Throughout this winter, OFD will be looking at some of the positive surprises and disappointments among teams this NBA season. Now that the calendar has turned to February, OFD will be looking at the teams that haven’t quite met expectations.
While most of these disappointments will be teams that are currently outside the top tier of teams, starting off with a championship contender that has mystified the basketball world this year feels right. Many people’s pick to represent the Eastern Conference in the finals, the Philadelphia 76ers are instead scuffling along at 6th in the conference. While they actually have the best home record in the NBA, their struggles on the road have put them in a position where they may never get the all-important home-court advantage they clearly need.
So what has happened to the team that almost took out Toronto last spring? In short? Fit. When your two best players don’t make sense together, you’re never going to reach your potential. While the rest of the roster is talented, you still need your pieces to work together, and too often it seems that Embiid and Simmons are on different planets.
The beginning of this Sixers run was led by Simmons and Embiid, but alongside JJ Redick, Robert Covington, and Dario Saric. The team changed its trajectory by consolidating assets for Jimmy Butler and Tobias Harris, then flipped Butler to Miami for Josh Richardson, and signed Al Horford instead of resigning Redick, creating what looked like the most fearsome defensive starting lineup of all time coming in to this season.
But it just hasn’t seemed to click. Horford is having his worst season in a decade, and while Harris and Richardson have been solid contributors, neither has leveled up to be the type of on-ball creator that Butler was in the 4th quarter of games. Matisse Thybulle is already among the top 15 defensive players in the league, but the rookie’s offensive game is quite limited for now. The rest of the cast has been fine, with Mike Scott standing out in particular as playing well. And yet…
Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons are both all-world talents and all stars. They just shouldn’t be playing together. The much-maligned Markelle Fultz, he of the broken shot, has made 2 three pointers 4 times this year. Zion Williamson, said to possess a shaky jumper, made 4 threes in his NBA debut. Why are these numbers important? Because Ben Simmons has made 2 threes for his whole career. The lack of spacing that his unwillingness to shoot creates makes it hard for Philadelphia to run a modern offensive system unless Simmons is surrounded by shooters.
While Joel Embiid is shooting 33% from outside, it’s also clear that opposing defenses would rather he stay there then have him post-up. Embiid is the rare player in today’s game for whom an archaic post-up game is efficient enough to play through. The problem is that without Simmons spacing out to 3, it’s easy for teams to throw an extra guy at Embiid when he posts up, reducing Philly’s firepower.
So what should be done? It’s certainly not hard to see a world where Philadelphia looks just fine once the playoffs arrive. Even if they don’t manage to climb into home-court advantage in a playoff series, their defense, ranked 5th in efficiency, could swallow teams whole with their length. Additionally, they are still one of the most talented teams in the whole NBA. However, if another season ends short of the Conference Finals, Brett Brown will likely find himself out of a job, and Philly fans may have to wonder about trading one of their two superstars.
