James Harden's honeymoon with the Philadelphia 76ers careened to a screeching halt Thursday night against the Brooklyn Nets.
In Ben Simmons' highly anticipated return to Philadelphia, the Sixers put together perhaps their worst game of the season. They shot an abysmal 32.3 percent from the field and got blown out 129-100 despite outscoring the Nets 26-9 from the free-throw line.
After averaging 24.6 points on 53.1 percent shooting, 12.4 assists, 7.6 rebounds and 2.6 three-pointers during his first five games with the Sixers, Harden laid a complete egg against his former team. He finished with only 11 points on 3-of-17 shooting, six rebounds and five assists in 29 minutes while posting a plus/minus rating of minus-30.
Harden told reporters afterward that this game was a much-needed reality check after the Sixers started 5-0 with him in the lineup.
"Tonight was good for us, man," he said. "We got our ass kicked. Since I've been here, everything has been sweet and we've been winning games. And so, tonight was good for us. We get an opportunity to come down to reality, watch film and just continue to get better."
Thursday's loss was the new-look Sixers' first taste of playoff-caliber basketball. The early returns raised some major red flags that they'll need to rectify over the next month.
Harden's Big-Game No-Show
During his eight seasons with the Houston Rockets, Harden averaged 28.4 points, 7.1 assists and 5.7 rebounds in 38.1 minutes per game across 85 playoff contests. However, he's developed the reputation as someone who often fails to show up in critical games.
That might stem from his miserable performance in the 2012 NBA Finals, where he averaged only 12.4 points on 37.5 percent shooting (and 31.8 percent from deep) as the Oklahoma City Thunder's sixth man. He also had only 14 points on 2-of-11 shooting and 12 turnovers in a closeout loss to the Golden State Warriors in the 2015 Western Conference Finals, 10 points on 2-of-11 shooting against the San Antonio Spurs in the 2017 conference semifinals, and a few other duds along the way.
His 3-of-17 performance against Brooklyn on Thursday appeared to be a continuation of that trend. He frequently drove into defenders seeking foul calls and was careless with the ball when those calls didn't come.
"I didn't think we played together tonight," head coach Doc Rivers said after the game. "I thought it was one of those games, a great example of a team that hasn't been together early on, and everybody was gonna try to do it themselves. You could see that early on. I think at one point, it was like 17 to four in assists. They were moving it, we didn't."
As Harden noted afterward, this was only his sixth game in a Sixers uniform. He told reporters that he's "still trying to figure things out." As he plays more alongside his new teammates, he'll develop better chemistry with them, particularly when opposing teams throw extra attention his way.
Harden also doesn't have to do it all in Philadelphia the way he did in Houston. That's the luxury of having an MVP-caliber teammate such as Embiid. But even if he isn't dropping 30-point triple-doubles every night, he needs to play more in control than he did Thursday.
Half-Court Offense Remains A Work In Progress
Since Harden made his Sixers debut against the Minnesota Timberwolves on Feb. 25, the Sixers have been an offensive machine. They averaged 109.3 points per 100 half-court plays, per Cleaning the Glass, which ranked second in the league over that timeframe behind only the Timberwolves.
On Thursday, they had 74.7 points per 100 half-court plays, which ranked in the 6th percentile of all games leaguewide this season.
"We didn't get a rhythm in that first quarter," Harden told reporters after the game. "The ball wasn't moving, we wasn't getting into the paint, we wasn't kicking it out for threes."
The Harden-Embiid pick-and-roll has been largely unstoppable over their first five games together, but the Nets had little trouble stymying it Thursday. They packed the paint, often swarmed those two with multiple defenders and dared the Sixers' supporting cast to beat them.
The Sixers’ defensive struggles only compounded matters. Nearly 23 percent of the Nets' offensive possessions came in transition, per Cleaning the Glass, which ranked in the 96th percentile among all games leaguewide this season. Only 10.2 percent of the Sixers' offensive possessions were in transition, which ranked in the 12th percentile.
The Sixers turned the ball over 18 times—they didn't have more than 14 in any of their first five games with Harden—which allowed the Nets plenty of easy run-out opportunities. It also enabled them to get back and set their half-court defense, which choked off the Sixers' offense.
"We've gotta figure out just our offensive balance of getting out and playing and being free out there," forward Tobias Harris said afterward. "I think obviously, we've had better defensive nights, which has allowed us to get out in transition and kinda not have the defense set up and kinda just have an open court and make passes and play free out there. Tonight, that was a little tough for us."
Free-Throw Hunting Run Amok
The Nets got off to a sizzling offensive start, but the Sixers briefly stayed within striking distance with repeated trips to the charity stripe.
The Sixers drew eight fouls in the first quarter alone, including three each on Bruce Brown and Andre Drummond, and Joel Embiid went 10-of-13 from the free-throw line. They drew eight more in the second quarter and went 11-of-12 collectively on their free-throw attempts.
The Sixers were in the bonus with five minutes left in both the first and second quarters, which allowed them to turn even non-shooting fouls into opportunities for points. With their offense stuck in the mud all night, that was their only prayer of keeping the game close.
However, they got carried away with the foul-hunting at times. They had multiple possessions where they threw up wild shots and hoped for a whistle that never came, allowing the Nets to take off in transition for an easy basket.
Free throws have been the Sixers' lifeblood in the early going of the Harden era. They've had at least 30 free-throw attempts in all six games with Harden thus far. But in the playoffs, referees tend to swallow their whistles and let more contact go.
Embiid and Harden are two of the NBA's most prolific foul-drawers. It's wise to prioritize that as part of their offensive strategy. They just can't rely on that to bail them out every night, especially once the playoffs roll around.
Defensive Red Flags
In time, the Sixers will hammer out most of their offensive concerns. They had scored 120-plus points in each of Harden's first five games before their dud against Brooklyn.
Perimeter defense is the far greater concern when looking ahead to the playoffs. Matisse Thybulle is one of the NBA's best young perimeter defenders, but he and his teammates were powerless to stop Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving and the Nets on Thursday.
Durant finished with an efficient 25 points on 10-of-17 shooting, while Irving added 22 points on 8-of-17 shooting. Seth Curry, whom the Sixers traded to Brooklyn along with Simmons for Harden, had 24 points on 10-of-14 shooting.
Thybulle drew the assignment on Irving to start the game, which left Tyresee Maxey on Curry and Harris on Durant. All three of them struggled to stop their respective matchups, which doesn't bode well for how they'll fare against top perimeter options in the postseason.
When one-on-one defense wasn't enough to slow down the Nets' top options, they started bringing extra help. However, the Nets picked that apart as well.
"I thought we were slow on everything," Rivers said after the game. "I thought our traps were awful, honestly. Like, if you're gonna trap, I didn't think that had any physicality either. I thought they were more physical offensively with the ball versus any trap we had, than we were defensively."
Danny Green missed Thursday's game because of a finger laceration, which didn't help the Sixers' perimeter defense. But he wouldn't solve everything that plagued them against Brooklyn, either.
By swapping out Simmons for Harden, the Sixers were bound to take a step back defensively. In theory, the trade-off should be a far more potent offense.
That wasn't the case in their first real test against Brooklyn. The Sixers now have only one month to get up to speed before the games start to matter.
