Author: Andrew Edwards

Al Horford: Disaster

by Andrew Edwards, posted in Basketball, NBA

It seems like just yesterday when the Sixers had a fully healthy roster, and had the option to move Al Horford to the bench. Up until that point, Horford’s struggles had been written off as a fit issue, and it seemed as though staggering his minutes with Embiid’s, as opposed to playing them at the same time, would solve the issue. As it turns out, that is far from the case.

With three of the starters out for an extended period of time during a tough west coast road trip, many expected the Sixers to struggle. It would almost be blind faith to predict anything else. But the one bright side we had to look forward to was seeing Al Horford in a role that would best fit his skill set. His response to this opportunity was to play his worst basketball of the season. After a decent enough showing against the Cavaliers, Horford has been nothing short of a disappointment in games against relevant teams.

All of the things that made Horford an appealing option in free agency have been non existent this entire season, specifically during this stretch. His low post offense has been sub par. His shooting, both from midrange and from deep, have been bad. His accurate passing, quick decision making, good shot selection and finishing have been non existent. His defense, which may have been the most eye popping part of his game, has been TERRIBLE.

He’s good for a block and a steal every now and then, but all season Horford has looked like it’s his first time playing basketball on the defensive end. He has gotten absolutely cooked by every matchup, and undrafted free agent Norvelle Pelle, Kyle O’Quinn and Mike Scott have frankly all held their ground defensively better than he has.
Not only has Horford not stepped up for the Sixers as they’ve become short-handed, he’s been one of the players keeping them out of games. It’s becoming more and more clear that if the sixers are going to make a playoff run, it will be in spite of Horford, not because of him.

Sixers Home Dominance Continues

by Andrew Edwards, posted in Basketball, NBA

On Thursday night the Sixers took care of business yet again at home in a 115-106 victory against the New York Knicks. Here are my takeaways from the game:

The Good
Tobias Harris: Tobias was the leading candidate to take over the offensive load when Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid went down. He was the go to option offensively for the magic and the clippers when he played there, so he is no stranger to being the top option on an undermanned team. He certainly did not disappoint in his first look at his new temporary role. Tobias finished with an efficient 32 points on 14-21 shooting and 3-6 from deep, while adding 7 boards and 7 assists. If the sixers want to stay afloat in the playoff race in their stars’ absences, they’ll need similar production from him throughout the rest of the year.

Shake Milton: The second year guard drafted in the second round out of SMU continues to look like a draft steal for the Sixers. After watching from the bench for much of the season, Shake has made the most of his opportunities and surprisingly has been one of the sixers most consistent players, and tonight he made another strong case to be in the sixers rotation, playing solid defense throughout, scoring 19 points on 5-5(!) shooting from deep, with only 1 turnover. It would be huge for this team if he can keep playing like this.

Al Horford: We have to give credit where credit is due. Despite being boo’d by the crowd for yet another missed wide open layup, Al Horford played pretty well overall. Like him or not, this is still one of the reasons Horford is on the team, to play when Embiid is unavailable. Whether it comes in normal backup center minutes when Embiid is resting to help the bench unit, or play as the starting center when Embiid is inactive, that is where Al helps this team the most.

The win column: it may not have been a very convincing win, but any win we can get without Embiid or Simmons we will take. A loss here would have sent the fan base over the edge, and they took care of business when they needed to.

The Bad
Glenn Robinson: Both Glenn Robinson and Alec Burks were putting up seemingly empty stats on a bad team before they got traded to the Sixers. When the Sixers traded for them, we always knew there was the possibility that when the stakes were raised and the roles were lessened that either of these guys could be worse than advertised. For Glenn Robinson, that certainly has been the case thus far. There is obviously plenty of time for Robinson to prove his worth, but outside of being able to run in transition and occasionally catching his defender sleeping with a backdoor cut, Robinson has been mostly useless offensively. He had another dud tonight, keeping this 0% from three streak alive and scoring only 4 points on 6 shots in his 21 minutes in the starting role. I’m not entirely sure why he’s starting either, especially right after publicly complaining about his role with the team after being here for only a couple of weeks.

Alec Burks: Unlike Robinson, I think Burks overall has been a solid role player for the Sixers. I’ve actually wanted him to start since he got here, although I’m not opposed to riding the hot hand with Shake instead. Tonight, however, he was pretty bad. I didn’t hate the looks he was getting, but he really had an off night, shooting only 2-10 on the night.

