On Friday night, the 76ers pulled away from the Eagles in Ben Simmons’ excellent third quarter, defeated the Eagles by a score of 127-111 in the third game, and regained the home court from the Eagles. Advantage. Joel Embiid once again led the 76ers with 27 points, and contributed 9 rebounds and 8 assists to bring another extraordinary night to an end.

This is what I saw.

Ok

• Simmons played some of his most annoying basketball in the first half of the season, and he actively avoided scoring opportunities in wild passes late in shooting time. The 76ers did not leave him, but at the beginning of the third quarter almost all offense went through him. Boy, did it turn out to be a good decision?

With the Eagles choosing to cover him in the low singles, Simmons began to work hard in a way that few players in the league could do. As long as they put their feet in the wrong direction, they would kill Atlanta. Help starts to hit him, please pay attention, because Simmons is strong at the basket and is not afraid of contact, forcing the Eagles to live with people like John Collins in space to defend him.

Facts have proved that this is not a productive pairing for the Hawks. Danilo Gallinari’s situation hasn’t gotten worse, and Atlanta is focusing more on Simmons, which provides the 76ers with the opportunity to use Embiid to be creative without the ball:

(To be honest, not long before this happened, Embiid came to catch the ball after a knee problem. I was scared, but it was still great to see these two connect on the high ball.)

Frankly speaking, we saw the best Embiid/Simmons combination of the year in the third game, but unfortunately, there are still some opportunities on the table. Atlanta has invested a double or even three team in Embiid’s direction. Compared with some of the problems he encountered in the regular season, Embiid often cut Simmons on Friday night. They did not earn points, but the seeds of success are there.

To say that this version of Simmons is always inaccurate in his heart, because he does not always get as friendly counterpoint as this version. It is reasonable to ask him to divide Danilo Gallinari, and the 76ers are commendable for returning to that form.

A final word about Simmons: I think it is ultimately difficult to quantify his defensive impact on Treyang and this series. After the first game, Yang’s data dropped sharply, but if the ball left him, Yang seemed to have no interest in trying to get it back. Simmons asked him to work hard for everything he got, and it seemed to add up.

• In the third game against Embiid, Atlanta took a very different approach, sending him a wave of defensive players time and time again, forcing the 76ers to do anything except their franchise center Win. Unsurprisingly, the man who came forward in the first half was 76ers forward Tobias Harris. This is what he has been doing throughout the season. He took his game to another level in the playoffs.

With Atlanta being knocked down on the flank and short stature, Harris was able to basically get any matchup he wanted in a game with the Hawks, resulting in many shots. Look Tough on paper, but in the end it was only Harris’s shots against small players. After he defeated Hachimura Rui’s series with his core strength, Harris is doing the same with the set of players the Hawks used to test him, dominating the low- and mid-post areas where he has opened many of these positions. season.

Harris also came up with some great performances in transitional defense in the first half, which is a sore spot for Philadelphia throughout the year. Due to a series of terrible mistakes by the two teams, the game was plunged into crazy chaos, and Friday night’s conversion promise was more important than ever.

Harris’s performance is almost perfect. He not only performed well in the regular season, but also took his game to a new level in these playoffs. He is the highest-scoring option, then he is the organizer, then he is the leader on the defensive end, and he is equally happy and efficient in every role.

• This is not the hot performance of the second game, or even the night of his high score in the first loss. But this is Embiid’s mature and elegant performance on both ends of the court. He responded to the game in front of him instead of trying to pass the ball heroically through positive reports. Dominance takes different forms, and Embiid continues to play absolutely sensational basketball when they need him most.

Embiid talked many times during the year how the increased trust in his teammates had an impact on his own game. The result of the offseason lineup adjustment is now clearly watching him-Embiid is passing the ball from the low post, face up, opening the offense for a group of teammates who rely on him. This didn’t weaken his dominance in the low post, it just strengthened it, forcing defenders to guess what he would do to slow the 76ers’ offense.

The scary thing is that Embiid’s defensive end on the court is at least as good or even better. Even when the Eagles were shooting at the rim, Embiid forced the player to use absurd arcs and shoot from an unorthodox angle to simply go around his arm to the basket. Bogdan Bogdanovic had to make a layup at the top of the rebound in the first quarter. This performance strangely represents Embiid’s dominance.

In 100% health, it is difficult to cover the current field like Embiid, and his meniscus is torn. He played the best pick-and-roll basketball of his career on both ends of the offense and defense, adding another layer to his game that many people have never thought of.

