The Philadelphia 76ers are undergoing some big changes against their will in the middle of the season. With Joel Embiid scheduled to undergo surgery on Friday to repair a torn ligament in his left hand, that means coach Brett Brown is challenged to make more changes to his offensive schemes.
Just when it seemed like the Sixers had settled on a few things, this Embiid injury has to have Brown pivot out of those changes and now focus on an Al Horford centered offense.
“You’ve got an all-league player that is your focal point to your offense,” said Brown. “You don’t have him, what does that mean? With pace of game, focal points, called plays, and where do I begin? It’s massive. I think if you looked at the results that we have had without Joel, we have lots of room to grow.”
The Sixers will now have to run a more up-tempo, running style of offense that fits more for Horford and Ben Simmons rather than what Embiid would run with a slower-paced offense that takes advantage of his low post ability and his skills down in that area.
So any type of offensive philosophy with Embiid now goes out the window.
“I’m putting a blowtorch, a bullet, many bullets into what we used to do,” Brown explained. “It doesn’t fit so shame on me on trying to make it fit. We don’t have Joel Embiid so when I say ‘blowtorch and bullet’, I mean it. It doesn’t mean we have to completely pivot out to wild stuff that could be reckless, I don’t think so. I think it’s just taking the house we’ve lived in and just moving the furniture around a little bit.”
In the previous offense, the Sixers guards would immediately look for Embiid on the block and have the offense run through him. They won’t do that with Horford so they’re job gets a little tougher. They will have to run more pick-and-rolls and be more decisive in their decision making.
“To think we’re going to replicate what we used to do with Joel with Al so we make the perimeter people’s world more seamless and comfortable, it can’t happen,” the coach stated. “There’s now adjustments as a team that we have to make.”
Philadelphia will have to make yet another adjustment and that will cause some more issues for an offense that was still trying to work out some kinks that were already there. Oh well, such is life in Philadelphia. [lawrence-related id=23106,23099,23091]