Philadelphia 76ers: Benching Matisse Thybulle is beyond pointless

The Philadelphia 76ers‘ monster win over the Los Angeles Clippers was a classic Matisse Thybulle game.

Now granted, Thybulle’s on-field excellence was largely overshadowed by the efforts of James Harden and Joel Embiid, who scored 29 and 27 points respectively, but in just under 26 minutes of action, the pride of the University of Washington put up 13 points on 5-6 shooting from the field to go with three steals and his typical brand of eye-opening defense.

Thybulle threw down dunks, set screens for Harden in one of the weirdest pick-and-rolls you’ll ever see, and even hit his lone shot from beyond the arc, which has become more and more common since “The Beard” came to town.

Excitement was at an all-time high, team-morale looked stellar, and naturally, Doc Rivers followed it up by changing what worked before, benching Paul Reed/Furkan Korkmaz, and sitting Thybulle for the final 19.5 minutes half versus the Phoenix Suns despite watching his team struggle to stop Devin Booker and Landry Shamet when the game’s outcome was still up in the air.

Hey Philadelphia 76ers, at this point, benching Matisse Thybulle is basically useless.

Matisse Thybulle’s defense is vital to the Philadelphia 76ers’ success.

Sometimes, when the Philadelphia 76ers have a particularly choice matchup against another playoff team, Doc Rivers puts it upon himself to try to simulate the playoffs with a shrunk rotation and a more expansive workload for his starters. On paper, that’s a totally normal and even quite smart strategy, as the Sixers only have eight games left in the regular season and will have to shrink down their rotation soon enough when the games start counting just a little bit more.

The team’s Sunday matinee – at least for folks in Arizona – was one of those games, and in the first half, Rivers’ rationale felt right. Monty Williams’ squad came out looking to test their mettle despite having first place in the West locked in, and for the most part, the Sixers actually outswung the reigning regular season champions to a 64-60 lead entering the half. While the first half was hard-fought, with Harden having to fight through traps on seemingly every play via defense from Deandre Ayton and others, the team’s two All-Stars combined for a little under half of the points scored by the team in white, and fans looked primed for a fun second half.

… except that isn’t what happened.

No, in the second half, the Sixers’ gameplan contracted in more ways than one, with Tobias Harris only putting up two more points, Thybulle exiting the game at the 8:21 mark in the third after picking up two quick fouls, and their scoring followed suit, as they were only able to put up 40 points in the second half versus 54 by the Suns.

So what happened? Why did the good Doc pull Thybulle in favor of 29 largely uninterrupted minutes by Danny Green even as his team suffered to stop the Suns’ outside shooters?

Honestly, whatever the rationale, it shouldn’t have taken almost 20 minutes to realize that it wasn’t the right decision.

After putting up six quick points from beyond the arc to go with three rebounds in the first half, Green didn’t score another point down the stretch, going 0-4 from the field in the game’s final two frames while failing to match Thybulle’s efforts on defense. While his theoretical ability to shoot from range could help to thwart the Sun’s traps on Harden and double-teams on Embiid, it didn’t deter Williams from calling those plays anyway and leaving Green wide open to brick it from the corner.

Considering how infrequently a player not named Embiid or Harden scores the ball when the duo are on the court together, the difference between Green and Thybulle is a net negative when their individual defensive abilities are taken into account.

Fun fact: Since Harden made his debut with the Sixers, Thybulle has a 3 point shooting percentage that’s an entire 10 percentage points higher than Green on only 1.2 fewer attempts per game. I know the threat of a 3 point shot is just as important as the shot going into the flow of an offense, but Green has only made three more 3s than Thybulle over that month and change on 15 more attempts.

There was a time when Matisse Thybulle versus Danny Green was a legitimate conversation among fans of the Philadelphia 76ers. Some preferred Green’s combination of 3-and-D over Thybulle’s defensive wizardry, while others felt that “Matheif’s” defensive contributions were just too good to hide on the bench, especially with a serious lack of perimeter defense filling out the rest of the starting lineup. That conversation is over now. Between Green’s health-related decline and Thybulle’s emergence as a steady 6.9 point scorer, the latter has to be counted on as one of the Sixers’ top-five minutes getters both when the playoffs roll around and down the stretch. If not? Well, you saw how the Suns game ended; do you really want to see that happen again?