3 Sixers Thoughts: Jealous Of The Cavs, Nice Guy Tobias, Disappointing Wings
It’s his mental disposition on the floor, which has been present as long as he’s been on the team.
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The Sixers had an absolutely dreadful week, dropping three straight games to severely undermanned teams while they were mostly healthy. To make matters worse, Ben Simmons still hasn’t been traded, and the league is in the midst of a massive COVID wave. Rather than do a deep dive into any one particular topic, I felt like it would be a bit more palatable to do some takes that have been coming to mind for me. Let’s begin.
Tobias Harris, very nice guy (to play against)
Tobias Harris won’t always play as poorly as he is right now. He’s been struggling of late due to his battle with COVID as well as a couple of other factors. But in many ways, it’s not his poor shooting, lack of footspeed, or iffy finishing that has fans so frustrated – it’s his mental disposition on the floor, which has been present as long as he’s been on the team.
Tobias plays basketball as if he’s trying to be extra sure that doesn’t do anything that the other team might find upsetting. He doesn’t sell contact to get foul calls. He’ll never bait an opposing player into a bad pass on defense. He rarely, if ever, tries to manipulate the defense with the ball in his hands in order to set up a pass. He is the polar opposite of a Draymond Green or a Marcus Smart, who are constantly doing sneaky things to get small advantages, or even just to get under the opponent’s skin.
Players like Smart and Green are in a constant game of manipulating or leveraging the other team’s behavior so that it benefits them. You reach your arm a little too close on the perimeter? Rip through move. You bump into them while they’re driving? Flop. You’ve thrown the same skip pass to the corner multiple times throughout this game? They’ll bait you into throwing it again and then steal it.
Instead, Harris opts not to take advantage of any of those types of opportunities. Whereas Green and Smart induce a strong sense of paranoia, I imagine most players feel the opposite going up against Harris. You want to bump him on his drives? Go ahead. You want to run the same play for his man 10 times in a game? Go ahead, he won’t try to break it up. You want to play 15 feet off of him on the perimeter? Go ahead, he’ll pump fake and then dribble into a 14-foot fadeaway.
I don’t think that Harris’ disposition is borne out of selfishness or even laziness; it’s just not in his DNA to play any other way. Whatever the cause, though, it’s hell for a fanbase that wants its players to do whatever it takes to win every game. On a per minute basis, Harris is dead last on the team in deflections, as well as loose balls recovered. He has not drawn a charge all year. He has zero sense of urgency, and seems to see little value in the little things. He epitomizes what it means to be an empty stats player.
Disappointing wings
There are many reasons that this Sixers team has been so woeful to watch – chief among them being that they aren’t built to withstand Ben Simmons’ absence, and Harris and Embiid haven’t been as good this year as they were last year. But boy, this year has been a real disaster for the Sixers’ wings.
Danny Green’s numbers are just fine, but he’s starting to show real signs of being cooked defensively. Furkan Korkmaz has been in an unrelenting cold streak. Matisse Thybulle has been a disaster offensively, and aside from his masterpiece against Steph Curry, he hasn’t been all that great defensively, either. Given the vacuum due to the struggles of those above him, one would’ve hoped Isaiah Joe could’ve filled a role, but he’s been mediocre at best.
Throw in Simmons absence and Harris’ struggles, and the Sixers are getting just horrid production from their wings at the moment. If you are going to play around Joel Embiid, you are going to need at least one of A) a complimentary perimeter star, or B) a robust rotation of versatile wings and guards. Right now, they have neither, and but the latter has been the more surprising development of the two. Embiid is working overtime on both ends, and this rotation has more holes in it than many of us likely realized.
I’m jealous of the Cavaliers
The No. 4 seed Cleveland Cavaliers are currently in the midst of a season that the Sixers did not have throughout their entire process and post-process era, and it makes me jealous. They have the perfect mix for a diehard fan: they are unexpectedly good. They have none of the weight of expectations, with all of the joy of being good – and they are only expected to improve in the long term.
Save for some short lived windows a few years back, the Sixers never had that type of stretch during this era. The 2017-18 season was the closest comparison, but the expectations set in before you could blink. In March of that season, people started talking about the Sixers as a potential finals team. By the start of the playoffs, many considered them the favorite in the East, due to the Cavs’ struggles and the Celtics’ injuries. When the Sixers were ultimately knocked out that season, it felt like disappointment, rather than house money.
By the start of the next season, the finals hopes were even more serious. In the span of a year and a half, they went from No. 1 pick in the draft to NBA Finals or bust. The incredibly short timeline of their come up was whiplash inducing, and ultimately, one wonders if it would’ve been more fun to watch a team rise to contention more slowly. The Cavs are young, fun, good, and are playing with house money. That’s a combination that it never felt like the Sixers had.