The Philadelphia 76ers brought back Tobias Harris for a reason and that was to provide some scoring and shooting from the wing position. He hasn’t lived up to that expectation in the previous two games.
After an eight point effort in Tuesday’s 98-97 win over the Cleveland Cavaliers, Harris followed that up with another night where he struggled scoring another eight points and he shot 4-for-13 in a 112-97 loss to the Orlando Magic on Wednesday. He is shooting a combined 0-for-14 from deep in the two contests.
Heading into the season, coach Brett Brown stated that the Sixers need Harris’ shooting. On Wednesday, Brown reiterated that comment:
I think it’s just human nature. He wants to please. He wants to shoot the ball. He wants to score. We need him to score. We needed Al (Horford) and we needed Tobias to score. We had a drought in the last period and we had a long night in that regard offensively. It consistently reminds me of two things. One, it always in any level of team that you have, it takes longer for offense to catch defense. And two, during that spell you better guard. You better guard. It’s the only insolation that you have if you’re going to miss shots at the rate that we’ve been missing shots. And, so be it.
The season is long. The team is only 11 games into a season where they have championship expectations so it is still very early to make any assumptions about the deal the Sixers gave to Harris.
Brown added:
I cut this thing up into thirds in my head and in my heart. I think it’s going to take until past Christmas to find the rhythm beat to what we’re doing. I look forward to a having a consistent rotation with Joel (Embiid) in the mix, in the meantime I give Orlando credit. I thought they did a great job defensively and we did not respond after a back-to-back.
The Sixers have had a rough time trying to figure out the rotation and it’s been tough to really settle down on a rotation with Embiid being in-and-out of the lineup and the recent injury to Ben Simmons. Once the team settles down, that can give an opportunity to Harris to really find his groove again. [lawrence-related id=19232,19222,19150]