If the 76ers didn’t tell you or me that he was injured in this series, the only thing you can guess is his grimace and painful moments. But they won’t last long, and before you realize it, Embiid threw away some poor souls on his way to the layup. He is the biggest and worst guy on the court, and he plays like this:

It’s hard to tell this person now, whether he is a walking bait or a solo team destroying team in a personal game.No matter what problems he encountered in the playoffs, he came up with a way Put on his Roddy Piper. The Hawks can’t defend him without fouling, and if they can’t figure this out, they will die soon.

• The highlight of the first quarter is not Embiid, Harris or Simmons, but…Fulcan Corkmaz? In a game that could be described as chaotic at best, Korkmaz immediately gave the 76ers a shot on the offensive end, and when everyone else was trying to complete the basic pass to his teammates, he became hot.

Corkmaz showed something in the first quarter, was hit by Tre Young for a layup, made some static shots from the corner, and made a three-pointer from the screen on the breakthrough, hitting a lot of people’s Shooting moves in the Doc Rivers era, he thought it would make him a coveted rotation player.

For Korkmaz, it was an ups and downs season, but he performed well against the 76ers in Game 3, and his performance paid off in the second half of the game in the absence of Danny Green. The mentality of the next person has been the key to their success throughout the season, and Korkmaz is the personification of Friday.

• It turns out that for the 76ers, finding Young is a bit trickier than expected, mainly because the Hawks only put him on the corner shooter. The 76ers often want to keep playing when Embiid backs up. still. There is a silver lining for Green to leave the game early-the 76ers have many teams with no fixed players on the bench, and they use this fact to target Young’s inability to defend.

The 76ers used some good old-fashioned pick-and-roll offenses, taking advantage of Young’s inability to fight through contact in the middle of the second quarter. Harris and Shaq Milton both saw sunlight around the corner. The result of possession is quite different-Harris found Dwight Howard at the basket to score, and Milton pulled down a three-pointer to block him and the rim after Young’s overcorrection. But no matter what they try to do, they are equally effective, ultimately profiting in the matchups that we focused on even before the series began.

• In these playoffs, Seth Curry can barely play on the defensive end at times, which is basically irrelevant because of how indispensable he is on the offensive end. He has been the glue for this team all year. He shoots from deep in the playoffs, which is almost the most important for him.

• Thank them for the vast majority of benches and rotations they provided on Friday night. Matisse Sebull performed well in the first few minutes of defense. Tyrese Maxi caused some damage on offense. When Atlanta became small, Howard was a powerful lob threat, and Milton seemed to have recovered. After his excellent performance, it was not surprising that he was the second game of his career.

We (or should I say me?) have been killing off the bench for most of this season, and the starters of course also lead the team, but everyone pushed them to the top seed and scored 2 in this regard. 1 Leading series. Home court advantage was taken back.

bad

• George Hill was introduced before the deadline to bring stability and a two-way play to the 76ers’ second team. We saw this in the regular season. But he has not yet appeared in the second round of the game. In the first half of the third game, he actively caused damage, while being boiled by Lu Williams, while coughing up the ball in a dazzling way.

If Hill just lacks open shots, it is easy to get through those bad games and keep him in the rotation. But he didn’t look like the cunning veteran who was now planning to stabilize the second force. I think he has a long enough record to bet on his recovery, but as the playoffs progress, the 76ers may have to pay close attention to him.

ugly

• Green limped back to the locker room early and eventually ruled out the remaining time of the third game before the end of the first quarter. This is not a good sign for a person’s future availability, especially a 30-year-old veteran with a lot of mileage on the odometer.

So far, Green has been disadvantageous to Philadelphia, which is an important reason why Young was able to win the first game in Atlanta. But losing him will have a huge potential impact on their playoff experience, on-court space and overall intelligence on the court, even if these did not appear too much in the opening phase of this series. He has been one of their most reliable players throughout the season, and if he can’t go, they will have to turn to a bunch of unstable substitute players.

(Bad news: Someone spotted Green in the arena wearing walking boots on Friday night. This does not seem to be a good sign.)

• The NBA will have to legislate to ban some drama performances in the game or stop rewarding them, because some of the calls Yang received in this series are absolutely absurd. It’s silly to throw your body back onto a lagging defender and be rewarded for it.

What needs to be clear is that if they do, the 76ers will be affected. Embiid is one of the best salesmen in the league. But when I watch these games, I want to see more basketball and fewer performances.

• When seeing Embiid hugging his knee in the third quarter, the Hawks fans will definitely cheer, and if the roles are reversed, this will make headlines.Then it happened once again When Embiid fell sharply midway through the fourth quarter. What a shame.

• For the sake of God, Joel, learn when to calm down and protect yourself. I think most people in the area can no longer stand watching you fall to the ground.

Follow Kyle on Twitter: @Kyle newback