In today's newsletter:
- Musings on last night's game.
- The disaster on the glass.
- The Reed/Jordan lineup experiment.
- How the DeAndre Jordan era has started.
- Where the loss leaves the Sixers in the Eastern Conference playoff race.
- Link roundup.
- Details on tonight's game against the Heat.
A lot has changed about the Philadelphia 76ers over the last three years. In fact, pretty much everything has. From the front office to the coaching staff, from the CEO to every player on the roster outside of Joel Embiid, Shake Milton and Furkan Korkmaz. there's almost nothing left of the group that lost to the Toronto Raptors back in 2019.
Yet every now and then you can look up and have the strangest sense of déjà vu.
The Sixers fell to the Toronto Raptors 93-88, despite the Raptors playing without Fred VanVleet (rest) and OG Anunoby (finger). Despite that, it felt like old times, as we sat by and watched as Nick Nurse and his perpetually pesky Toronto Raptors squad found a way to make Joel Embiid's life uncomfortable after the first quarter; as the Sixers once against stood around and watched Toronto pursue every loose ball, perplexed as if they had no ability to stop Toronto's onslaught on the glass; watched a stagnating offense that increasingly became isolation heavy as the game wore on; and watched as the Sixers completely unable to survive even a few minutes without Joel Embiid on the court.