Josh richardson- Josh finally started hitting late in the 3rd quarter, but for most of the night couldn’t hit a jumper to save his life. He didn’t kill the team considering he only had 13 attempts, but he really has to step up and score more in the absence of Ben and Joel.

The margin of victory: I know they are playing without their two franchise players, but this supporting cast should still be able to beat this Knicks team at home with ease. If the Sixers want to consider themselves contenders, they can’t look like one of the worst teams in the league when they’re down a couple players. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt that they just have to get used to playing without Ben and Joel, but that trend cannot continue or else they will get handled by other playoff teams.

Mayhem in Philly

by Andrew Edwards, posted in NBA

It may be time to hit the panic button in Philadelphia. The 76ers season has been hanging by a thread all year. Entering Wednesday night, although they were without Ben Simmons for the foreseeable future, there was still some reason for optimism. The Sixers going into this game had the third easiest strength of schedule, what seemed to be a more motivated Joel Embiid coming off a career high 49 point game against the Hawks, and a record of 36-22. Things took a turn, however, when early in the first quarter of a double digit loss to the Cavs (yes, you read that right) Joel Embiid went to the locker room after being wrapped up by Ante Zizic.

At halftime, Embiid was ruled out of the game with a shoulder sprain. I’m no doctor, but from what I have gathered, a shoulder sprain can range anywhere from 1 to 8 weeks, so Embiid should be back come playoff time unless he suffers a setback. Simmons, on the other hand, has nerve impingement In his back, which could be a 2-3 week long injury if it can heal with rest and physical therapy, but could end his season if it develops into a herniated disk, which would require surgery. Needless to say, this team is officially backed into a corner.

There are a lot of takeaways from Wednesday night but aside from the injury, the biggest story is, yet again, the Sixers abysmal struggles on the road. I would be lying if I said I had done any actual research on it but I can not imagine that there has ever been a team to have the best home record in the league with a road record worse than 9-21. There just can’t be.

Their struggles on the road, in my opinion, are mostly effort based. I hate to sound like the mainstream media talking heads that pretend the only reason teams ever lose games is because the other team “wanted it more” or “had more heart” but in the Sixers case, it’s mostly true. Statistically, while every starter on the team does have a dip in statistics on the road, it isn’t by much. The only starter that has much of a change at all is Embiid, with a 7% dip in field goal percentage. But the problem really lies on the defensive end of the floor.

When the Sixers are at home, no team in the league has a better defensive net rating. On the road, 11 teams have a better defensive net rating. Statistics don’t always tell the whole story, but in this case statistics are very reflective of their play. If you watch the games they give up way more wide open looks on the road than they do at home. They give up easy offensive rebounds. They make lazy passes. They become stagnant on offense because they cannot string together enough stops defensively to gain any momentum. That is the main problem with how this team was built. When you hang your hat on the defensive end, you have to bring it on that end every single night, constantly create offense with defense, string together enough stops when you’re in a shooting slump so that other teams can’t go on runs, and take pride in the fact that nobody can score on you, and a lot of these guys just don’t seem to have that mindset. The plan, according to Brett Brown, was to play bully ball offense and smash mouth defense. So far, we are only seeming to get those things at the Wells Fargo Center. Hopefully Joel and Ben have a speedy recovery, because if this Cavs game tells us anything, things will go south very quickly if they don’t.

Out Indefinitely: A Sixers Story

by Andrew Edwards, posted in Basketball, NBA

On Sunday night Ben Simmons suffered a lower back injury in the first quarter of a game against the bucks. This was a re-aggravation of an injury that he previously suffered in a practice the week before. Today, he was ruled out Indefinitely.

Players get injured every year, it’s an unfortunate reality that we as fans, organizations and players have to face. I would never sit here and say that every time an organization demonstrated poor judgement when deciding to play someone through an injury that action needed to be taken. With that being said, I think it is time for the sixers to make some changes and reevaluate how they make these types of decisions.

