The Times Herald (Norristown, PA)
McCaffery
mons’ answer was to take exactly zero for the rest of the season. If he can bigtime the coach of the Australian Olympic team and a long-time family friend like that, Simmons will not concede to expansion of his repertoire under any circumstance.
In his mind, he is a finished product at age 23. He’s right. It’s finished.
• Joel Embiid has more limitations than widely believed.
Though he had his moments of greatness, including a 49-point tormenting of the Atlanta Hawks, his lack of foot speed continues to be a challenge. With Simmons and others looking to play fast, the Sixers are naturally slowed offensively whenever Embiid is available. And while he likes to campaign for Defensive Player of the Year, Embiid often lacks the spring to jump out and defend on the perimeter.
Embiid will be 26 next year, his seventh since leaving college, and he has never played more than 64 games in a season.
The Sixers are committed to Embiid and Simmons. Both are skilled. But another regular season revealed the two are ill-suited to playing together.
• The Brett Brown era is in peril.
That could change with a lengthy postseason run. But this is about what the regular season revealed. And it was a tough one for a coach who’d been made to endure too many of those in what he has often called his “interesting life” with the Sixers.
It was just last spring when Josh Harris refused to commit to Brown past one playoff round. And given the opportunity this year to say Brown was his coach for the long term, Elton Brand passed. The Sixers, with Brown as the front man, entered the season ranting about how they were the best team in the Eastern Conference. If the next game they play is in the postseason, it will be in Boston as the No. 6 seed.
Brown is a stable basketball man with deep coaching knowledge, and he will be quickly recycled in the coaching carousel. But the Sixers’ road difficulties, Simmons’
refusal to grow, a lack of a robust pro-Brown clubhouse constituency and Brand’s mood were impossible to ignore.
• Signing Al Horford for four years and $109 million was a horrifying mistake.
Since much of that expenditure was justified by what Horford, 33, could supply in the playoffs, there will be an opportunity to revisit the situation. But as for what the regular season showed, Horford was uncomfortable as he was unproductive as a hybrid center-forward, was never the outside shooter he seemed to be whenever he was torching the Sixers from deep, was not the in-house leader he had the potential to be and he temporarily lost his starting job on merit.
Horford had been playing better lately. For the Sixers, the only benefit of that will be that they can easier off-load his contract in the offseason. And even that will require a valuable first-round draft choice as a sweetener.
• Tobias Harris is exactly what he always has been … but not more.
A natural scorer, a good and willing teammate, Harris provided 19.4 points per game, 36-percent threepoint accuracy and the occasional critical bucket. But at five-years and $180,000,000, he is being compensated as a superstar. That, he is not. He is a just-miss All-Star in an industry with several dozen.
• Shake Milton can do. In any regular season, there will be the revelations. Milton, a secondround 2018 draft pick, was barely considered a factor in the preseason, but by the end proved he could be the three-point shooter the Sixers will need after the J.J. Redick era.
• Josh Richardson has leadership potential.
With Jimmy Butler gone, and with Simmons and Embiid disinterested in the task, there was a need for direction from within the room. Richardson, though just a first-year Sixer, filled the role, all while providing meaningful minutes at the point and shooting well.
• Matisse Thybulle was a find.
Brand and the Sixers were clear at the draft that they wanted Thybulle. They picked the right guy. His length providing unique value at the defensive end, he shot well enough to be a two-way value.
As for everyone else, all they proved is that they were sufficient but easily replaced NBA backups.
So bring on the playoffs, whenever they happen. At that point, every analysis will be open for re-examination. But as for the regular season of 2019-2020, it revealed only that the Sixers have a lot to prove before they are ever as capable as they had themselves convinced.