Sixers seem broken without many assets to be fixed
CAMDEN, N.J. » The 76ers of 20192020 were going to be special. So they all agreed. So they all announced. So they all were convinced.
Their starting lineup so flush with All-Star level talent, their head coach wouldn’t bother waiting until the first training camp practice to wave off the idea of job competition. There would be Joel Embiid, Ben Simmons, Al Horford, Tobias Harris and Josh Richardson. With that, there would be no confusion. Perfection is perfection.
There would be 82 games, however inconvenient, but the Sixers would vow to make their way through them and emerge as the No. 1-seeded team in the NBA East. And by all means, their style of play would be unique and appealing, complete with a couple of tee-shirt-ready slogans.
“You should write this with a really thick crayon,” Brown said, before strolling off to camp. “And hear me loudly: We will end up playing smash-mouth offense and bully-ball defense. We have the team that can do that.” Crayons snap. Basketball seasons can, too. While the Sixers have not been awful, even going 22-2 in home games, something has gone horrifyingly astray with their plans. Thursday, they will be in Milwaukee to play their 52nd game, and even if they win, they will be 12 games behind the Bucks in the loss column with 30 to play.
Richardson has had recurring hamstring trauma. Embiid dislocated his finger. Those things mattered. But should they have mattered that much? By Wednesday, the team that had itself convinced it could enjoy the home-court postseason advantage through the Eastern Conference tournament was two standings places removed from even having that edge in Round 1.
So Brown guessed wrong, way wrong. And so did Elton Brand, who put the team together. And so did the media know-it-alls who tended to agree that the Sixers were positioned for fulfillment. But only Brand and Brown can fix things. And with the trade deadline coming at 3 p.m. Thursday, and with little to offer, that process is running out of time.
Something is broken. After a 31-point loss in Miami Monday, Simmons groaned that the Sixers were too soft. In sports, there are few worse insults. And for a franchise showpiece player to say it, it is more than a burst of understandable exasperation. It is something he was determined to fling into open discussion.
Allowing for the possibility that Simmons is correct, the Sixers did not become soft on their own. They became soft because they chose not to bring back two of their most vicious competitors in Jimmy Butler and J.J. Redick. They also felt it a good idea to replace T.J. McConnell, a player Brown always touted for his fierce, full-court defensive intensity, with Raul Neto and Trey Burke. Such is the risk of doing too much rotisserie-style roster construction. As much as the Sixers may have seemed improved over last season, they had sacrificed some of the spirit that had made them so competitive in the previous two years. At some point, that comes with an invoice.
That point has arrived. The Sixers’ upcoming schedule is challenging, but not overwhelming. So they have time for a rally. But even if they were only 5.5 games behind secondplace Toronto Wednesday, they need to become at least a little different before the deadline. Their problem is that they don’t have much beyond surprising rookie Matisse Thybulle to dangle in trade.
So, do they have enough anyway?
“I believe so,” Horford said Wednesday, after practice. “Elton has some tough decisions to make. But with this group, I believe we can get it together. Of course.”
Once, that would have sounded reasonable. But in that Miami blowout, the Sixers started the fourth quarter with Embiid, Burke, James Ennis, Mike Scott and Shake Milton. After having allowed 41 points in the third quarter, Brown was down to trying anything and resting valuable players. But other than Embiid, that group provided a glimpse at how ordinary the Sixers would be in a crisis, and how difficult it will be for Brand to package anything in exchange for trade-deadline value.
After having dismissed Redick, Butler, Robert Covington, Ersan Ilyasova and Marco Belinelli, among other shooters, in recent years, the Sixers were aware entering the season that they would not be the most mesmerizing long-distance-shooting team. But there was an assumption that it could all be addressed at the deadline, that some veteran with the ability to thrive in the sets formerly reserved for Redick would spring available. At one point, Redick’s name was even floated as a possibility. But unless Brand is willing to dip into his top six players, he has nothing that would appeal to any team, contention-minded or otherwise.
“I’m coaching what I have,” Brown decided. “Elton and the front office, I think, did a great job of constructing this team, and we have people who have emerged in some unlikely ways. Shake is an example. Furkan Korkmaz, in a way, is an example, kind of out of left field. We’ll take this group and until someone tells me differently, try to move it forward. I enjoy coaching the team. I didn’t down in Miami. But for the most part, it’s true.”
He’ll coach what he has, which is a sixth-place team. He has a starting unit with unreliable shooting. He has players who seem uncomfortable with their positioning. He has a team on a three-game losing streak. And he has a trade deadline that could yield no relief.
With so few escape routes, the Sixers are at a crisis point as they spin toward Milwaukee and beyond. Mark that down in thick crayon.