Tyrese Maxey struggled hard and the Sixers never really got close to Milwaukee in the second half, losing 124-109 in an anemic opener without Joel Embiid and Paul George.

Here's what I saw.

The good

— I will open the season by pointing out something negative for the season other team at the Wells Fargo Center on Wednesday evening. Giannis Antetokounmpo spent the first five minutes of this game hanging on the defensive screen with his head in the clouds, wasting some very good rim protection from Brook Lopez. But there is one key difference for Philadelphia this season compared to last: They were well prepared to take advantage.

Throughout training camp and the preseason, Nick Nurse preached the importance of having more possession on both sides of the ball, and the Sixers had better personnel to do it than ever before in the Joel Embiid era. Andre Drummond immediately went to work, cutting a hole in the Bucks' box-outs for tips and boards in the first quarter. Their wingers also got involved, with both KJ and Caleb Martin flying in for the second chance.

There will be consequences for playing so aggressively on the glass, but they have the athletes to justify chasing those extra shots, so move on.

– Nick Nurse called Caleb Martin one of Philadelphia's five best players before the game and explained why he brought KJ Martin into the starting lineup. The head coach was apparently so convinced of this decision that he reversed it at halftime.

C. Martin (this is going to be annoying, I can tell) looked every bit like my ideal fifth starter in this game, except for Lillard cheering him on a bit in the second half. He was a menace on offense and one of their most active communicators on defense, constantly trying to rush and call his teammates to the right spots. That will pay off over time, even if it didn't make too much of a difference on Wednesday.

– Guerschon Yabusele has waited a long time to return to the NBA, and while his Sixers debut wasn't perfect, I thought he brought exactly the mix of skills you were hoping for on night one. He got behind on the glass, made some nice passes in traffic and was a pretty useful off-ball defender, although there were a few moments at the rim where I wished he had been two or three inches taller.

What reflects his European experience most is the constant movement on the offensive. There wasn't a single moment where the ball got stuck in Yabusele's hands and he did a great job of either taking the open jumper, swinging the ball or driving into empty space with every touch. He also lived up to this ideal off-ball, dancing along the baseline or moving around the perimeter to create space for his teammates.

(Unfortunately, I think those moments of wishing he was taller were hard to avoid against a Bucks team with Giannis, Brook Lopez and Bobby Portis up front. When Milwaukee was able to get through Philadelphia's first line of defense I still think that the Sixers will probably need a big roster before the season is over, and that Yabusele shouldn't be the only player that should be trusted to play minutes behind Drummond If Embiid is out The problem lies less with Yabusele, a natural forward playing out of position, and more with how the roster is constructed.)

The evil

– I continue to have concerns about Kelly Oubre's secondary, especially in these games where he looks to take over a larger share of the offense while Embiid and George are sidelined. Oubre was relatively good as a downhill attacker, but in the first half alone there were probably a half-dozen plays where Oubre could have swung the ball or at least found a teammate, only to slam into the Bucks' defenders for no real reason run.

For most of last season, Oubre managed to avoid the headlong defensive behaviors that characterized most of his career. But he was off the ball for far too long in this game, which led to some avoidable open threes and easy backdoor cuts for the Bucks. For me that is a much A bigger problem than the one you have to deal with with players like Lowry and Gordon – they're both older and can be picked on to some degree, but put themselves in the right position enough for help to arrive (and will ) to increase possession of the ball.

I have a lot of tolerance for Oubre if he stays committed on defense, attacks off the ball, and keeps his contested jumpers to a minimum. I won't live with a lot of games like this, especially when you ask someone like Martin to come off the bench.

– The most glaring problem for Philadelphia without Joel Embiid and Paul George is, unsurprisingly, shot creation. When you build three big-money stars around you, it's unlikely that the other guys on the roster are demons with the ball in their hands. It was still a bit unsettling to see how inept they were to start this game, as possession often didn't end until the final seconds of the shot clock due to slow decision-making and some chemistry issues early in the season.

As we saw at the end of last season, there is one much It's a bigger challenge for him than Tyrese Maxey to have to be a lone star, and he's not necessarily ready for every night. Maxey was on the wrong end of a few questionable non-calls — thank you, Scott Foster — but he also missed a handful of clean looks from three and generally struggled to dictate the pace of the game. He did an excellent job of leading Philadelphia in the preseason with quickness in the halfcourt and in transition, but little of that was on display on opening night.

(It didn't help, of course, that their defense wasn't good enough to get consistent stops. You can't run if you're taking it out of your own basket.)

In the preseason, Maxey shot poorly, but made up for it with an aggressive, proactive attempt to get the rest of his teammates going. I was really happy to see him chase his own shot to open the game and take the responsibility from Embiid as their leader in the first quarter. There will be nights when he can take the shots and it will look a lot prettier than it does today.

I found it insightful that Sister almost immediately observed what was happening and decided they needed more Kyle Lowry to help Maxey. The Sixers' organization left a lot to be desired, but more importantly, they often had no real plan other than “Tyrese, do something” as Maxey lacked dribbling skills for most of the half. Milwaukee shuffled their coverages effectively and felt able to properly trap and shadow Maxey, and that's how I would play the Sixers in this setup. The more you get the ball into the hands of Andre Drummond, Kelly Oubre and the rest of their role players, the more likely you are to get a positive result on defense.

However, this group won't be able to do much with Maxey taking about a third of the 30-plus shots and attacking players like Gary Trent Jr., Damian Lillard and Taurean Prince for the majority of his possessions. Credit to Brook Lopez for great rim protection and Giannis for some moments of elite defense, but the individual player wasn't good enough.

— Andre Drummond had his moments in this game, but all of my forward-looking concerns came to the fore in this game. When he has to defend all the way to the three-point line, bad things often happen. Brook Lopez had a difficult shooting night and still managed to have a reasonably big impact on this game, pulling Philly's rebounding machine away from the basket. “The Meh” is probably the better category for Drummond, but those are the categories I impose on myself.

The ugly

– I’m a little worried that Kyle Lowry still needs to be a security blanket for this team. He deserves credit for shooting well and still having Nurse's trust, but that suggests they may be lacking creative depth on the roster.

– A good night from Maxey brings this stat back toward respectability, but shooting would already be high on the list of roster issues. Jared McCain will likely need to get opportunities for that reason alone, because the Sixers can't end up in a spot where teams are narrowing the floor around Embiid, Maxey and George, whether they're operating together or individually.

This is one of the potential problems with using Oubre and Martin as key wings in the rotation. They offer a decent amount of defensive versatility, but you'll be on a three-point roller coaster for most of the season. Philly scored a total of one three-pointer from the Martin/Martin/Oubre trio on seven combined attempts. Not enough volume, not enough brands.

— I didn't particularly like how Nick Nurse handled this game, even considering some players' foul trouble and the difficulty of setting up a rotation without two of his best players. It felt like they were just throwing lineups at the wall and hoping something would work, between the Martin substitutions, Ricky Council IV's minutes in the second half, and the decision to play small early in the third period , as Drummond struggled not to commit a foul.

Experimentation is one thing, but it should be done over a longer period of time rather than cramming everything into 48 minutes to open the year. Too much chaos to expect to win a game against a team that was polished in comparison.