version of the Sixers. On the latter front, hoo boy, this was nice:

And Jaylen Brown, as he does, offered another “easy” game with close to 30 points, crushing the Bulls from the midrange in another classic iso bag game for their star wing. Giving Brown the ball and letting him work was as good an option as they had all night, and he chipped away at other problems along the way, pulling down seven rebounds to go with four assists and a very complete box score.

On the negative side of the ledger, we are officially in problem territory for Joel Embiid on offense, which is hard to believe for a guy with his resume and skill set. He has talked about the trouble of building a rhythm in their star-heavy lineup, but I am worried about the mechanical breakdowns and his overall comfort level more than how many shots he can or can’t get up. Embiid’s shots in rhythm still look reasonably close to his peak jumper, but he is fighting it whenever he hesitates to let it go, and the three-point shot has been bad for so long that he didn’t even think to shoot on multiple wide-open opportunities from the perimeter on Sunday. The Bulls also blocked multiple Embiid shot attempts at the rim, with the big man failing to judge how much space he had or create proper separation to score over the smaller Chicago frontcourt.

(That said: Embiid did a great job of hitting cutters when players moved off ball for him and had some good bully ball moments on the offensive glass, overpowering smaller Bulls for second-chance points. If he can iron out the jumper, the ingredients for dominant two-way impact are there.)

The duality of relying on Jabari Walker at center was on full display Sunday. Walker was a critical ingredient in their turnaround, offering a huge burst of energy on the offensive glass to create extra possessions. His eight rebounds (four offensive) at halftime didn’t even capture the extent of his impact, with Walker drawing multiple fouls on pure effort and positioning. Walker was also robbed of a beautiful assist when Tyrese Maxey smoked a layup on a bounce pass that the forward threaded through traffic.

But playing Walker at center means you need to be a little more careful about how you construct lineups, which was not the case for Nick Nurse on Sunday. Right as it looked like the Sixers might pull away from Chicago, Philly went to a lineup with Walker at center and three guards (Maxey, Simons, and VJ) at the 1-3 spots in the lineup. There’s basically no way to defend and rebound out of those looks, and the Bulls cut the lead back down to six points heading into the final period.

It is an indictment of the Sixers’ offensive process and their apathetic approach to defense that they were never able to pull away and put their feet up down the stretch. They are overqualified to win through isolation battles with all of this talent, but their average possession has a higher degree of difficulty than is necessary, with teams shrinking the floor and offering help from all angles to encourage kickouts. And the defense was honestly even worse on Sunday, the Bulls backcutting Philly to death as the Sixers mostly stayed asleep off-ball.

You could argue that all of these close wins are good reps that will serve them well down the line, and you don’t apologize for another win, but this one felt like they just had too much talent for Chicago to overcome. What will win out over time — their huge talent advantage, or the cracks showing in their system and approach? That remains to be seen.

Other notes

— If Tacko Fall is not going to dress for a game with Adem Bona out of the lineup, I simply do not understand why he has a two-way spot. Get someone you think can play center or

— Josh Giddey’s direct pass to referee Tyler Ford in the short corner was probably the funniest moment of the season so far. Could watch the replay 100 times and not get tired of it.

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