PHILADELPHIA–The Philadelphia 76ers are 21 games into the 2023-24 season and still have some aspects they need to figure out. The Sixers have had a lot of players go in and out of the lineup due to injuries and illness and coach Nick Nurse has had to mix and match a bit.
After making the big Halloween trade in which they sent James Harden to the Los Angeles Clippers, the Sixers have had to find a way to work four new players into the rotation. They then lost Kelly Oubre Jr. on Nov. 11 after being struck by a vehicle and Nurse has had to make moves in terms of his rotation and starting lineup.
With Oubre Jr. back from injury, Nurse now has to configure how Philadelphia will look on a nightly basis.
“I think you can pretty much safely say the 5 starters are gonna in the rotation, right?” Nurse explained. “I think you can pretty much safely say Paul Reed’s gonna be in the rotation as the backup 5. I think you can probably say Kelly Oubre is gonna be in the rotation considering what he brings on both ends of the ball…Pat Bev is gonna be in there as the backup 1. After that, I really like—there’s a lot to like about all the other guys.”
Nurse has options such as Marcus Morris Sr., Robert Covington, Mo Bamba, Furkan Korkmaz, and KJ Martin off his bench. All of them have shown they can play and produce in the NBA and Nurse knows it. It’s just about getting a chance to see everybody to make his evaluation.
“That’s where we gotta figure out are we playing 10?” Nurse added. “Yeah. We are now, for sure because we’re trying to figure out what’s Marcus bring? What’s Cov bring? They all can bring something. All of them. All the way to 15. We’ve seen Jaden (Springer) bring his things. We’ve seen (Danuel) House bring his things. We’ve seen Furk bring some things. We’ve seen even Mo who’s hardly gotten a chance have a pretty good game the other night, but it’s hard to see them.”
At the moment, it appears that Nurse has a rotation, but things can always change. The Sixers always scrimmage at the end of every practice. That is an opportunity for the coaching staff to see what they can do in live situations. That also plays a factor when they can’t get players into games.
“There isn’t much chance,” Nurse continued. “You’re not gonna—like I said there’s eight there. It’s not like there’s five there and I’m trying to find three or four out of the other 10. There’s only a couple spots. You don’t get much chances. We can just only go off what we evaluate and we try to evaluate the best we can at practice, too because you guys see, we do play a lot at practice.”
Then there’s the starting lineup question. Should the Sixers continue to start Nic Batum? Will Oubre Jr. eventually be worked back into the starting role? Nurse has to evaluate that as well.
“I wouldn’t put it in concrete,” Nurse said of his starting lineup options. “I wouldn’t put it as fluid either. Somewhere in between those two. I think there still could be some movement there is what I guess what I’m trying to say.”
[lawrence-related id=87467,87470,87463]