The Philadelphia 76ers have struggled how to best integrate big free-agent acquisition Al Horford into the lineup on offense and it has raised questions about whether it was such a smart move to sign Horford, to begin with.
As the season gets set to resume, the Sixers will now have yet another chance to see what the big man duo of Horford and Embiid can do on the floor together. Coach Brett Brown acknowledges that this has been a tough aspect of his team to fully figure out, but he is confident things will come together. It’s just a process of working through it all.
“My thought process is quite simple,” Brown started. “I’m going to go into the three weeks and figure it out. I think that it’s true that we have learned a lot of some of the things that either don’t work and you really in your head and heart feel like ‘I don’t care how much time we have, that’s probably going to be tough to pull off’ versus, ‘we need to do a little bit better I need to do a little bit better.'”
When it comes to Embiid and Horford, specifically, the two of them have an offensive rating of only 101.1 which is in the fifth percentile per Cleaning the Glass. Embiid’s individual offensive rating is at 109.2 and Horford’s is at 114.7. The evidence suggests that the Sixers are much better on offense with just one of them on the floor rather than having the two of them together and that is where the idea of two different Sixers teams comes into play.
“There is kind of a Team Al and a Team Joel and you figure out what that world is and then there is the integration of the two,” Brown explained. “When you start taking a deep dive on those three things that I just said and take some analytics into that like ‘what do we do offensively and defensively?’ and you start to get a clearer idea of what you do well. Somewhere with all of that, I’ll be able to give a clearer answer of what I think once we start to play again.”
The restart in Orlando does offer Brown a fresh start. He realizes that things with Embiid and Horford did not exactly work out as well throughout the season, but this restart does give him and his staff a clean slate and they can figure out what they plan to do next in the season’s restart.
“I feel like we should,” Brown added. “It’s easier to truly believe that when you have Ben’s (Simmons) health at a stage that it is, but yes I do and I feel like I’m going to Orlando certainly mindful of all the things that are really going on in the world and the health climate that we’re in and amongst that, an excitement to restart, to reload a team that I think we have as good a chance as any [team].”
Philadelphia brought Horford in an effort to team him up with Embiid and win a championship. It was not to separate the two of them and try to win that way. In the end, as long as they do win, it does not matter how they do it and nobody will mind if they split the two of them up. That is why this upcoming playoff run is going to be very intriguing for the Sixers.
Philadelphia will get their second shot on August 1 when they officially reopen play against the Indiana Pacers. [lawrence-related id=33850,33840,33832]