Though strong, Sixers not as complete
CAMDEN, N.J. >> After six years of tanking and tinkering, after several dozen point guards, after nights when tickets were going for a buck on the internet ... after it all, Josh Harris looked at his 20182019 76ers and declared success.
Finally, everything was in place. There were tankprize draft choices Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons playing at an All-Star level. There was one of the best outside shooters ever, J.J. Redick. There was Tobias Harris, a star-level scorer. And there was the NBA’s ultimate closer, the finisher, the one player who would demand the ball for the final possession. There was Jimmy Butler.
With that, Harris would first call anything but tworound postseason penetration, “very problematic.” Later, he would refuse to commit to his head coach past one playoff round. And he was right to be so demanding.
Last season was the Sixers’ time.
That was the moment when all the parts were in place.
Then Kawhi Leonard made a game-winning shot in Game 7 of Round 2 in Toronto, the ball four times hitting iron before it ever hit the net. Then, it was over. Boom.
“I really believe we could have won a championship,” Brett Brown would say, months later, before the Sixers’ next training camp. “Life goes on.”
Life went on, and for the Sixers, it wasn’t catastrophic. Complicated transactions abridged, a dissatisfied Butler would leave for Miami, Redick would bolt for New Orleans and, to fill those spots, Elton Brand would acquire Al Horford and Josh Richardson. The bench would be reimagined, as all NBA benches must, given contract realities. Embiid would go on a diet. Simmons would at least consider taking the odd three-point shot. And, as it usually happens, all would be declared fine.
Before camp, Brown would set the NBA Finals as a goal. Few were emboldened to argue.
“The potential is amazing,” Tobias Harris said. “That’s not even just on the basketball floor. I know we have a really good team, and we get along with each other, help each other and have one solid goal. We’ll strive and push each other every day.”
So it would go, in one form or another, throughout training camp. The Sixers would stress how good they were and how ready they were to compete for a championship. But for the most fundamental basketball reasons, they just are not as ready for that as they were last spring. That’s what happens when a team becomes less able to shoot and becomes greatly diminished at point guard.
The Sixers will sell the idea of Simmons as an All-Star point guard. Last year, he was. But he was not the point guard when it mattered. Instead, Butler commandeered that job, whether Simmons, Brown or anyone else liked it or not. In the playoffs, either Butler had the ball in his hands or the Sixers were not going to win games. They knew it. They acknowledged it.
Behind Butler and Simmons, or Simmons and Butler, there was T.J. McConnell, whose grasp of all things basketball was unquestioned. Though the customary rotation squeeze would cost him postseason visibility, McConnell made a difference in plenty of regular-season games, whether with a steal, a crisp pass or a timely shot. This season? Butler is gone, allowing Simmons to regain the spot and, in the process, receive an ego boost. The Sixers were hoping either Trey Burke or Raul Neto would win the backup job in camp. Neither did. So the backup will be Richardson, a perimeter player by job spec who is willing to run the offense but who looked overwhelmed by the task in the exhibition games. That means the Sixers will try to win a championship with two unorthodox point guards, one barely willing to shoot.
A franchise never running a slogan deficit, Brown would tout “smashmouth” offense. The idea would be for the Sixers to take advantage of their size and muscle smaller defenders toward the rim instead of squaring up for three-point shots. And after they shot 51-for-161 from behind the arc in the preseason, Brown pretended not to notice.
“Time will tell,” he said. “But I don’t think it’s as big of a problem as maybe the marketplace does.”
The marketplace thinks it’s a problem for one reason: It’s virtually impossible to win critical NBA games without consistent, three-point shooting. The Sixers are satisfied that Embiid, Richardson, Horford and Harris can make long shots, and that Mike Scott and Burke can do so at a high level. But that’s like stuffing a baseball batting order with three 15-home-run hitters and arguing that it is the same as having one power threat hit 45. It’s not. Redick, and before him Robert Covington and Marco Belinelli, made Embiid and Simmons better. That power cannot be replaced by multiple aboveaverage shooters and a nifty catch phrase.
With Horford replacing Butler, the atmosphere in the room will improve. That’s a value. So is Horford’s ability to be a stretch-five whenever Embiid needs a rest. Simmons is a unique player able to help win regular-season games. Embiid and Simmons have Defensive Player of the Year ability. Richardson does, too. The Sixers will rebound. Brown can coach. And with a dilution of the Eastern
Conference since the end of last season, the Vegas over-under of 55 wins sounds about right.
“The good thing about this group is that we are very versatile,” Horford said. “Guys can play multiple positions. Our strength is our length. That will play to our advantage.” They’re different. They should be very good.
But to think the 76ers are a better basketball team than they were at the end of last season, that would be problematic.