The Philadelphia 76ers are working through one of their toughest stretches of the season as they are coming off a disappointing 0-4 road trip after a statement win on Christmas Day over the Milwaukee Bucks. They have scored 104 points per 100 possessions over the four-game losing skid which would put them towards the bottom of the league offensively over a full season.
This team continues to work through its odd roster construction as they look to break out of this long slump that has placed them at the 6 seed in the Eastern Conference. That’s not exactly what general manager Elton Brand had in mind when he built this team.
As they continue to work through their issues, they got back to work at practice on Sunday and coach Brett Brown made it clear that practice was offensive related.
“I feel like the clarity as it relates to just offense is the recognition of roles,” said Brown. “The recognition of ‘where is our bread buttered?’ and you can talk about in early offense, you’ve got a breakneck speed, take off guard in Ben Simmons, and then you have Joel Embiid who gets 10 defensive rebounds a game so inevitably he’s in trail, like how do you play off of that? How do you hunt corners and get more threes?”
The Sixers shot only 6-for-27 from deep in the last loss to the Houston Rockets on Friday, which then caused the Sixers to begin looking for shooting as the February 6 trade deadline approaches, and the shooting will continue to be this team’s biggest challenge moving forward.
A big help for this team would be what an individual’s roles would be. How do they play with Simmons? Especially with his continued reluctance to shoot? Or when Embiid is off the floor, what then? What about Al Horford’s role in all of this?
“How do you let a breakneck speed, 6-foot-10 point guard own the middle?” Brown continued. “Then here comes Joel, that’s his world. Multiple post players cramming the paint, not opening stuff up, doesn’t interest me. So the recognition of skill sets and the co-existing of a team, that interests me. The guys are fantastic. This isn’t pulling teeth. There’s high character, there’s a lot of talent, but it’s trying to take an unusually designed skill sets that we have and be very clear on ‘this is how the world works’. That’s what we did a lot of today.”
Philadelphia will look to break out of their slump on Monday when they host the upstart Oklahoma City Thunder. [lawrence-related id=22719,22710,22692]