CAMDEN, N.J. — The Philadelphia 76ers have roster issues to address as they pick up the pieces following a another second-round playoff exit. The roster, led by the star duo of Joel Embiid and James Harden along with rising star Tyrese Maxey, is still very strong.
The bench unit was not as strong as the Sixers hoped entering the 2021-22 season. By adding Georges Niang and Andre Drummond, Philadelphia made savvy signings in the summer of 2021. But the Sixers had to move Drummond to acquire Harden, and Philadelphia wasn’t able to adequately replace him.
The Sixers signed veteran big man DeAndre Jordan, but he was not nearly the same player he had been. His minutes on the floor were tough to watch. Young Paul Reed remained unreliable and foul prone.
Heading into the offseason, president Daryl Morey understands what has to be done to improve the roster.
“We’re excited to do that,” said Morey. “I think we’ve had very good success about finding guys. We’ll have the max resources under the CBA available to us, but a lot of it’s gonna be finding the right minimum guys, which I think we’ve had good success and I find that to be one of the best parts of the job is how do you, once you’ve got your main guys in place, which we do, finding the guys who can fit in and we need to do a better job, but that is the job. That’s part of why I love being in basketball.”
The Sixers received good play from Shake Milton in their Game 6 loss to the Heat, but even his minutes were up and down. Philadelphia didn’t know where to really turn to find consistent minutes.
“When you’re searching, we’re searching for whatever we can get at that point, you know, that’s not a good place to be, but that’s the place we were in,” said coach Doc Rivers after Game 6. “You just try to do what you can do to get your offense going.”
At exit interview day on Friday, Rivers explained Philadelphia lost depth in the Harden trade.
“Once you’ve made that trade, they add the talent, but then three go out, and it does hurt your bench a little bit,” the coach explained. “We understood that when we did it, but we thought it was the right thing to do in the long term.”
Now, the Sixers must find a way to get that depth back and help the bench.
This post originally appeared on Sixers Wire! Follow us on Facebook!
[mm-video type=playlist id=01f09kz5ecxq9bp57b player_id=01f5k5xtr64thj7fw2 image=https://sixerswire.usatoday.com/wp-content/plugins/mm-video/images/playlist-icon.png]
[listicle id=63997]
[lawrence-related id=64060,64057,64054]