I Can't Tell How Good This Sixers Team Actually Is Right Now
Sometimes they’re the best. Sometimes, they’re far from it.
Andrew Unterberger is a famous writer who invented the nickname 'Sauce Castillo' and is now writing for The Rights To Ricky Sanchez, as part of the 'If Not, Pick Will Convey As Two Second-Rounders' section of the site. You can follow Andrew on Twitter @AUGetoffmygold and can also read him at Billboard.
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18 games into the 2020-'21 Philadelphia 76ers season, and two things seem abundantly clear: Joel Embiid is an MVP candidate, and nothing else can be taken at face value.
Embiid has been remarkable. There isn't a facet of his game that doesn't look sleeker, more refined and more imposing than it did a year ago: His conditioning and his will, but also his finesse and his discipline. He seems like a better leader, a better teammate, a better communicator. He's this team's Dirk Nowitzki and its Tyson Chandler -- he can close games on both sides of the ball, and has. He's more dependable, more durable and more devastating. The stats are eye-popping, and the eye test is even more conclusive. Even when he pump fakes and drives to nowhere this season, he still usually ends up with a bucket. I have never seen anything like it.
The rest of the team? I think they're pretty good. I hope they're pretty good. It's hard to tell, kinda. They're good enough to help Embiid power the team to a 12-6 start, tops in the East even after a deflating loss to the conference-worst Pistons in Detroit last night. But it's hard for me to ignore the fact that they've done it with relatively good health, a Prefab Sprout-soft start to their schedule, good timing luck on a couple of their tougher schedule matchups, and a point differential that doesn't exactly suggest across-the-board domination on the Sixers' behalf.
And then, of course, there's the on/off disparity. Obviously the Sixers post significantly better numbers on both sides of the ball with Embiid on the court than off, but you don't really need to dive deep into the numbers to suss out his impact: All you really need to know is they're 12-2 in games when he plays and 0-4 in games when he doesn't. It's kind of amazing how out of sorts this team looks without Joel in the lineup -- simple plays suddenly become gruesomely laborious, defensive rotations arrive a step slow, everyone's jumper looks a little more rickety, even. Certainly, there's no next-man-upping on this team without Jo, especially when that next man is Dwight Howard, currently about as convincing stepping into the role of Joel Embiid as Larry David was at playing George Costanza.
That might not matter tremendously in terms of Philly's ultimate ceiling, since a version of this team without Joel Embiid is a dead duck in the playoffs anyway. But it's mildly disconcerting that the team looks this lost without their big man, since it sorta points to the idea that it's a little hard to know who else on the team can really be trusted to produce in his stead right now. Seth Curry's two single-digit scoring games this season have both come when Embiid's been out; he's not really a make-it-happen guy without the big man to play off of. Shake Milton doesn't share the court a ton with Jo to begin with, so you'd hope he could bear a little more of the load with him out -- but he's maybe starting to struggle adjusting to his heftier role at the moment; his jumper looks flatter than ever, like it's literally weighted down by the extra responsibility. Tyrese Maxey still doesn't have a clear role on this team besides the world's most overqualified mop-up man in garbage time, and when Danny Green hits a single shot off the dribble you should probably save the ball to send to Springfield later.
Ben Simmons... well, let's just say like that Ben-led streak to close the 2017-'18 season without Embiid feels farther away than ever. He hasn't exactly stepped up to bear the offensive load in his co-star's absence; in the three games without Jo he's yet to even crack double digits in field goal attempts once. And it's not because he's been too occupied getting his teammates wide open looks, either -- he had 13 combined assists and 13 combined turnovers in the two Jo-less games against Cleveland and Memphis. That ratio was better last night in Detroit (4 to 2), but it didn't matter much because Ben was only on the court for 21 minutes total, limited by silly foul trouble in the first three quarters. That's the story of Ben and this Sixers team right now without Joel: Given the opportunity to prove they're capable of more, they instead show how overextended they are without him.
OK, there is one exception: After one legitimately bad game to kick off the Sixers' schedule, Tobias Harris has been the exact same player in pretty much every game so far this season since, Jo or no Jo. The consistency is stunning to the point of nearly being alarming: In his past 14 games, he has scored between 16 and 26 points (on between 10 and 20 shots) every single time. In 12 games alongside Jo, he's averaging 19.6 points on 53% shooting, and without him he's averaging 20.7 points on 48% shooting -- including a team-high 25 last night on 10-19 from the floor. Tobias is probably never going to have a breakout takeover game with Jo on the bench, but you still basically know what you're getting from him, and it would be enough if everyone else on the team wasn't disintegrating around him.
This all points to a fact we've long accepted to be true about this Sixers team: They're a team without a second option. Not that they literally are without other options, just that they have a big ol' question mark under "second option" on their current org chart. Tobias is currently the ideal third option. Shake and Seth are both perfect fourth options in a closing lineup. Ben is probably best right now not being relied on as any kind of scoring option, but as a connector for the rest of our offense and occasional emergency bucket getter off obvious mismatches, fast breaks and offensive rebounds. But that second guy -- the guy who can provide a credible impression of that first guy's impact when the latter ain't around -- is nowhere to be found at the moment.
The good news is that the second option does appear to be all this team is really missing right now. As last season ended with a four-game sweep at the hand of the undersized Boston Celtics -- with Embiid excelling but not dominating in the series -- we wondered if it was really the first option that this team was lacking, if Joel was at heart more of a 1B who'd be better off anchoring the defense and serving more as a Miami Chris Bosh type on offense than a true offensive hub. But as long as he keeps playing at this level, scoring at a level of volume and proficiency that essentially no big man ever has before, that debate is moot -- and the team might not even need a James Harden type to contend from here, but more of a Jason Terry.
Failing a major move to upgrade, though, how good is this team right now exactly? Tough to say, because not only have we only seen this full Sixers starting lineup for eight out of 16 games so far this season -- going 8-0 in those games, albeit mostly against cupcake opponents -- but we've barely seen any of the other East teams at full strength either. Boston's been missing Jayson Tatum and/or Kemba Walker, Jimmy Butler's barely played for the Heat, and who knows if or when Indiana is getting back T.J. Warren and Caris LeVert this season. The Bucks and the Nets appear to be mostly whole, but the former has been confusing and underwhelming, while the latter is too inherently fraught with on-and-off-court imbalance to maintain any kind of consistency. Between injuries, trade shuffles and COVID-related interruptions, we may very well get to the postseason this year having no real idea of who the best teams in the East actually are.
So could the Sixers play out the string with this roster and just hope that they can kinda ride Joel to the finish line in a weird year without an obvious runaway favorite? It's possible, though that's a lot to put on the big man's back in his age-27 season, when he's never played at this consistent level (or gotten through an entire year fully healthy) before. I'd certainly hope that Daryl Morey would at least explore the possibility of trading for a Zach LaVine type -- which maybe means "just Zach LaVine," since the number of guys who put up first-option-type numbers from a lead guard position and might actually be attainable is not large -- and I wrote last week about how they might actually be able to do so now without breaking up the team's core in the process. Get him, and the rest of the roster just kinda falls into place.
Without him? The Sixers might still be able to contend -- Embiid is that good right now, and the East is that weird -- but if any of the other more complete teams in the conference do start firing on all cylinders, we could find ourselves outclassed pretty quickly. And in the meantime, we should prepare ourselves for a whole lotta heartache whenever Joel has to sit.