Grading The Sixers Concerns
Yes, things look a little messy in March. Yes, the bench stinks. But this team has multiple elite shot creators, and that gets you places in the playoffs.
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The Sixers continued their winning ways last night in Cleveland, making it seven wins in 10 games, and yet, something feels off. They’re getting off to slow starts. They’re blowing big leads when they do start well. They’re barely scraping by bad teams like the Magic. James Harden looks slow. The bench looks like a disaster. Etc. etc.
In spite of all the winning, something feels a bit off. So, here in this piece, I’ll go one by one through each concern about their recent play, and whether or not it’s simply a short term blip, or a legitimate long term concern that could hamper them in the playoffs. I’ll rank my concern around each trend as low, medium, or high. Let’s begin.
Transition defense: low-medium
The Sixers have been a dreadful transition defense team all year, ranking 26th in Cleaning The Glass’ assessment of transition defense, and 28th in opponent fast break points per game, ahead of only the Lakers and Rockets. This trend has only been exacerbated since the Harden trade, and we’ve been forced to watch the likes of Nikola Jokic and other proficient outlet passers launch bombs down the floor off of Sixers misses to generate easy, automatic points.
As for what leads to a team being this poor at transition defense, it ties squarely back to the discipline and habits of the personnel. There are certainly stylistic choices that can lead to poor transition defense – for example, teams that generate a lot of offensive rebounds are often poor transition defense teams, for the obvious reason that if you’re crashing the glass, you’re not getting back on defense – but the Sixers buck that trend completely. They are piss poor at both offensive rebounding as well as transition defense.
I would attribute it more so to individual players’ habits. Tyrese Maxey often attempts wild finishes that leave him on the ground and unable to get back in the play. Harden and Tobias Harris often zone out and coast in transition. Matisse Thybulle takes some egregious risks on backcourt steals that leave him out of the play. Embiid can log some major chasedown blocks when he’s engaged, but he is no stranger to jogging back on defense, and also loves to jaw with the officials after not getting a foul call. Throw it all together, and you get a team that simply isn’t all that interested in transition defense.
Still, I’m going to rate my concern level here as relatively low. This will continue to be a regular season problem, but when the game slows down in the playoffs, it simply won’t matter as much. The Sixers were not a stingy transition defense team last season, and that was not even close to being their biggest detriment in the playoffs. Expect this one to continue until mid-April, and for it to be an afterthought after that.
James Harden looking slow: medium
Yeah, I’m starting to get a bit concerned about the way that James Harden looks physically. I don’t know if it’s lingering hamstring issues, other nagging injuries, or simply age-related decline, but regardless, it can’t be a good sign that he simply isn’t scoring at anywhere near the rate that he did in previous years, and finds himself resorting to foul grifting and step-backs more often than one would like. It simply doesn’t feel like he’s the type of automatic bucket that we were expecting him to be when he came over in the trade.
The concern here exists on two levels, of course. 1) If Harden is only ~90% of what he used to be, can the Sixers still win the championship this year? 2) If he’s experienced this level of decline at age 32, how will he hold up a couple years into his next contract?
Harden is shooting his lowest percentage from inside of 3 feet since his rookie year. Sure, he isn’t enjoying the type of spacing that he enjoyed in Houston for many years, but decreased effectiveness around the rim is often a sign of one’s athletic pop starting to decrease, and rim protectors starting to have a bit more success against you. At the moment, everything Harden does looks more laborious for him than it has in the past, from getting by his perimeter defenders to finishing through traffic.
My concern level is somewhat mild for this season – I still think they can win the championship with Harden being 90 percent of what he used to be – but much greater in the long run. While the success of the likes of LeBron James, Chris Paul, Kyle Lowry, and other 35+ players might make one optimistic about Harden’s longevity, it’s important to remember that those players are anomalies, and are stylistically much different from Harden. While Harden does have incredible IQ and craftiness, his shot creation is predicated largely on his change-of-direction ability; his entire downhill game is based on quick crossovers and hesitations. If his herky-jerky ability starts to fall off a cliff, one wonders how he remains a top-20 player in the league.
The backup center minutes: High
Good Lord, the Deandre Jordan minutes have been a disaster. He can’t make a dunk. He’s a non-presence on defense. He’s not boxing out. He’s setting moving screens. It is right up there with Greg Monroe in terms of being a potent visual representation of Murphy’s Law.
There are no obvious answers here, but I can’t help but feel like it is incredibly worth it to experiment for a series of games with either Paul Reed or Charles Bassey. At the very least, I would like to see the young guns get reps and try to establish some chemistry with the rotation players, so that if they need to be called upon during a playoff series, they are up to the task. If Rivers keeps them completely on ice throughout the entire regular season, you don’t really have that option, as you would never throw a young player with almost no regular season experience into a high-stakes playoff series.
Rivers should at least lay the groundwork to get Reed or Bassey some reps and confidence so that they could be ready if called upon. Blindly sticking with Jordan or Millsap is not the answer.
The lack of pop from the rest of the bench: Low-medium
Backup center is easily my biggest concern with the Sixers’ bench, but the rest of that unit isn’t impressing anyone, either. The Sixers are 27th in the league in bench scoring, and it just feels like they don’t quite have anyone to give them a shot in the arm on nights when they start slow.
It remains possible that one of the forgotten bench players (namely Shake Milton or Furkan Korkmaz) could have a rejuvenation, but that feels unlikely at this point. Looking ahead, the only real hope that they should have is that the starters are able to hold up playing huge minutes with an 8-man rotation (starters plus Green, Niang, and backup center) in the playoffs. Green and Niang at least take nothing off the table, and are experienced, gutsy players who can stay on the floor in the playoffs. From there, the Sixers will simply need to stagger Harden and Maxey so that they can avoid having to play another ball handler.
A Green-Niang-backup center bench unit is far from ideal, but it feels like more of a regular season problem, as most teams resort to 8-man rotations in the playoffs, anyways. My concern level here is pretty mild.
Final verdict: low
I remain very confident that this team has a chance to win the championship this year. I’d like to make a comparison to support that: this team and this season reminds me of the 2018-19 team in more ways than one.
Around this time three years ago, many Sixers fans were in a mild panic over the fact that things hadn’t quite meshed cleanly between the stars, the bench stunk, and they were hardly scraping by a bunch of mediocre teams. They got to the playoffs that season, and those things hardly mattered, because they had a shit ton of shot creation and a bunch of tough dudes, and that’s all that really counts in the playoffs.
I see a similar story unfolding here. Yes, things look a little messy in March. Yes, the bench stinks. But this team has multiple elite shot creators, and that gets you places in the playoffs. Being a fun team that shares the ball, plays the right way, and gets back on transition defense is cute in the regular season. But having a bunch of high-level shot creation is what gets you deep into the playoffs. Much like the ‘18-19 season, this team is not built to be a regular season bitch, but rather to be playoff motherfuckers.
We will all continue to be annoyed by all of the things that I listed throughout the rest of the season, but perhaps no team in the league has as much shot creation at the top of their roster as this team does with Embiid-Harden-Maxey-Harris. I feel extremely confident that their ability to create shots will carry them to playoff success.