The Sixers won an entertaining duel Sunday afternoon in Chicago between Joel Embiid and DeMar DeRozan. NoahLevick of NBCSPhilly has the recap:
The team’s final contest before Thursday’s deadline will be a Tuesday night matchup with the Suns in Philadelphia. Here are observations on their win over Chicago: Embiid was tremendous early on. He made his first five field goals, including a coast-to-coast layup punctuated by a Euro step, and scored 10 of the Sixers’ first 12 points.
One defining trait for Embiid as he’s grown into one of the sport’s best players is how excellent centers appear borderline ordinary when they face him. Vucevic seemed seriously overmatched against Embiid in the first half. He got rolling a bit in the third quarter, though, and ended with 23 points, seven rebounds and five assists.
He ran the Sixers’ offense nicely, getting Embiid touches when the big man was hot. Maxey accepting the chances to take open threes is great, too. Each team will have its own game plans, but we figure opponents might start hedging and blitzing Maxey more regularly in pick-and-rolls if he continues to prove he can take and make pull-up jumpers.
Korkmaz posted nine points in his 17 minutes. The injury-depleted Bulls were not especially deep and only scored 10 bench points on a collective 2-for-14 shooting effort.