The Heat used a simple defense to expose the 76ers' awkward roster construction, and Joel Embiid didn't sound happy

After the game, Joel Embiid sounded frustrated with his role, bemoaning a lack of touches and how the team executed their game plan.
Offensive struggles were expected of the Sixers, but through a third of the season, there are still growing pains that teams will take advantage of after seeing Miami's success on Wednesday.
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The Philadelphia 76ers entered the 2019-20 NBA season with major questions about their offense, and through 29 games, there haven't been many answers.

The 76ers used their offseason to double-up on size, defense, and Joel Embiid insurance by letting go of Jimmy Butler and J.J. Redick, then signing Al Horford and trading for Josh Richardson. The result: a big, long defensive juggernaut that, on paper, wasn't much of a natural fit on offense.

On Wednesday, the Miami Heat exploited the Sixers' unusual construction (by modern NBA standards) during a wild 108-104 win. After the Heat fell behind by as many as 12, they went to a zone defense and dared the Sixers to beat them with their shooting.

It worked.

According to Second Spectrum, the Heat played a zone defense on 39 possessions on Wednesday, more than any other team has played this season. When the Heat went to the zone in the second quarter, it helped spark a 37-19 quarter that put the Heat back in front.

According to ESPN , on the 59 possessions the Heat played man-to-man defense, the 76ers shot 45% from the field. The Sixers shot 42% for the entire game, meaning the zone helped stifle the Sixers offense.

To beat a zone, a team must make outside shots, get into the teeth of the defense, or get the ball to the high or low posts. After the game, Sixers guard Josh Richardson said as much.

"You just got to move the ball, you got to get the ball to the high post, low post, and play inside out, or you just got to drive it," Richardson said (via Philly Voice's Kyle Neubeck). "You can't just stand there with the ball over your head."

When the Sixers did this, they beat the zone.

Tobias Harris got into the high post area, in the soft spot of the zone, and took advantage.

The latter isn't the type of high-quality shot that modern teams build their offenses around, but it's a good open look that the defense left open.

Other times, however, Philadelphia settled for three-pointers without ever getting into the lane (all while Embiid called for the ball in the same high post area that Harris had exploited).

Other possessions saw the same "east-west" movements until the Sixers finally got the ball to Embiid, who didn't have the spacing or time to get off a good look.

The Sixers were down by 16 with a little under eight minutes left to go before they scrambled to get back in the game. They ultimately came up short, however, with a game-ending possession surely everyone would like back.

After the Heat missed two free throws to ice the game, the Sixers rebounded the ball, down two, out of timeouts, with 12 seconds left on the clock. Ben Simmons went the length of the floor but was stopped on a drive by Kendrick Nunn. Simmons then kicked the ball out to a semi-open Horford (a 34% three-point shooter), who missed the go-ahead three. Game over.

On Thursday, ESPN's Jay Williams criticized the game-ending play on "Get Up."

"You want Ben Simmons to look at the rim. Take that shot," Williams said. "Even if you can't figure out what defense they're in, you're 6-10. Punish little Kendrick Nunn. Put him in the blender. Take him down low to the block ... I also want Joel Embiid to run his tail down the floor and post up and stop settling for threes and be the dominant low post threat that we know you always are."

After the game, Embiid sounded frustrated about the Sixers' execution and his involvement in the offense.

"[The zone] was on the scouting report, we weren't aggressive enough," Embiid said (via Neubeck). "In the first half, I don't even remember myself being in any action or getting the ball, so they kind of I mean it was in the scouting report, we knew they were going to do it, we were prepared for it, I guess we didn't act on it or do what we talked about."

Embiid said of the Sixers' late rally: "I feel like in the fourth quarter, I was a little bit aggressive, and my teammates found me. In the first half, that wasn't the case. We have to do a better job at being locked in from the beginning."

Before Philadelphia's late rally, Embiid had just 12 points on 4-of-11 shooting. He finished the night with 22 points on 8-of-19 shooting, much of the production coming in the final minutes.

joel embiid 1 Mitchell Leff/Getty Images

This is the symptom of awkward roster construction a big team with little spacing, whose anchors are a 6-foot-10 point guard who doesn't shoot and a 7-foot center who can dominate in the post but can't reliably spread the floor.

The Sixers rank 14th in the league in offensive rating and their dominant defense has allowed them to outscore opponents by wide margins. Yet at 20-9, there's room to grow. The Sixers still had a chance to win on Thursday, despite some of their ugly offensive struggles a sign of their talent and a large margin for victory. But expect other good teams to test the Sixers as the Heat did. Philadelphia still has some work to do figuring out how to best utilize pieces that fit on one end, but maybe not the other.

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