referenced one of his old teammates, Taurean Prince<\/a>, trying to hammer home that sometimes it\u2019s as simple as going up and getting it.<\/p>\n\u201cThe ball goes up in the air,\u201d James said, \u201cand you go grab it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both Maxey and James know the Sixers need to do more than just that. So does Nick Nurse, who\u2019s trying to find ways for this team to finish possessions with the guys he has available.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll five guys got to rebound. I just look at the numbers there and the defensive rebounding, just across the board, no matter position, just aren\u2019t good enough,\u201d Nurse said after the game, \u201cso, everybody\u2019s got to chip in with a few more.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even when Walker and Barlow are back, the only true center on the roster on nights Embiid will miss is Adem Bona, a springy center who\u2019s struggled as a rebounder. In his best performance of the season, Bona had 13 rebounds in 25 minutes of play, but still let some crucial boards slip through his fingers, including two on one possession that led to Daniss Jenkins hitting the dagger three that put the game away.<\/p>\n
Both Bona and Maxey stressed that the Sixers need to do a better job of finding their man and boxing out, regardless of position.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe just got to hit, box out, try to fight, you got to figure it out,\u201d Maxey said. \u201cThe ball comes off the rim, you gotta do whatever you gotta do to get that rebound.\u201d<\/p>\n
On top of the attention to the matchups, Bona believes that more Sixers crashing the glass on the offensive end will help even things out.<\/p>\n
\u201cOffensively, we got to rebound as a team. Sometimes we just have one guy going or we have two,\u201d Bona said. \u201cObviously, we have to worry about fast breaks, getting back, but at the same time we also got to focus a little more on offensive rebounding.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an area of the game the Sixers will have to put more attention to, but for the time being, they\u2019re in a tough spot to grab boards, personnel wise. They\u2019ve been relying on LeBron to fill in center minutes so far, but they know that\u2019s not a long-term solution.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t see it being a sustainable role,\u201d James said, \u201cbut it\u2019s a role we know that we can tap into if we need it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The end of the bench has really been depleted by injuries a week into the season \u2014 there\u2019s not much they can do about that.The only legitimate criticism of the roster construction at the moment is the aforementioned use of the two-way on Fall. As tall as he is at 7-foot-6, Fall proved to not be a rotation player in his first stint in the NBA. Relying on a guy who was never a rotation-caliber player, hasn\u2019t played in the NBA in four years, and also missed all of training camp and preseason with an injury to provide the help the team needs feels \u2026. ambitious, to say the least.<\/p>\n
The Sixers obviously aren\u2019t going to achieve the goals they desire without Embiid in the lineup when the games matter. They do have to figure out how they\u2019re going to eat those innings in the time it takes getting there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Sixers knew they\u2019d have to be a better rebounding team than they have in recent seasons. After…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":941819,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,107314,85],"class_list":["post-941818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nba","tag-sixers-analysis","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=941818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941818\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/941819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=941818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=941818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=941818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}