Six Thoughts: Sixers Start Long Trip with Meltdown in Chicago

The Sixers held a four-point lead with less than five minutes to play in the fourth quarter. They were then outscored 13-2 to end the game, suffering a bad loss in meltdown fashion to open a long road trip.

Here are six thoughts on the game.

Dominick Barlow, strengthened by illness

Barlow will always have the uneviable task of doing all the little things that most stars will excuse themselves from doing. It is an even more undesirable role, at least from the eyes of those not doing it, when you're comin off an illness. Credit to the hungry youngster for coming back from whatever plagued him and immediately impacting the game on both ends.

He had the motor to use physicality on offense and then get back on defense to factor into the strategy after Chicago went on a 39-17 extended run.

Barlow was on the Sixers' glass all first half, amassing three offensive rebounds before intermission. His efforts at the rim gave Philadelphia high-quality second-shot offense because he wasted no time going back up with the ball. Barlow boxed out smaller guys, out-muscling the Bull in his way to come down with the ball, and snuck into the picture when Chicago got caught watching.

On the defensive end of the floor, Nick Nurse put Barlow right into the thick of the action, opting for Joel Embiid to guard the likes of Isaac Okoro and Matas Buzelis so that Barlow and Paul George could switch on ball screens and stop dribble penetration.

Embiid fights through it

It is clear that Embiid can still be a highly valuable offensive force, even with his compromised knees. The defense is problematic, and the Bulls preyed on that. Embiid has been a drop-coverage big forever. The knee injuries didn't introduce that as the only passable defensive scheme for him. But Chicago used the pockets of space between the pick and the dropped Embiid to wreak havoc on the Sixers' defense in the first half. Some of it was Embiid's fault. His effort to recover when beat left something to be desired.

But Embiid fell to the floor with a yelp on what appeared to be a non-contact play. After a few possessions of jogging it off, he was able to stay in the game.

Embiid continued the rhythm he built before the knee flared up, using his strength to force his way to the rim when he could make a clean dribble move into the paint. He grifted his way to a supply of free throws and even found the power for a couple of threes.

Embiid amassed 27 points in 25 minutes of action through three quarters. At this point, there is no question as to whether Embiid is still capable of dominating on offense. It's a matter of how his body responds to heavier workload and how resistant he can be to the discomfort that comes and goes.

That Embiid has been able to fight through some shaky moments in each of the last two games and return to his forceful ways is exactly what progress has to look like at this point in the season if the Sixers have designs of making the most of their talents in the postseason.

The calendar is about to flip to a new year. Embiid and Philadelphia have to start moving away from being overly conservative with managing his health so that he can build conditioning and resistance for when the standings start to really matter and the playoffs arrive.

Consider the last two outings steps in the right direction.

Back to the 39-17 run for a moment

The Sixers looked like they were going to earn themselves an absolute rippig for their defensive effort after starting the game on a 13-2 run. They practically helped the Bulls build a rhythm on offense, too slow to get out to contest on early threes by Nikola Vucevic, Matas Buzelis and and Josh Giddey. They capped off that series of allowed threes by failing to get back on defense, permitting Zach Collins to slip down the court and force VJ Edgecombe to commit a weak foul on a made layup.

There was a miscommunication on a screen that allowed Giddey to nail Collins rolling to the rim for an easy score with no Sixer in position to disrupt. The transition, as it often is with this team, lacked just as much pride as the halfcourt defense did. You can't let guys back-cut you for layups off of misses or turnovers.

Some of that was the scheme exposing Embiid's limitations. A lot of it was Philadelphia not even forcing the Bulls to attack their chests. They let Chicago get around them for drives with no rotations on the weak side to help curb the penetration.

The Sixers stabilized the game only after Nurse hid Embiid outside of the action, limiting penetration by having Barlow and George switch instead of chasing through screens.

Nurse's critical mistake

The good the head coach did with his defensive adjustment didn't save him from himself when he took Barlow out for Quentin Grimes with about five minutes remaining in regulation. It made the Sixers smaller, ostensibly spreading the Bulls out on defense with more shooting on the floor. Of course, that doesn't much matter when Grimes has two points all night and is shooting just 36 percent from three on the season.

That is not to say that the Sixers would've definitely won if Barlow had stayed in the game. But there was a Bulls possession that ended with a layup after multiple offensive rebounds in the final minute of the game. When the opportunity cost of Barlow is Grimes, it's difficult to excuse.

A weird night for Tyrese Maxey

Maxey was well on his way to sharing a 30-point night with Embiid until the late stages of the fourth quarter. His decision-making and touch disintegrated in crunch time, a pretty unusual occurrence for the star guard. He was exceptionally wide on a three off a pin-down, bricking the ball off the backboard and into Chicago's possession. He missed on a couple of complex attempts at the rim. It looked like he abandoned the floaters that have made him an absolute killer for most of this season. He settled for difficult, contested layups instead. The game had already flipped in Chicago's favor, but the Sixers called Maxey's number when they lost the lead and he had nothing.

The Embiid-Maxey two-man game comes and goes

If you've noticed the Sixers' offense being reduced to Embiid being the fulcrum of everything when he's on the court, you're not alone. It's passable when he's in a groove, and he was on Friday. But I can't say Embiid and Maxey are working in concert all that often right now. Their two-man chemistry fades in and out, with Maxey deferring to Embiid quite a bit.

Embiid can't play that style and then decide it's Maxey's time as the game gets close to the finish line. Aside from a beautiful cut for a layup off of an Embiid bounce pass, Maxey was hung out to dry down the stretch. Embiid looked to him to make things happen after much of the offense ran through the big man when they shared the floor.