Sixers-Heat takeaways: Joel Embiid’s defensive presence missed; Tobias Harris leaves his mark

MIAMI – Joel Embiid’s presence is what the 76ers miss the most when he doesn’t play.

Tyrese Maxey must stay aggressive no matter what. And Tobias Harris just might be officially back to playing close to his early-season level.

Those three things stood out in the Sixers’ 119-113 loss to the Miami Heat on Christmas at Kaseya Center.

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Averaging an NBA-leading 35 points per game, Embiid’s scoring prowess draws the most attention. But the Sixers defense suffered Monday with him sidelined with a sprained right ankle. And that was no different from when the 7-foot-2, 280-pounder missed games this season against the Minnesota Timberwolves, New Orleans Pelicans, and Boston Celtics.

“His greatest impact that we missed tonight was defensively,” said Harris, whose Sixers (20-9) dropped to 0-4 without Embiid. “We miss his size, his presence, his ability to protect the rim. We got outrebounded pretty bad tonight and that hurt us.”

The Heat (18-12) scored 50 points in the paint and outrebounded the Sixers, 56-36. Miami led 13-5 in offensive rebounds.

Heat center Bam Adebayo finished with 26 points along with game-highs of 15 rebounds and three blocks.

Maxey had the worst performance of his career, finishing with 12 points on 4-for-20 shooting. Even that was misleading, considering five of his points came in the final 45 seconds.

His 20 shot attempts were the most on the team. But since his shot was off, he lacked the aggressiveness he usually plays with. On one third-quarter play, Maxey passed the ball to Patrick Beverley instead of looking for his own shot. And on another play, the standout took a long low-percentage three-pointer over driving the lane.

“He’s a great player, a great shooter,” Harris said. “In a game like tonight with big fella not playing, we need him to be high volume. We trust him as well. The whole team does. As a group, we don’t worry about misses.”

Harris realizes that Maxey is going to have off shooting nights from time to time.

“That’s not going to be normal for him,” Harris said. “So he’s going to be fine, but just to encourage him to keep shooting. We have the utmost confidence in him to help us in any of those stretches.”

After scoring 27 points Monday, Harris is averaging 30 over his last two games. This comes after the power forward had struggled in his previous 11 games. Some will point to those struggles being a result of not getting the ball while Embiid and Maxey excelled in their hard-to-stop, two-man game.

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In reality, Harris’ lack of aggressiveness caused his struggles. But like when he scored 33 Friday night against the Toronto Raptors, he didn’t have the problem versus the Heat.

He tried to downplay his performance.

“One, I don’t look at things that small a sample size,” Harris said. “And two, we got to [win]. Tonight was a big game to get out and try to figure it out without our big fella playing, because we haven’t been our best when he doesn’t play. We got to figure that out as well.

“But for me, just continuing to work on the positives that’s working on myself, and to continue to excel at that.”