Philadelphia 76ers: Matisse Thybulle needs to be seen to be believed

In the NBA, you can pretty accurately tell how a player is performing by looking at their stat line.

Sure, you lose some of the subtle nuances of an individual’s game, as well as how they perform when the ball isn’t in their hands, but as a general rule, if a player is stuffing the stat sheet with huge numbers at a few spots or good numbers across the board, it typically serves as a good representation of their on-court efforts.

Heck, some fantasy basketball GMs may never even watch a game with one of their players and only know how well they’re playing based on how many points they generate in any given contest/week – for better or worse.

But sometimes, every once in a while, a player comes along who transcends the traditional stat line that has graced newspaper pages for decades. Sometimes a player is so consistently dominant at the nuanced aspects of the game that only advanced analytics and the “eye test” can really quantify his impact. Despite only having 121 professional games and counting with the Philadelphia 76ers under his belt – 124 if you count the playoffs – Matisse Thybulle appears to be one of those defensive albatrosses.

Matisse Thybulle’s game has to be seen to be believed, Philadelphia 76ers fans.

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Matisse Thybulle’s fourth and final run with the Washington Huskies will surely go down as one of the most statistically analogous seasons in NCAA history.

In only 31.1 minutes of action – down from the season prior – Thybulle averaged 9.1 points, 3.1 rebounds, 2.3 blocks, and an incredible 3.5 steals per game, all the while draining 30.5 percent of his 4.2 shots from beyond the arc per game. Thybulle’s 126 total steals was the 10th most of any player in NCAA history over a single season, and his 331 total steals ranked 18th overall behind such household names as Jacob Gilyard, John Linehan, and Eric Murdock.

Now to some, Thybulle’s keen eye for disrupting passes and innate ability to knock down shots in the air were easily written off as byproducts of playing in Mike Hopkins‘ notorious 2-3 defense, but those gripes quickly fell by the wayside once he took his talents to the NBA, as the noodle-armed coverage specialist has remained every bit as effective on the ball and off it regardless of what defensive scheme he was deployed in.

Measuring in at 6-foot-6, 201 pounds with a reported 7-foot wingspan, Thybulle is nimble enough to cover either guard position, while simultaneously being able to match up onto most forwards without skipping a beat due to his dunkable hops and incredible length. He can stick with his guy in man, switch effortlessly around the arc, and even muck it up in the pair where he pulls in an average of 1.5 rebounds a game.

Through the first two periods of the Philadelphia 76ers’ 2020-21 NBA season, Thybulle is averaging the most steals-per-minute of any qualifying player and holds the rare distinction of being the only guard in the association to average a block per minute regardless of qualifier.

Thybulle also has the fifth-best defensive RAPTOR rating regardless of position, role, or record according to FiveThirtyEight, slotting in three spots higher than Joel Embiid and one below Alex “The Bald Eagle” Caruso.

Again, that’s all great, but what does it really say? That Thybulle’s production matches the eye test? That he really is the sort of ball-hawking disruptor who would have been a perfect NFL cornerback? That Thybulle has the potential to become a long-term fixture of the Sixers’ starting five if he can just produce Danny Green-esque number on the offensive end of the court?

The numbers just don’t tell the full story.

No, the beauty of Thybulle’s game is the individual variances between showings. He’s like attending a Phish concert or eating an entire pint of Phish Food in one sitting; every experience is unique but no less exciting.

Whether he’s limiting Devin Booker to 19 points in 29 minutes or pulling off a swipe so surprising that Giannis Antetokounmpo has to foul him out of sheer shock, there’s a full game’s worth of highlights of Thybulle doing the little things extraordinarily well to put his team in the best position to succeed, even if they don’t show up on the stat sheet.

That, my friends, is the true signifier of a disruptor, the ability to impact a game when no one is looking.

At the beginning of the season, Matisse Thybulle looked expendable. He was a deep-bench reserve during the preseason, barely played during the first few games of the season, and looked like a potential casualty of the switch from Brett Brown to Doc Rivers. Had Daryl Morey packaged the then-23-year-old with other picks and players to procure James Harden, I doubt many a fan would have cared, but now, a few months down the line, there might not be a more important player coming off the Philadelphia 76ers’ bench than Matisse Vincent Thybulle, as his ability to consistently turn in elite defensive performances could seriously swing a game or even series come playoff time as a three-headed defensive monster with Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid.