Teams noticing Sixers ability to share the ball
PHILADELPHIA » A pair of adept passes from Joel Embiid to Ben Simmons the other night helped the 76ers secure a road win.
With his back to the rim, and his feet about 15 feet from the basket, Embiid had drawn coverage from multiple defenders before uncorking a pair of over-theshoulder passes to Simmons for two uncontested dunks. One in regulation, and another in overtime, that helped push the Sixers past Minnesota.
And those passes drew the attention of the Oklahoma City Thunder.
The Sixers have positioned themselves as a pass-happy team, one that — even with the benefit of two budding superstars on its roster — doesn’t mind sharing the ball. They average 26.1 assists per game, good for third-best in the NBA. And their 354 passes per game are 20 better than the next-closest team.
Brett Brown calls it “a good-togreat” mindset. In other words, why should one of his players hoist a good shot when a pass would enable a teammate to get a better look at the basket? It’s part of the reason, so says their coach, that the Sixers have found success through the season’s first 27 games.
“You’ve got half-a-second to pass it, shoot it, or drive it,” Brown said Friday, two hours before the Sixers faced the Thunder. “We don’t want ball-holders. We don’t want ball-stoppers.”
The Sixers are one of three clubs with teammates who average five or more assists, between Simmons’ 7.7 assists and T.J. McConnell’s 5.1. (The others are Boston’s Al Horford and Marcus Smart and Toronto’s Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan.)
Simmons also leads all players in individual passes per game, with 78.1. For context, Atlanta’s Dennis Schroder ranks second in that category ... with 66.0.
Brown deserves credit for fostering that culture.
“We glorify, we gamify the assist. The assist is king. The pass is everything,” Brown preached. “The way that we play, it’s good for our personnel . ... In general, I’ve said to our people in Philadelphia that it drip-feeds into every aspect of our locker room.”
At the other end of the court Friday, the Sixers stared down a team littered with NBA royalty, but one that struggles mightily with ball movement. Oklahoma City’s mostly static offense, which features plenty of isolation play from Russell Westbrook, Carmelo Anthony and Paul George, has led to a league-fewest 261 passes per game.
Thunder coach Billy Donovan seemed somewhat apologetic of his team’s dismissive approach to moving the ball.
“To me, it’s always about generating a good shot,” he said. “If we make (only) one or two passes and generate a good shot for a player on the floor, I’m OK with that. The one thing we have to be committed (to) is, sometimes, if it’s not created on one or two shots, can we make the third or fourth or fifth pass?”
Hey, whatever works. But for the Sixers, particularly in an overtime win this week at Minnesota, sharing the ball has led to victories. ***
There’s no debate that Mo Cheeks is one of the best players in Sixers’ franchise history. His No. 10 already hangs in the Wells Fargo Center rafters. Now, his likeness is immortalized outside the team’s training facility.
The Sixers unveiled a sculpture of Cheeks in Camden, N.J. The timing of the ceremony worked out well for the 61-yearold Cheeks, an assistant coach with Oklahoma City.
“I was always a big fan of those Sixers teams back then,” said Donovan, a Long Island native who had a vested interest in the Sixers after they acquired Julius Erving from the Nets. “Mo was a great catalyst to those teams, and had an incredible career and was the floor general for their team. (He) brought that to this city and to this organization, and I’m just happy they’re honoring him.”
The statue of Cheeks joins three others that were erected at the training center a year ago, those that depict Wilt Chamberlain, Billy Cunningham and Hal Greer.