Six Thoughts: Sixers Stomped by Thunder as Second-Half Woes Continue

Tyrese Maxey scored 23 of his 28 points in the first half, but the Oklahoma City Thunder upped the ball pressure in the third quarter to send Philadelphia packing.

Here are six thoughts on the game.

MVP-level first half from Maxey

After a brutal closing stretch to Friday's loss in Chicago, Maxey came out and absolutely carried the Sixers to a close affair at halftime. His shooting was diverse, Maxey lining up a deep three off the catch in the first quarter and a second off a high ball screen to give Philadelphia a lead late in the second quarter.

His shooting from the perimeter was mostly a sub-topic under the entire story of his first half. Maxey set the tone for how he wanted Philadelphia to approach the vaunted Thunder. He did not blink at Oklahoma City's size on the interior, attacking the likes of Isaiah Hartenstein and Chet Holmgren head-on.

One of the best ways to try to thwart a player of Maxey's speed and skill is to complicate his driving lanes in a way that forces him to jump off the wrong foot at the rim. Straight runways into the chests of Hartenstein and Holmgren might not hold up as a defensive scheme. When it was clear that Maxey was cooking, the Thunder upped the difficulty, forcing him to gather farther away from the rim and have to step into shots inside with his off foot.

He was totally unfazed by the challenge.

As admirable as his offensive effort was Maxey's engagement on defense. He had three strips to blow up Thunder drives and ruin transition opportunities for OKC. Maxey also blew up a passing lane for an uncontested layup in the frame. It was Maxey who rose above distinguished defenders Lu Dort and Alex Caruso to impact the game in the first quarter.

Adem Bona's best half of the season

After a five-point swing in OKC's favor entirely on Andre Drummond's shoulders, Bona came in and gave Philadelphia exactly what they needed to stay competitive in the first half. He played with a physicality on defense that thwarted Hartenstein on drives. Bona tracked those drives all the way to the rim, pinning the ball off the backboard to send Philadelphia out in transition.

It was a rare game in which Bona's hands were outstanding, and the Sixers desperately needed them to be. He caught and hung onto the ball in traffic, maintaining control for rim-rattling dunks or to earn the foul call. Even as the game got away from the Sixers, Bona brought down a number of rebounds in traffic and kept his footing to stay in bounds.

Wanting more out of Paul George

It's disappointing to see how little the Sixers have done to use George as an offensive weapon until recently. There's probably some push and pull to a former All-Star feeling like he can still have his way in isolation matchups. But Philadephia could do a lot more to explore ways that George could be utilized as a shooting threat off the ball. He lit it up in the second half against Chicago once the Sixers ran him off pin-downs on the wings for catch-and-shoot threes. George got going again in this game when he stopped trying to do everything off the dribble and lined up deep balls off the catch.

His shooting helped keep things stable until the middle of the third quarter, when the game went entirely off the rails for Philadelphia. I don't mind his occasional isolation or self-created shot, but it was so clear very early in the game that George couldn't back anyone on this young Thunder team down, maintain a dribble against ball pressure or create separation for clean looks off the bounce. It took a litlte while for him to shift to a more off-ball role, and it was only then that George started to produce buckets.

It's ultimately on George and Nurse that this is still a tough engine to start. George has to commit to hard sprints off pin-downs, counter moves if he gets top-locked on the pick, cutting back to the rim if he sees an overplay or zig-zagging his way into space. Not everything is going to be an easy curl into an open jumper. But it's also Nick Nurse's job to draw these things up.

The Iverson action (staggered screens along elbows as George cuts from one wing to the opposite) is fine for the purposes of getting George a clean catch. But sometimes there needs to be more structure out of that so that the primary action flows into a secondary action.

A really bad Drummond game

While Drummond stared officials down looking for favorable whistles after contact, the Thunder were off and running with no man hustling to cover up the middle for the Sixers. OKC wanted Drummond in every action, getting him moving toward the basket with Holmgren sneaking behind him. He stepped to the ball all game long, leaving the lob over the top open for the Thunder. The Sixers were outscored by 14 in his 17 minutes of action, and it looked that bad.

Nurse does have to wear some criticism for Drummond being so exposed. Against Chicago, Nurse did a great job of scheming Embiid out of the primary action so that the Bulls couldn't get into the paint so easily. He had no such strategy for the pick-and-roll targeting Drummond.

VJ Edgecombe loses his juice

It never felt like Edgecombe found his aggression going to the cup. He settled for lots of jumpers in this one. To be fair, he had a decent first half of shooting that carried into the second half. But his legs were zapped of juice pretty quickly and it felt like he tried to over-compensate by putting too much upper body into his shot because then he started to miss very long. I wonder if the combination of illness and extended travel caused some fatigue for the rookie.

Wrong game for positive shooting regression

Of course the three-point shooting regressed back to the positive for Philadelphia against this team. If the Sixers had a 17-for-43 shooting night in either of the Nets and Bulls losses, they're not on a three-game losing streak.

How good are the Thunder on twos? They lost the three-point battle by 21 points and still won the game by 25.