The Sixers won a game Wednesday that they typically never win, in part thanks to Nick Nurse and his coaching staff.
Down 51-39 to the Miami Heat at halftime in their play-in game Wednesday, the Sixers looked dead in the water. After the Sixers jumped out to a 13-6 lead and drew two early fouls on Bam Adebayo, the Heat predictably began junking the game up by switching to zone, which completely befuddled the Sixers. They finished the first half with more turnovers (11) than assists (eight).
This had all of the makings of a typical Sixers meltdown in the playoffs. Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey combined for 19 points on 5-of-17 shooting in the first half, while the Sixers shot 3-of-18 from three-point range as a team. Miami was only 6-of-20 from deep in the first half, which prevented the Sixers’ deficit from ballooning further, but the Sixers needed to figure out how to crack the zone to get back into the game.
Thanks to a scorching second-half shooting performance from Nicolas Batum and increased aggressiveness from their ball-handlers, the Sixers did just that. Nick Nurse and the Sixers’ coaching staff deserve their flowers for keeping the team together and making sure they didn’t let go of the rope amidst that slow start.
After the game, Nurse pinpointed the difference between how the Sixers approached each half.
“Well, we didn’t do a lot of things that I talked about doing,” he told reporters about the Sixers’ first-half struggles. “The first half, I didn’t think we were moving, cutting, driving, et cetera. And then obviously we started, especially driving the ball in the second half. Just attacking the paint.”
That message was not lost on Maxey, who had more turnovers (three) than assists (two) in the first half. That was a marked departure from the regular season, where Maxey averaged only 1.7 giveaways per game and had the lowest turnover percentage of any player with a usage rate and assist percentage north of 25.
“At the top [of the zone], I was just being passive and passing around,” Maxey told reporters after the game. “But Nurse and Cam Payne and a couple guys on the bench just telling me like, ‘Look, just drive in there and kick it out.’ And it worked a couple times. I drove in there, got a few assists and some guys hit some threes.”
Nurse was more succinct summing up their conversation.
“I was telling him the entire time to make one pass, get it back and put his head down and go and collapse the defense,” he said. “That was huge.”
The Sixers racked up 15 assists and only four turnovers in the second half, which helped fuel their furious rally. Batum’s shooting was the primary catalyst, though. He went 5-of-8 from deep in the second half, including two during an 11-2 run that trimmed Miami’s lead to two. A halftime conversation between Batum and Buddy Hield seemingly led to the drastic turnaround.
“I talked to Buddy a little bit, like, ‘We’re trying to get it to Joel too much,’ and they would be like pretty much all around him,” Batum told reporters. “‘You and I, when we come in, we’ve got to shoot.’ We were wide open, and we were trying to play the game their way. So him and I just tried to find other ways to take the pressure off of Joel and Tyrese.”
The in-game adjustments to solve Miami’s zone was Nurse’s biggest test Wednesday, but that wasn’t the only area in which he and the Sixers’ coaching staff shined.
After Kelly Oubre Jr. put the Sixers up 99-96 courtesy of an and-1 with 36 seconds left, the Heat had a chance for a 2-for-1. Tyler Herro pulled up for a would-be game-tying three-pointer with 26 seconds left, but Batum soared in to tip the shot into the waiting hands of Maxey.
BATUM BLOCK. https://t.co/RlcRuT5mjd pic.twitter.com/neKODfjRcy
— Philadelphia 76ers (@sixers) April 18, 2024
After the game, Batum credited the coaching staff for setting the stage for his late-game heroics.
“Coaches showed me that play on the video literally like a minute before,” Batum said. “We’re expecting that play for them to go around, catch it, go right and shoot it right away. That’s exactly the play they showed me like a minute before, so I was expecting it.”
The playoffs afford teams far more of an opportunity to dial into one another’s tendencies than the 82-game grind of the regular season. Mo Dakhil, who spent eight years on the video staff of the Los Angeles Clippers and San Antonio Spurs, recently distilled at The Athletic how that process typically works.
“A team’s advance scout provides the play call in an Excel spreadsheet with the name and the action being run in that set,” Dakhil wrote. “It also contains the frequency in which the play is run, the amount of success it had and a view of what defense was deployed.”
Based on Batum’s comments after the game, the Sixers had clearly done their homework on the Heat’s pet plays. Knowing what Herro would likely do in that late-game possession helped them lock in defensively and come up with a game-saving stop. They’ll have to do the same against Jalen Brunson and the New York Knicks in the first round of the playoffs. Luckily, Nurse’s experience coaching OG Anunoby in Toronto might give him a head start on preparing for Anunoby’s “sacrificial cuts.”
Nurse also made a pivotal call late in the game against Miami that helped the Sixers slam the door on Butler and Co. After Tobias Harris badly bricked a three-pointer with the Sixers down three and less than five minutes remaining in the game, Nurse opted to close with Oubre in place of him and Kyle Lowry in place of Hield. Both players made key plays down the stretch, including a poke-around steal from Lowry that resulted in a transition three for Embiid.
“I thought Tobias was playing fine, he played a ton of minutes,” Nurse said afterward. ““I thought he was absolutely tired, that was the only reason I made that switch. … I thought Tobias played his guts out for the entire game and just was on E a little bit. And I made the switch back to Kyle from Buddy. I thought Buddy was playing great and gave us a spark too, but I just thought it was that time of the game where Kyle will usually make a play or two, and he did.”
Maxey and Embiid should be locked into the Sixers’ closing lineup, but the other three spots appear to be more up for grabs than anticipated heading into the playoffs. That’s a good thing. Between Batum, Hield, Oubre, Lowry and Harris, the Sixers have five viable candidates for those three spots. Nurse should be open to mixing and matching based on matchups and game flow, and it appears as though he is. That’s especially critical if the Knicks scheme to leave Harris open and he can’t make them pay for it.
None of this is to say that the Sixers will waltz into Madison Square Garden on Saturday and open up a can of whoop-ass. The Knicks are a tough, gritty team built for playoff basketball. The Sixers will have to figure out how to slow down Brunson, how to deal with Anunoby’s game-wrecking defensive ability and how to handle the Knicks’ loaded supporting cast. That won’t be easy.
But with Nurse at the helm, the Sixers should be well-prepared for what Tom Thibodeau and Co. throw at them in this series. This will be Sixers’ fans first chance to witness Nurse’s game-to-game adjustments firsthand, too. Considering the reputation he built in Toronto as a mad scientist during the playoffs, it’s nice to have him on the good side this time.
Unless otherwise noted, all stats via NBA.com, PBPStats, Cleaning the Glass or Basketball Reference. All salary information via Spotrac or RealGM.