I am having a hard time convincing myself that the Sixers are all that much better than the Bucks. Is Embiid better than Greek F? Simmons is probably better than Middleton but not a better scoring option. The Sixers seem to be the hotter team for sure and did have a better record overall than the Bucks but it should be pretty evenly matched I would think.
Game 1 is important. We don't want to give away home court.
The Sixers are a much better team than the Bucks. They have more top end talent (i.e. 2 to 1 on legit stars), they have better role players, and the role players fit much better with their 2 stars. They also have a much better coach. Bret Brown is the one coach left in the East that can legitimately match Stevens on an in game adjustment basis.
I like how you just multiply Giannis x 2 to get Simmons and Embiid as if they're remotely equal and completely dismiss how effective Middleton was. The Bucks played better than the Sixers are playing (and I believe CAN play).
Middleton isn't nearly as good as Simmons or Embiid. The fact that he went off, shouldn't be used as a positive, it should be used as the negative it is.
I really don't care (and neither should you) about your perceived value of Khris Middleton. That's another debate that we could have and I will probably agree with you. Perhaps he's not as good of a player as Simmons and will never replicate this performance ever again. That's not the point. I'm referring to what actually happened. Middleton scored 24.6 ppg shooting 61% from 3pt and 59.8% overall against a stingy defense. And we beat them. And then you try to downplay what we just went up against and beat by citing that the Sixers have better role players (lumping Middleton into the role players bucket by process of not mentioning him) and by claiming that it's a negative (presumably because the Celtics defense was so horrible that even Middleton played great)? It doesn't line up with what we saw. The guy had some open looks, sure (who doesn't?). But he also drilled contested shots over and over again. I think that he was the 2nd best player on either team (if it's not Horford).
I respectfully think that your line of reasoning is disingenuous and that we should retrospectively consider Middleton a star for this particular playoff series.
Middleton has never shot better than 46.7% from the field in any season (his career best TS% is 57.7). The fact that he shot 59.8% (71.7 TS%) doesn't mean he is a world class player, it means that Boston let a guy perform out of his butt. Middleton is a role player. He is a #3 type player at best as he has been his entire career. He is slightly better than someone like JJ Redick (per 36, Redick actually scored more per game than Middleton did this year on a much higher TS% so it isn't as crazy as it may sound at first blush).
The Sixers are a significantly better team than the Bucks.
Both are really good shooters. But Middleton, due to his length, is tougher to defend. And I like JJ Redick, he will give us problems. Redick is probably a better player defensively as well.
Of course the Sixers are a better team. But for some reason we just seem to defend Sixers better than we do the Bucks. We are able to neutralize Embiid and Simmons better than we can Giannis and Middleton. Whether that will remain true with our depleted roster will be answered very shortly.
I spit my drink out.
Look guys, we're entering absurdity here. It doesn't matter how good Middleton is. He played amazing. Superstar level. Moranis has the only point here that could be an actual point: Did the Celtics enable him to play well by playing poor defense? But I just don't buy it. I can certainly remember way more "how is he playing this good?" situations compared to "how are we leaving him wide open?" situations. Same with Giannis. For 6 games he was scoring from everywhere.
I don't know if I'm missing something here or if you guys just didn't watch the games. Giannis and Middleton played better than anything I've seen from Simmons and Embiid. If you want to go down the list of Redick vs Parker and Covington vs Thon Maker, fine, whatever. I don't care enough to argue who's better because all 4 are pretty average to me. But please do not put Middleton's series vs us into the role player bucket and please do not forget that we survived a series against 2 players who played at superstar level. That alone should tell you that we can win this series vs the Sixers.
Easy, Erik. Redick is actually a very good defensive player. Middleton not known to be, although better than his rep.
Is this really true? I feel like when he first came up he was a pretty bad defensive player (and he worked really hard on that end, like he did on his entire game), to become about average. I find it a bit hard to believe that a guy that had slow footspeed to begin with and isn't very athletic to start, is about to turn 34 is considered a very good defensive player by anyone. This take also doesn't seem to jive with what I have read on the sixers sites or even in articles like this
https://thesixersense.com/2017/08/16/philadelphia-76ers-jj-redick-defensive-flaws-covered-up/The Ringer also seems to jive with this:
"His lack of elite size or speed makes his individual defense only passable, but he’s a capable team defender who can fulfill his role in a scheme, execute the game plan and help Brown hold his younger teammates accountable."
https://www.theringer.com/2017/7/1/16040754/2017-nba-free-agency-jj-redick-sixers-deal-8fd59fd73969So again... I agree that this thread has gotten off the rails when people start calling him a "very good defender"
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