Mailbag: The Slow Sixers, Pleasant Surprises, Should Maxey Come Off The Bench?
The most glaring weakness of this team over the last few weeks is -- stop me if you’ve heard this before -- a lack of reliable backup center minutes.
Adam Aaronson, whose legal name is Sixers Adam (@SixersAdam on Twitter), covers the Sixers for The Rights To Ricky Sanchez. He believes cantaloupe is the best food in existence, and is brought to you by the Official Realtor of The Process, Adam Ksebe.
Following their disappointing home loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder on Thursday night, the Sixers are preparing to depart for their first of two west coast trips, a stretch in which they’ll face five Western Conference teams in an eight-day period.
Additionally, the team’s loss to OKC was its 41st game of the season, putting them at the exact halfway point of the season. With that in mind, it seems like a good time for a Bonus Mailbag. You know the drill:
From @play_on_sunday: What has been an unexpected pleasant surprise for the team so far this season? On the other hand, what's been an unexpected disaster
Let’s begin with the positive: De’Anthony Melton is a player I’ve argued would fit tremendously well on the Sixers for a few years now -- including advocating for the exact trade that brought him to Philadelphia just days before it actually happened.
By that point, the book on Melton was pretty much written: an extremely pesky and versatile perimeter defender who is at least passable offensively. That was all the Sixers needed him to be in order to validate moving the 23rd pick in last year’s draft to have him be their replacement for the injured Danny Green.
Melton’s defensive prowess has been as advertised. But what I’m not sure anyone saw coming was him making another leap as a shooter -- he once went from poor to decent, but then he went from decent to fantastic.
Shooting more than six three-pointers per game this season, easily the highest volume of his career, he has knocked down 39.7 percent of his tries from beyond the arc. His shooting, once his biggest weaknesses, is now legitimately a weapon.
Between his terrific defensive abilities and his near-elite three-point shooting, Melton has quickly become one of the league’s single most valuable role players.
On the flip side, PJ Tucker entered the season believed to be the Sixers’ unquestioned most crucial addition. And while he was certainly not brought to Philadelphia to score in bunches, his ineptitude offensively has rendered him the member of the team’s starting five who rarely closes games.
Tucker has always been one-dimensional offensively -- he’s been able to knock down corner threes for most of his career, and it’s been enough to get by.
This year, though, these problematic tendencies have become exacerbated: not only does Tucker only feel comfortable shooting from the corners, he actually will not even look at the rim or ponder taking a shot when above the break.
This is not a subtle weakness -- and so Tucker, long known for his viability in high leverage situations, could very well be played off the floor in the playoffs due to his lack of offensive utility.
For a 37-year old who signed a fully-guaranteed, three-year contract, this situation is far from ideal. This leads me to the next question:
From Matthew Brend: Thoughts on changing the starting 5 with Melton coming in for Maxey?
I haven’t been able to get on board with Tyrese Maxey being this team’s sixth man -- I get the idea, but Maxey is too good to relegate to the bench.
However, I think everyone agrees that Melton has more than earned a starting spot. Everyone also agrees that when the chips are down, he should be on the floor over Tucker. So why is it Maxey who should move to the bench?
Positionally, a starting lineup featuring James Harden, Maxey and Melton would be unorthodox. But against teams without a superstar wing, what is the argument for Tucker over Maxey, when the former is an impediment to the team’s offense and the latter adds a different layer to it?
Many coaches resist frequently adjusting their starting lineup. But if I were in charge, Melton would start alongside Harden, Maxey, Tobias Harris and Joel Embiid in most games. But if the opponent has a lethal scoring wing (or two, in the case of the Boston Celtics), Tucker can easily take Melton’s place for the specific purpose of helping slow down players like Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown or Kevin Durant -- at least as much as those players can possibly be slowed down.
From @killerbeez_: Do you find it problematic that the Sixers are probably the slowest, least athletic team in the entire NBA?
I do! It’s not something that presented itself as an obvious problem during the summer, when we could only envision what the team would look like rather than actually seeing it unfold.
Maxey is a blur in the open floor. Outside of that, which Sixers rotation piece is an above-average athlete relative to other NBA players at their size? Harden’s lost a lot of his explosiveness. Embiid traded mobility for strength years ago. Tucker is strong, but not quick. The same can be said for Harris. Georges Niang is notably slow, and Shake Milton has never been the fleetest of foot.
Melton is a great athlete, as is Matisse Thybulle (if he can even play crucial minutes in the playoffs). But when you think of the surefire championship contenders in the NBA right now, most of them have at least a few tremendous athletes.
This doesn’t disqualify the Sixers from championship contention, but it’s certainly a roadblock standing in their way.
From @gvhos: What type of player should the Sixers target in a trade?
Well, after that soliloquy, the most obvious answer here is adding an athletic perimeter player. Perhaps the Sixers could try to turn Thybulle’s rotation spot over to a similarly-athletic wing who can be relied upon to play big minutes in the playoffs.
But what stands out as the biggest need for this team right now is -- you guessed it -- a reliable backup center.
I wrote about why I view this as the team’s biggest need and broke down several trade candidates on Tuesday, so I’ll leave the deep analysis to that piece. But ultimately, Paul Reed has not yet proven he can be trusted for long periods of time, and Montrezl Harrell’s defensive weaknesses are too glaring to ignore once the playoffs come.
From Sam DiGiovanni: Do any Eastern Conference teams stand out to you as a team that the Sixers don’t match up well with in a playoff series?
Most will observe this team through the lens of whether or not they can beat teams like Boston, the Milwaukee Bucks, and even the suddenly-surging Brooklyn Nets, who have established themselves in the top tier or two of teams in the Eastern Conference -- a place the Sixers hope to certify their standing in as well.
But, as the Sixers continue to show they are vulnerable against high-powered guard play, my attention shifts to the Cleveland Cavaliers, who are ahead of the Sixers in the standings, and if the season ended today, would be their opponent in the first round of the playoffs.
Melton is a great defensive player, but he is their only good perimeter defender who they can definitely use in the playoffs. Maxey is not a traffic cone on that end of the floor, but he is certainly not a plus defensively. Harden’s sporadic contributions as a defender typically come guarding above his height as he leverages his tremendous strength. Tucker guards his ass off, but lacks the foot speed to keep up with the game’s quickest guards. We know what Thybulle is capable of on defense, but we also know what he is not capable of on offense and that those weaknesses prevent him from being a reliable playoff rotation piece.
The Cavaliers have not one, but two excellent guards -- Donovan Mitchell has become one of the game’s very best scorers, and Darius Garland is one of the best shooters in the league who also happens to be a brilliant passer with some of the most impressive ball-handling in basketball.
Additionally, they have two bigs -- Jarrett Allen and Evan Mobley -- who are capable of at least challenging Embiid down low. The Sixers’ MVP candidate will always score in bunches, but Allen and Mobley will not be pushovers.
In a game that didn’t feature Harden and Maxey or Allen earlier this season, the Cavaliers blew the Sixers out, 113-85. Of course that one game with multiple key pieces absent is not indicative of how a playoff series would go.
But even without Allen available, Cleveland held Embiid to a 6-16 shooting line that night. Meanwhile, Garland scored 21 points and dished out nine assists and Mitchell knocked down five triples. And for what it’s worth, they also have long-time Sixers killer Caris LeVert, who scored 22 points on 11 shots off the bench in that game.
On paper, I believe the Sixers are the very-slightly better team, and the public would almost certainly favor them heavily. But I think these teams are extremely close to each other in terms of talent -- and the Cavaliers have a lot of things going for them that have the potential to cause the Sixers trouble.