Will the Sixers Finally Be Good Even Without Joel Embiid This Year?
Will the Sixers Finally Be Good Even Without Joel Embiid This Year?
Maybe not. But also probably?
My main reaction to the Sixers' schedule release this year -- as much as I could muster a reaction in the first place, can't say I can really get much excitement up for a schedule drop -- was a slight Oh shit, here we go again. As detailed by The Danny already, once again the Sixers get to load up on easy games early, have an impossibly hard month or two sometime in the new calendar year, and then finish against a bunch of cupcakes -- just like every other year of The Process (though really it may have just been last year, hard to remember for sure.)
Regardless, you may recall that this schedule structure didn't work out great for us last year: After plowing through the early season JV circuit, Joel got hurt at the worst possible time and we were forced to weather the toughest stretches of the season without him, ultimately losing too much ground to make it up once he got back. I started worrying about us tracing this same exact arc again next season, getting overly chest-puffy about steamrolling our cream cheese portion of the schedule before falling into a sinkhole with Embiid's inevitable mid-season maladies. Were we gonna have to take a crowbar to his lower body early in the season to appease the injury gods, just in the hopes of getting him back in time to save the team post-All-Star break?
But then, a calm came over me. (Just a slight calm, this was only a mid-August-level AU freakout to begin with.) We don't really have to play the schedule game this year. Embiid can miss the games he has to miss. We may actually be good enough to convincingly tread water without him this time.
I don't even think the Embiid-less squad last year was quite as hopeless as their win-loss record would imply. Tyrese Maxey missed a bunch of those games too -- including those crippling back-to-back losses against the woeful Grizzlies and Nets that sorta secretly sealed our fate last season -- and the fact that they were in such a tough portion of their schedule meant that they were kinda playing uphill every night. I still feel like that team could've been a 40-45-win team over the course of a normal season; not good enough to be particularly relevant, but good enough to stay afloat while Embiid got right.
This year, though, they might finally be a real playoff-caliber team even without Jo. You're not winning a championship with Maxey and Paul George as your two best players, but you're probably winning a whole lot of regular season games; you can still build a pretty real and formidable offense just starting with those two guys and not have to suddenly be relying on Kelly Oubre Jr. to take 25 shots a game. The Clippers were able to go 8-7 against a decently tough run of teams without Kawhi Leonard last year, and I would certainly rather have Maxey as my No. 1 guy on offense alongside George right now than James Harden. Give me Maxey and George and a decent gallery of role players -- as the Sixers should have on the roster this year -- and I'll take our chances against most teams most nights in the regular season.
And then of course, there's Andre Drummond. I love and cherish our dearly departed BBall Paul forever -- can't wait for him and Embiid to be reunited on the Eastern Conference All-Star team next February once he averages 22-9-5 for the Pistons as a starter -- but he was maybe just a little too wild to serve as the Sixers' starting center for any continuous period of time; Normal Good is always gonna be a little bit of a challenge for a team that's starting BBall consistently for weeks. Drummond can fit into Normal Good a little bit better. He's got his flaws, which will undoubtedly be exposed with too much time in the light, but he can function coherently in a good team because you basically always know what you're going to get from him; he's not gonna suddenly go cold on the boards for a week or two. And then behind him, a little Adem Bona blocking shots and getting out of the way on offense... not a bad way to spend 10-15 minutes a night. We might need to shore up our insurance policy there a bit, especially if Drummond has to ever miss a game or two himself, but it's not a particularly screaming concern. Not yet anyway.
What I'm most excited for, though, is Year Five Tyrese. I mean I'm pretty excited for Year Anything Tyrese, but now that he's been taken the leap, gotten paid and watched a summer of Team USA basketball from his couch, I think he's gonna be as hungry as ever to stop being the Sixers' cute overachievement story -- he's already plenty cute without that -- and start simply being their superstar and franchise player. As much as we fixate on how great Tyrese is and how much better he's already gotten, I still think a lot of folks forget how much better he should still get from here; he's still only 23 -- younger than Ice Spice -- and has already grown from change-of-pace bench guy to legitimate All-Star. Every year we go "well that last season when Maxey dramatically improved everything about his game was great but surely that's mostly over with now," and every year he just gets way better again. I'm done doubting it's gonna happen again this year.
And if the horrors of the Embiid-less stretch last year accomplished one positive thing, hopefully it was in teaching Tyrese how far he still had to go in terms of being a No. 1 option every night. Which isn't to say he flopped in the role -- he had some tough games, but was mostly productive and occasionally spectacular -- but the grind of it definitely wore on him, and he clearly had a lot to learn as both a scorer and a distributor when not having a hub like Joel to play off of. Developing his mid-range attack should hopefully be the biggest area of emphasis for him this summer; when he's looking to attack off the dribble he's gotta have a little more varied a gameplan than just charging the rim every time with the occasional stepback three mixed in.
But Paul George will help. A roster full of competent vets will help. A tradeline move or two will (probably) help. A post-Olympics Embiid who's learned a little more about how to be effective on offense without getting the ball every single possession will help when he's around, and (maybe) better schedule managing will help so that the times he isn't around are more sporadic than continuous. The Sixers being good when Embiid sits would hopefully encourage him to sit more regularly, and perhaps decrease the chances the decision gets taken out of his hands for a month or two. But even if that does happen, we may finally have a roster that's not as miserable and hollow to watch as a late-season episode of Billions when we have to go some time without him. Do your worst, NBA; I will fear no act of scheduling sabotage this season.
Andrew Unterberger writes 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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