Harris emerging as a valuable leader
Fourth-quarter effort vs. Nets shows why Harris was worth heavy investment
The 76ers began the second half of their season Wednesday the usual way. They were looking all over the place, wondering what was next.
Their first 41 games a strange mix of home dominance and road confusion, the Sixers would spend the night in deep against the Brooklyn Nets, who had lost six of their last eight and hadn’t had their best player all season.
The Sixers would win, 117-106, because they typically win at home, where they are 19-2. But they were, have been, and will continue to be less than whole, at least until the trade deadline. It’s the way they’ve long been, which in its own way is odd, for after seven years of development, there should be some deadline for getting it right.
They don’t shoot well from outside. They are missing Joel Embiid, this time injured with a surgically repaired dislocated finger. And Al Horford has yet to regularly function as expected in his two-position role.
Yet … they don’t easily go away. They battle, particularly at home. And as he dug for a particular difference-maker Wednesday, Brett Brown knew
right where to turn. That would have been to Tobias Harris, who had just rung a bell in the Sixers’ locker room, a tradition for the player deemed that game’s most important.
“There is a sincerity in his personality,” Brown said. “And there is a genuine desire to win. You can’t dismiss that.”
For the $180,000,000 the Sixers are paying him, Harris should have a desire to win. But it would have been times like Wednesday, after the Sixers had lost six of eight and were in danger of sliding further from high Eastern Conference relevance, that Harris showed why he was worth a heavy investment.
The game choppy, the action rough, Harris scored 11 points in the fourth quarter, many on difficult, mid-range twopoint attempts. He was 4-for-6 in the final 12 minutes and was the No. 1 reason the Sixers remained on a pace to win more than 50 games.
“You see it in his face,” Brown said. “You see it in his actions in the locker room. And that means a lot.”
If the Sixers are a splitpersonality study, Harris can be a grounding agent. At the peak of his career, he has become a reliable scorer and a legitimate candidate for the AllStar Game, an honor he long has been denied. And if that happens, it is because when the Sixers had found themselves wandering through another pretrade-deadline maze of confusion, Harris solidly, confidently emerged as a cut-above player.
“In the second half, we were still finding our feet,” Brown said. “But he was our bell-ringer. It didn’t surprise me at all that he picked it up the way he did.”
To Brown, Harris’ continued development as a bulk scorer has been a priority. With Embiid likely out until well past the AllStar break, with Ben Simmons oddly reluctant or unable to score in fourth quarters, and with everyone in the operation waiting until the roster is remade in February, as it is always remade in February, Harris is the best option for survival.
“What I have said to anybody that will listen, but mostly to him, is that, ‘I want you to score. I want to grow you as a scorer,’” Brown said. “And I think he has done that. I think he has grown his game to where it is coming out to where I want it to be. He can get three-point attention. He can get into the lane and score over smaller people.
“I’m happy with that. And he is improving in subtle ways.”
Before the game, Brown was asked what the Sixers need, in particular, to make the second half of the season more fulfilling than the first. If he didn’t have a specific answer, it was because the list was too long.
“I mean, there is nothing that I can jump on and say, ‘Here it is,’” Brown said. “There are lots that would come to my mind.”
One thing that did come to mind, though, was that the Sixers are still searching for a personality. With the core group literally made over four times in the last season and a half, there has been a leadership drain. Brown regularly has tried to pin that responsibility on Embiid, calling him “the crown jewel” at whatever risk to anyone else in the room who might want that distinction. Simmons is a competitor and an unorthodox scorer. But when Jimmy Butler essentially grabbed the point guard position from him during the playoffs, then openly told him to be more aggressive, it was obvious that Simmons was not leading, but being led.
So there the Sixers were Wednesday, without Embiid and with a chance to tumble. And suddenly, there was Harris, taking a game over.
“He really is invaluable from a human standpoint,” Brown said, “as much as he is on the court.”
Until Embiid returns, Brown knows the Sixers will have plentiful burdens.
“I think we are all very candid that there are things that we have to do better,” he said. “I can’t say anything specifically, like defending sideline out-ofbounds. I know what they are. But it’s a little deeper than anointing one thing as the Holy Grail of our problems.”
If one, however, was finding that last-minute leader, a team in flux may have an answer.