All I Want Daryl Morey to Do Is Convince Joel Embiid to Shoot Threes
Here’s a job you won’t have to trade anyone for.
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Almost a week into the Daryl Morey experience, the thing I like the best about it so far is that I don't have to be scared by dumb fake trade proposals anymore. Simmons to Golden State for the No. 2 pick and Andrew Wiggins? Simmons and Horford to OKC for Chris Paul and Dennis Schroder? Embiid to Houston for Russell Westbrook? In early October they might've each still given me pangs of oh no if enough people discuss this that it becomes a thing the Sixers' meatloaf front office might actually talk themselves into it being reasonable. Now? If it's dumb enough to make me laugh, it may as well be a Comedy Central rerun of Saving Silverman for our Daryl. Gotta say, it's nice to have one fewer thing to panic about these days.
Of course, while a crucial first step, just not making bad decisions won't be enough for our new Team President this offseason. He'll have to nail the draft, he'll have to figure out how best to deploy our cap exceptions, and he'll have to do more trading than 12-year-old me trying to balance out my Halloween candy roster the day after trick-or-treating. But while I'm confident he's up for all of those tasks, I have a simpler in-house assignment for Daryl as my personal top priority for this offseason: Get our big man to shoot threes, because it's the key to unlocking just about everything this team is capable of.
Joel Embiid isn't categorically averse to the deep ball. He shot 172 of them last year and made 57 of them, a 33% conversion rate that's generally acceptable for your seven-foot center, and a personal best for Jo since his career-best 37% finish in his rookie season. Believe it or not, that 172 is more threes than famously sweet-shooting big man Dirk Nowitzki attempted in Dallas during the regular season of their 2010-11 championship run, and in 22 fewer games. But for what the Sixers should want to do -- what I think the Sixers can do this next season, particularly in conjunction with a full embrace of Moreyball -- it's still not nearly enough.
There's been a lot of speculation about whether Embiid's co-star Ben Simmons can thrive in a Daryl Morel-assembled system, given his own much more extreme distaste for shooting from beyond (or even within) the arc. But as most smart observers have noted, that ignores the fact that Russell Westbrook -- at age 31, and already after a couple years of obvious statistical decline -- had one of the best stretches of his career last year in the Rockets' system as a single-purpose rim attacker, averaging a staggering 33 points a game on 53% shooting from January to February while taking just over two triples a contest. Let Simmons loose in that environment at eight years younger and eight inches taller, and he could put up numbers like neither O'Connor has ever dreamed of. You can still run nearly about any brand of highly effective offense in 2020 with one non-shooter.
But you can't really do it with two. So until such time as Ben is finally ready to break out that Jamal Murray imitation he's long been rehearsing in private, it's gonna fall on Joel to become a real shooting threat. Which isn't to say, turn him into P.J. Tucker -- automatically planted in the short corner, standing around on every possession waiting for a kickout that may never come. But when it is time for Ben to operate in single coverage, then he does need to be spaced outside the arc, ready to shoot if the ball heads his way.
And I certainly don't mean "ready to look like he's going to shoot, then to actually pump-fake and drive the lane for a contested pull-up two," as he’s long seemed to want to do every time he's parked beyond the arc. It takes an hour off my life every time Jo does that, and has actually led to points on the board maybe three times total across four years. No, I want him excited to actually get to shoot. To take it personally that he was left open enough to get one off without much static. To raise up without hesitation, with the belief that it's going to go down more often than not. To have the confidence that even if this one doesn't connect, the next one still probably will.
This isn't just for Ben's benefit, either: I've long believed that the final piece to both Jo's offense and the entire team's half-court success lies with him becoming more of a volume shooter from beyond -- particularly against the other best teams in the East. Marc Gasol proving unmovable and unshakeable on the block? Let Jo drift beyond the arc and shoot threes for a bit. Brook Lopez camping out in the lane and making it difficult for us to get anything at the rim? Get Jo to flash the range and pull him out of his defensive comfort zone. The Celtics hacking, complaining, double-teaming and just generally draining Jo down low? Let them be the team bemoaning a big man getting hot from beyond for once.
And while you'd like to see Joel get his percentage up to the 35-37% range, hitting one out of every three is still totally fine for him on higher volume, because he accomplishes so much just by needing to be guarded out there. Diversifying his offense, conserving his energy and his body, cutting down on his turnovers, opening shit up for his teammates -- nothing but good things can come from Embiid embracing his inner Davis Bertans.
Well, almost nothing. There are drawbacks to having Joel think perimeter a little more -- fewer easy buckets, fewer trips to the line, fewer instances of an opponent sending in their third-string big with four minutes to go in the first because their top two Cs already each have two fouls. But the biggest might be that the first time he has an underwhelming shooting performance in a big game, he'll have to deal with the Inside the NBA crew pulling out their typically heady brand of "If I were Joel Embiid, I would simply dunk the ball every time" type analysis. Historically, Joel has taken that shit surprisingly to heart, and the first time Shaq questions his manhood on a live TV postgame because he went a whole quarter without putting Daniel Theis through the rim, he may be likely to revert to his old Big Boys Don't Shoot mentality.
That's why we need Daryl. Not to say that it's usually the GM's responsibility to change the players' on-court reflexes -- that's traditionally coach stuff, and we've got a new one of those too, who's gonna need to do plenty of Embiid ear-bending on his own. But in this case, I do think Jo might be more likely to listen to Morey than Doc. If there's one NBA figure in this world that our big man still trusts implicitly, it's Our Once and Always Dark Lord Sam Hinkie, and even if that personal connection doesn't immediately convert to Hinkie's old boss and mentor, the faith in his ability to do his job and know what he's talking about probably will. If Morey tells Embiid that the data supports that the team is better off when he's shooting threes at a regular clip -- as I certainly believe Hinkie ultimately would have if they'd gotten more than 31 games together -- I think Jo'll take his word for it, maybe even over Barkley's. (Who, by the way, shot 220 threes himself in his MVP season.)
I hope Daryl Morey finds good trades for Al Horford and/or Tobias Harris this offseason. I hope he packages our 21st and 34th picks with spare parts for a shooter/handler that ends up balancing out our starting five, then gets us the steal of the entire draft at No. 36. And I hope he starts making lameass SpongeBob memes out of the dumbest Ben Simmons trade proposals that circulate around Twitter as the NBA's Silly Season really gets underway. But most of all, dammit, I just hope he gets Jo's 3PAs up from around four a game to six, seven, eight a game. The psychic and practical benefits to both the Sixers and to my sanity will be borderline incalculable -- and it's just a good proof of concept that under Morey, we can actually be something resembling a healthy, modern, normal 2020 basketball team.