Embiid, Philly Break Apart Utah’s Defense in a Blowout Win

Utah’s defense had been stingy lately, but struggled to contain Joel Embiid. (Photo via Sixers.com)

The Utah Jazz entered their nationally-televised home date with the Philadelphia 76ers as a dominant defensive team. But on Thursday night, they hardly looked the part.

Behind a meaty 23-and-14 from Joel Embiid, 24 points from sharpshooter JJ Redick, and a triple double from sophomore¹ star Ben Simmons, the Sixers absolutely confounded Utah’s vaunted defense. Those three led a balanced attack that exploded in the middle quarters: Philly outscored its host 73-50 in the second and third on their way to a 114-97 win in Salt Lake City. With the victory, the Sixers also claimed the season series sweep, having edged the Jazz when the teams met on Broad Street in November.

Utah entered the game on an amazing defensive tear. Prior to hosting Embiid and Simmons, the Jazz had played seven straight games (and nine of 11) with a defensive rating that was better than the best defense in the league. They led the league in opponent points per 100 possessions for the first 26 days of December by a wide margin; in fact, the gap between Utah’s 96.9 for that period and the next closest team² was wider than the gap between the second and eighth best December defenses.

In a single evening against Philly, the Jazz gave almost that entire cushion up.

Utah’s defense allowed the Sixers to score 1.46 points per possession in the second quarter and 1.41 in the third.

The Jazz had opened up a 7-point lead entering the second quarter, but that’s where things started to go awry for Quin Snyder’s club. The Jazz D looked mostly helpless as Philly opened the quarter by scoring on nine of their first 10 possessions. The resulted in a 21-14 surge — including eight from Embiid and seven that Redick scored on and-1 plays — that brought Philly even at 43-43.

The next big Philly run started just before halftime. With the score knotted at 50 and less than 90 seconds to play before the break, the Sixers got buckets on each of their final three offensive trips. The Jazz did force four empty possessions to start the third quarter³, but weren’t able to take advantage, going 0-for-3 with a pair of turnovers of their own. And that’s when Philly got back to scoring.

Over the final 10 minutes of the third quarter, Philadelphia had 20 offense possessions and scored an astounding 38 points. 

Philadelphia coach Brett Brown obviously came to town with an astute plan to create fissures in Utah’s elite defense. The idea involved getting Jazz big men Rudy Gobert and Derrick Favors to defense in space, and force Utah’s guards and wings to guard multiple actions. The Jazz often struggle to defend “re-screens,” plays where a big sets a pick for the ball handler and then flips it and sets a screen for the guy to go back in the other direction. The Sixers exploited that weakness.

That’s a relatively simple play on paper: just a drag screen with a dribble hand-off to TJ McConnell’s left, and then when Dante Exum cuts him off by getting through the screen, they set a pick going back to his right. But it gets complicated because the Jazz have different defensive rules for different types of screens. The on-ball defender, the screener’s man, and the three help defenders all have different roles for a perimeter screen to the outside (the first screen) than they do on pick-and-roll farther in for a player going toward the middle. Philly is betting here that if they re-screen, someone on the Jazz will get confused about their role on a play or simply be too far behind their man to impact the play. 

Re-screens for guards frequently discombobulate Utah’s defense because they require bigs to alternate between defensive styles within a split second. Favors and Exum both do a good job on the initial action. Favors gives Exum room to squeeze through so that the latter can cut off the ball. But on the re-screen, Exum is supposed to go over. He makes the correct read here, but it’s a tough angle for him to go over when he was already lower than the level of the screen, and when he gets hung up on the pick, Favors is too far back to bother McConnell’s shot.

And then there were plays like this where Philly sought to stretch out Utah’s bigs.

It’s not very common to see Gobert confused on a defensive play. But the Sixers complicate his job by throwing two simultaneous screens at him that he has to read and navigate. There’s a cross-screen for Embiid to attack the lane, and a pindown for Embiid to pop to the outside. Gobert is more worried about the former, so he hurries to cut off the paint, biting hard on the decoy and leaving Embiid free to waltz into a perimeter shot.

This play works because of a combination of special talent and smart clipboard work. Embiid’s combination of size and skill require a lot of attention from big men who aren’t used to making decisions out in space, much less guarding pindowns. And when you pair those elite tools with a smart play design that makes Gobert unsure exactly what he’s guarding, it’s too easy for Embiid to get comfortable.

Philadelphia also attacked in transition, and rebounded five of their own misses during that stretch. 

The craziest part about that stretch is that the Jazz were scoring plenty themselves. They piled on 27 points during those 10 minutes, and they did so on 50 percent shooting, 5-for-8 from three, and 8-for-10 from the line. But even that wasn’t enough to keep up with a team that was simply red hot. 

In fact, Utah had several strong offensive performances. Donovan Mitchell surpassed his season average with 23, and Gobert added 17 (on just nine shots) to go with 15 boards, five assists and two steals. Exum had his best scoring night of the season, racking up 20 points in his second career game against Simmons, a fellow Aussie and personal friend.

Kyle Korver added 11, albeit somewhat inefficiently: he made just two of seven 3-point attempts. And outside of Mitchell and Gobert, most of Utah’s main guys struggled. Joe Ingles shot 4-for-12 from the field, Favors made just a single bucket on his way to four points, and Jae Crowder came off the bench to make just one of four attempts. But the player who most felt the funk on offense on Thursday was starting guard Ricky Rubio, who shot 1-for-10.

But Utah really didn’t lose the game at that end. For two quarters, the Sixers simply had too easy a time scoring points. That’s atypical for Jazz opponents — especially lately — and Utah will have a chance to get its defense back on track on Saturday, when the Knicks make their lone visit of the year to the Salt Lake Valley.