Sixers observations: Alec Burks’ clutch performance in an overtime win adds some drama to the rotation | David Murphy

What we learned from the Sixers’ 112-104 overtime win over the Nets. . .

When it was revealed the Ben Simmons was likely to miss the game with some lower back tightness, there was an opening for Brown to slide his veteran big man back into the starting lineup. Instead, he kept Tobias Harris at the four next to Embiid and Robinson on the wing, with Raul Neto replacing Simmons at point guard. Brown said at practice on Wednesday that he wanted to use the Sixers’ last 27 games to grow the rotation that he used in the Sixers’ win over the Clippers in their final game before the All-Star Break. His decision to keep Horford out of the starting lineup reinforces that commitment.

The lineup against the Nets also suggests that he likes what he has seen from Robinson with the first unit. Against the Clippers, Furkan Korkmaz got the start, but was replaced by Robinson to start the second half after the Sixers had trouble slowing down L.A. point guard Lou Williams. Brown clearly likes Robinson’s defense better than Korkmaz’s, but he also brings some athleticism to the offense. In his first couple of games with the Sixers, he showed a knack for getting to the rim off the ball, scoring 16 points on 8-of-12 shooting in 24 minutes of action.

But Alec Burks ended up getting the bulk of the minutes that would have been Robinson’s and was on the court along with Neto for the bulk of the crunchtime minutes in the fourth quarter. He got them several critical buckets and got himself to the line for a pair of free throws that cut the Sixers’ deficit to 101-99 with 1:37 remaining. With 3:22 left in overtime, he got to the rim and finished and drew a foul for a three-point play that gave the Sixers a 106-104 lead. This was why the Sixers got Burks, who finished with 19 points in 30 minutes of action.

There are times when you can say that all’s well that ends well. But this was not one of those times. All was not well for a long stretch of this game, and that’s borderline inexcusable for a team with championship aspirations that had a full practice the day before. Championship teams do not get outscored 44-8, and that’s what the Sixers did over one abysmal stretch of the first half. They came out with an intuitive enough gameplan, feeding Joel Embiid the ball and allowing him to go to work over an overmatched Jarrett Allen. When he checked out of the game for his first break, he had 11 points and the Sixers had a 20-4. But by the time he checked in, the lead had dwindled to 24-18, and it would only get worse from there.

What happened? The Nets made a simple adjustment, replacing Allen with DeAndre Jordan, and the Sixers looked like they had no answer. Instead of orienting the offense elsewhere, they spent most of the rest of the first half looking like they were playing 4-on-5.

Granted, things changed in the second half. The Sixers came out with an offense that ran through Tobias Harris and Alec Burks in the middle of the court, with Embiid playing a more complementary role as a screener and popper. By the end of the third quarter, it was a one-possession game. That’s all well and good, but it should not have taken that long.

Even in the final couple of quarters, there were a number of stretches where the Sixers looked content to rely on their individual talent rather than operating with some semblance of a plan. Early in the fourth quarter, Furkan Korkmaz bailed them out with a desperation pull-up three as the shot clock expired. Embiid put the team on his back on a number of different occasions. The Sixers needed him at his best, and that’s what he gave them. He finished with a season-high 39 points and was a monster on the boards and hit a couple of free throws with 35.9 seconds and again with 16.2 seconds remaining, tying the game both times. And as good as he was on offense, Embiid was a complete game-changer on the defensive end, where the Nets had no idea what to do at the rim.

Still, it is impossible to forget that abysmal first-half performance. For a team with the talent that they are alleged to have, the guy on the bench needs to do a much better job of putting that talent in situations where it is most capable of expressing itself.

Neto got the start, but the offense hardly looked like a synchronous whole with him running the show. Brown continues to insist that Josh Richardson is capable of primary ballhandling duties, but Thursday was the latest night where the evidence did not appear to be in his favor. Richardson isn’t a great passer, doesn’t often win the point of attack off the dribble, and is more comfortable navigating the high paint than he is getting to the final level of the defense and making things happen at the rim. In the end, the Sixers were saved by Burks, who got them a couple of timely buckets off the pick-and-roll in the second half and in isolation in overtime.

At one point in the first half, the veteran big man was a minus-26. With Simmons sidelined, there wasn’t much to glean from the way Brown shuttled his subs in and out. But the Horford conundrum is not going away. He played just 18 minutes, and the Sixers were outscored by 26 points during his time on the court.