Nov 5, 2025; Cleveland, Ohio, USA; Cleveland Cavaliers guard Donovan Mitchell (45) drives to the basket beside Philadelphia 76ers center Andre Drummond (1) in the fourth quarter at Rocket Arena. Mandatory Credit: David Richard-Imagn Images
The Sixers fought hard but ultimately succumbed to being several players short against the rested Cleveland Cavaliers on Wednesday. Guess they should've won on Tuesday!
Here are some storylines from Philadelphia's second consecutive loss.
The Sixers' perpetual problem behind Embiid is probably just simple economics at this point. Not financial economics, mind you. Rather, a matter of supply and demand.
There are a finite number of humans that stand 6-foot-10 or taller. A fraction of those are in the NBA. The ones that have good hands, rebounding instincts and the agility to guard in space graduate from backup to primary. Backup bigs remain backup bigs because they are fundamentally flawed in a way that has limited upside for improvement.
Perhaps the only way to uncover a big with fewer warts than most is to draft one.
The Sixers have invested a second-round pick in Adem Bona. They are also living out the two-year deal they gave Andre Drummond — for now. Nick Nurse should receive some credit for giving Bona a strong chance to win the job behind Embiid to start this season.
But it's pretty obvious that Bona has too many warts to be Embiid's consistent reliever.
His hands are quite bad. Bona chases blocks at the expense of rebounding position. His only offensive skills are crashing hard for dunks, catching the ball high and jumping through the ceiling.
Even when Bona stepped out to the perimeter in this game, he leaned too heavily toward protecting the drive and was thus late to contest jumpers. The one thing he must do to stay ahead of Drummond is guard in space.
Speaking of Drummond, that he's not consistently beating Bona to the job says just as much about him. He's never been one to guard in space. His days of rim protection are in the mirror. Drummond can't rise with the trees unless he gets some momentum moving toward the basket.
The one thing he is doing better as of now than he was last season is rebounding the basketball. That is the reason to play him over Bona because his hands on offense aren't much better.
But right now, the Sixers are picking their poison on a minute-to-minute basis. We've seen this movie enough times to know that perhaps a great backup center doesn't exist. Perhaps the answer is to hope that you can find two competent-enough bigs to cobble together survivable minutes by committee.
Jabari Walker has been bad enough to where Watford is probably worthy of stepping into the starting lineup after just three games. His bargaining chip is that he's the only guy with real forward size currently active.
While Walker is still patiently waiting for his first three to fall, he continually fumbles the ball on drives. His confidence is clearly low.
How do I know that?
In this game, he passed out of a drive...to Bona...for a corner three.
He'd rather make a bad decision than be saddled with a bad outcome on a possession.
Back to Watford. His feel for the game, especially at his size, has been a tremendous breath of fresh air for this group. Nick Nurse has been huge on "safely transferring the basketball" early in this season. Watford does that on almost every touch. Whether it's a DHO with Tyrese Maxey, a dump-off pass in the paint or a swing out to the perimeter, Watford is connecting the floor and making things happen on offense.
One of the best outcomes of the summer will likely be that Daryl Morey did not cave to giving Quentin Grimes a contract in excess of $20 million per year.
He's had some really good stretches early in this season. His instinct is to pull the trigger whenever there's chaos. With that instinct comes bouts of rough decisions, and it was a rough back-to-back for Grimes.
He profiles as a sixth man — blistering hot when he's hot, and maybe bordering on harmful when he's cold.
Don't let the box score fool you, Grimes was not much of a help while this game was still up for grabs.
It was obvious from the opening minutes of the game. His three was short and he tried to overcompensate by misallocating energy up through his shooting motion. He wasn't close on his deep ball all night and Edgecombe's midrange jumper was nowhere to be found.
Defenses are starting to subtly key on him. Cleveland showed a bunch of size with helpers when Edgecombe attacked the rim. He got blocked a couple of times on Wednesday and was treated to a rookie whistle.
He looked like a rookie worn down by a heavy minute load.
