PHILADELPHIA — It’s not easy replacing 35.3 points per game on the floor, but that’s the challenge the Philadelphia 76ers face in the wake of Joel Embiid’s meniscus injury in his left knee.
The Sixers will have to find other ways to score. Embiid was off to such a dominant start to the season that Philadelphia just gave him the ball and relied on him to lead the way whenever the offense bogged down.
In Saturday’s loss to the Brooklyn Nets, the Sixers shot just 29 3-pointers compared to 51 for Brooklyn. The Nets made 20 shots from deep compared to 12 for Philadelphia. That has to change without Embiid on the floor.
“It’s easy to generate triples with big fella on the floor,” Tyrese Maxey said after the loss. “I mean, honestly, because they’re trapping and doing different things like that. I got trapped a little bit. I tried to get out the ball and let other guys make plays, but yeah, I guess we do need to get our 3-pointers up.”
The Sixers will have to rely on more of a drive-and-kick offense. Embiid obviously attracts so much attention it makes it easier to find open looks from deep. Now, that responsibility will be on Maxey.
“Absolutely,” Kelly Oubre Jr. told Sixers Wire of shooting more 3s. “Every team comes in here, they drive and kick, drive and kick, drive and kick, they attack the paint. Kick it out to wide-open 3s or they score the layups and it’s very simple, but when we try to do it, it’s like we don’t know. The play breaks down, we got to an iso situation, and at the end of the day, teams are doing to us what we need to be doing every game.”
It will be on coach Nick Nurse at this point to find ways to generate more 3s for this group. Philadelphia has to keep up offensively while Embiid is out. The Sixers have scorers they can rely on, but they need to find ways to get up more 3s.
“We just gotta learn from that,” Oubre added. “Coach Nurse and his staff are doing a really good job of making sure they’re on us about getting better every day. We’ll have practice and we’ll bring that up I’m sure and just fix that, but we gotta do much better at just generating the offense through everybody. Not just two players or one player.”
The Sixers look to bounce back when they take on the Dallas Mavericks on Monday.
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