Jahlil Okafor's career has been contrasted with offensive power and defensive deficiencies. A natural ability to score; a consistent problem with stopping the opponent from doing the same.
That weakness was glaring in Wednesday's effort against the Heat as one play exemplified the shortfall to his all-around game (see video).
During the first quarter, Okafor stood in the paint while Goran Dragic drove the lane with T.J. McConnell chasing behind. Dragic missed and three players crashed the place, none of which were Okafor. The 6-foot-4 Rodney McGruder came down with the rebound and, still trailed by McConnell, kicked it out to an open Hassan Whiteside for the jumper. Okafor looked stagnant on the entire possession.
"Now think about defensive stance," analyst Jim Lynam said on Sixers Postgame Live. "The first thing you do when you block a shot, you bend your knees. If you don't have your knees flexed, you're not ready to do anything. It's that simple."
If this was the first (or second, or third) time Okafor's defense was called into question, that play wouldn't have been as noteworthy. But it's not. And so that video hit social media and by the next morning was splattered all over different websites with criticism of Okafor in the Sixers' 125-98 loss.
Lynam said, as a former coach, he would not have shown that play to the entire team in a film review session.
"It's a very damaging demonstration," Lynam said. "Sometimes plays are so bad that you really embarrass. You want to get a message to your player, you want him to learn from it. Sometimes I actually would say to my staff, ‘I'd be embarrassed to show that.'
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"Let's say it's a ridiculously bad play by (host) Mike Barkann [as an example]. I'd say to the team, I'll deal with Barkann individually. I can't show that in a room of players. Those guys will lose respect for him and it might never come back. That play we watched falls into that category."
That play actually came on a night when Okafor was the Sixers' most effective rebounder. He pulled down seven boards, including two offensive. The only player with more boards than him was the NBA's leading rebounder, Hassan Whiteside, who had 11.
Okafor has shown flashes of improvement lately with his rebounding in the absence of Joel Embiid. Okafor has four games with seven-plus rebounds -- including a double-double against the Knicks -- in the 11 games he has started since Embiid was sidelined after the Jan. 27 matchup with the Rockets.
Okafor is averaging 6.7 rebounds in his last three games and 5.5 since the All-Star break (compared to 4.8 before it).
It's moments like that against the Heat, though, that bring flashbacks to games like Feb. 1, when he pulled down one rebound against the Mavericks, compared to Salah Mejri's 17 off the bench.
Okafor has never been touted as a defensive stopper, even when he was selected third overall in 2015. His strength has always been his offensive abilities -- clever footwork with a basketball IQ that can create smooth shots. He put that on display last weekend with 28 points against the Knicks, including a go-ahead bucket with nine seconds to play. Okafor is averaging 11.5 points off 50.9 percent shooting from the field this season.
There is such a stark gap, though, between his play on either end of the floor. Brett Brown acknowledges Okafor's room for improvement, at the same time urging people to remember he just turned 21 years old in December.
"Jahlil is such a willing participant in trying to be coached," Brown said after Wednesday's game. "He lets us coach him. It's just, he's young. I think people sometimes have a hard time understanding really how young he is. There are times you saw just offensive brilliance tonight with really some really amazing type of individual moves offensively, and other times you realize that he's got a long ways to go defensively, as far as a sustained type of effort and understanding of the defensive side of all of this. But he's been fantastic."
Chances are, Okafor could have pulled down 15 rebounds against the Heat and that one play still would have gone viral. Okafor doesn't have to transform into a 20-and-10 player; that's not his game. Two years into his career, though, it's not necessarily his numbers on his box score but his perceived effort that is used as the criteria to characterize his performances.
"We just played terrible as a team on both ends of the floor," Okafor summed up the loss to Heat. "We just weren't good."