If this were a stand-alone incident, I would probably brush this off. Hell, if this was the second or third incident i would probably brush it off, but I can only see this same thing happen season after season before I start to connect the dots. Dating back to 2016, the sixers have re-aggravated a Joel Embiid knee injury twice, played Joel Embiid the most minutes in the league for the first stretch of the season in 2018 season, let Markelle Fultz play through a shoulder injury during a SUMMER LEAGUE GAME that arguably lead to him physically forgetting how to shoot a basketball, allowed one of their best young players to average collectively 34 and a half minutes per game over the course of the last 3 seasons, and now this. They have an extremely bad habit of making short term decisions that lead to long term consequences.

Aside from these specific examples, they have a much deeper history of injuries since 2013. Nerlens Noel, joel Embiid, Jahlil okafor, markelle fultz, zhaire Smith, and Ben Simmons each missed significant portions of their rookie year. Embiid also hasn’t had a healthy playoffs since he’s been here and Markelle Fultz couldn’t see the floor the entire time he was there. We can’t blame all of these injuries on front office/medical staff negligence, but when it happens so often, I believe it’s fair to be skeptical.

And lastly, we can not pretend that players don’t recognize these trends too. Kawhi Leonard forced his way out of an organization with arguably the greatest coach of all time because he felt his injuries were mishandled. And after he left, the spurs have found it significantly harder to land free agents. I do not see a reason that the sixers organization should not be worried of a similar fate for themselves if this trend continues.

Al Horford: Sixth man

by Andrew Edwards, posted in NBA

The Philadelphia 76ers entered the 2019-2020 nba season as one of the frontrunners to come out of the East this season. Although they lost their 4th quarter closer in Jimmy Butler, and their best jump shooter in JJ redick, they seemingly had made up that value in former allstar al horford and last seasons leader for the Miami heat, Josh Richardson. The idea was though that while josh can’t shoot like JJ, and Al can’t score quite like Jimmy, they brought a new and different skill set to make up for it, specifically ones that the sixers lacked last season that would end up costing them a chance at a title. Richardson was/is a clearly superior defender to JJ, and is one of the better gaurd defenders in the league. and Al filled a need that jimmy, or anyone else on the 2018-2019 team couldn’t, a backup center that could (potentially) also play alongside joel Embiid, who also happened to be Joel’s worst matchup in the league in the 2018-2019 season. So now the sixers have the physicality and defensive versatility to defend any team in the league while, on paper, not having really anyone who is a negative offensively. Sadly, the optimism that was unlike any optimism sixers fans have had since the iverson era, was not met with the results everyone had hoped for. As it turns out, having 4 players in your starting lineup that heavily rely on posting up, getting inside and being surrounded by floor spacers leads to some unsatisfying results offensively. It also turns out that constantly going stagnant on offense leads to a drop in team morale and motivation on both sides of the ball. Who would’ve thought? Clearly not general manager elton brand. So, sitting at an underwhelming 33-21, and an even more underwhelming 6th seed in the eastern conference, something had to change. Somebody had to come out of this starting lineup. Josh Richardson was the only true gaurd, which the sixers were lacking, Ben simmons and Joel Embiid are the franchise players, and Tobias Harris is the only one of the forwards who even moderately resembles a floor spacer, so that leaves al horford. The same al horford making roughly $33million a year for the next 4 years. The same al horford who hasn’t come off the bench since he was a rookie. But the fact of the matter is Al horford was putting up career lows, and the net rating of him simmons and Embiid was hardly league average. It was a move that had to be made, and frankly, it wasn’t made soon enough. The Second they replaced him in the starting lineup, it immediately lead to arguably one of their most impressive wins of the year against the clippers, and the floor opened up for everybody, there was a new and improved energy level from the whole team, even Al improved in his new role. And now the sixers, rightfully, seem pretty committed to sticking with this experiment, but one question still remains, who starts over Al horford? Do you give up some defense with the teams most accurate shooter in furkan korkmaz, and leave the bench unit with less fire power on the perimiter? Do you start Glenn Robinson/Alec burks, who both are new to the team and have no chemistry with anyone? Do you stick with the defensive first mindset and bring rookie defensive standout Matisse Thybulle in to the starting role, even though he doesn’t bring much to the table from the scoring department?  I guess it’s good to have a lot of options, as opposed to their roster options last year, but the clock is ticking and the sixers have to figure it out come playoff time. Only time will tell how this rollercoaster of a season will end.