The Philadelphia 76ers swung a couple of big trades on draft night back in November and one of those big moves was to bring in Seth Curry who is a sharpshooter and he will fill a need this team has.
Curry shot 45.2% from deep with the Dallas Mavericks in the 2019-20 season and he is expected to come in and provide space for Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid to operate.
However, coach Doc Rivers believes there is a lot more that he can do rather than just be a catch and shoot guy. He will hand him the ball and let him go to work after getting an example of what he can do when he faced him in the playoffs.
“I think we’ll expand his role,” said Rivers. “What people don’t realize is that Luka (Doncic) had the ball in his hands more than James Harden. When you have a dominant player like that, you don’t touch the ball as much, yet whenever Luka didn’t have the ball in his hands, I thought Dallas played through Seth a lot, especially in pick-and-rolls. Playing against him in Dallas, we were as scared as his shot as his drives. His drives killed us so he’s a clever basketball player. We plan on using his strengths, bottom line.”
That also means having Curry play in the two-man game with both Embiid and Simmons. Embiid had a lot of success running that type of offense in the past with JJ Redick and Rivers believes Curry, along with Shake Milton and Furkan Korkmaz, can run that type of game with the big fella.
“There’s no JJ Redick’s with that speed and that pace, but Seth can do a lot of those things and so can Furkan and so can Shake,” beamed Rivers. “I think we have three guys, in my opinion, that have the chance to do some of that. I think we have to do that. I thought Brett (Brown) ran some great stuff with JJ and Joel and Ben and now we have these three guys that we can probably use some of that stuff to work for us as well.”
There were some questions from outsiders that the Sixers gave up a lot to get Curry in the form of guard Josh Richardson who is probably the better player, but Curry is a better fit. Besides, president Daryl Morey and general manager Elton Brand consulted Rivers as they are a team when it comes to making these types of moves.
“We’re a team,” Rivers stated bluntly. “Daryl wouldn’t have done any of those things without me sitting next to him and Elton sitting next to him. It’s been our team meeting that front office team and so far, we’ve worked phenomenally well together. We had some tough debates, giving up guys, but we had some really long, hard debates where the room was split, and we had to come to an agreement on things and we did that. Once we pulled the trigger, everybody was happy.”
At the end of the day, the team needed shooting and spacing. Ultimately, that is where Curry will hang his hat this season.
“We needed it,” the coach said with a laugh. “I wanted to create space for Ben and Joel. I want Ben to be able to go downhill and play and I want Joel to work in space so we definitely have spacers on our team.” [lawrence-related id=39675,39672,39669]