Normally 23 games into an NBA season, you get a sense of what exactly each team is and who they will be. It is pretty easy to spot out the contenders, the pretenders, and the teams that will be hoping to hit the lottery for the NBA draft.
However, in the 2020-21 season, that is not going to happen at this point.
The Philadelphia 76ers are 16-7 at this point of the season and they are sitting at the top of the Eastern Conference. They have a serious MVP candidate in Joel Embiid and they have two other players in Ben Simmons and Tobias Harris who will most likely be named to the All-Star game. One would think that means this team is a serious contender in the East.
While that is probably the case, coach Doc Rivers is not sure what his team really is just now as they have had their season disrupted by the pandemic as well as injuries up and down the roster.
I like our team, I really like our team, but I don’t exactly know who we are yet,” said Rivers on Saturday. “One, it’s early in the season, two it’s because of all this clutter. You want a clutter-free environment as much as you can, at least as a coach, that’s what I try to create. You’re not creating a clutter-free environment right now, you’re just not, so you have to deal with that.”
Due to their own issues that they are still trying to work out, the Sixers have no choice but to focus on themselves. They have a lot of new players and they have to figure out a lot of important things such as chemistry, the rotation, the backup power forward position, and other issues in that cluttered environment that Rivers referred to.
“As my dad would say, just keep my bed clean, don’t try to make somebody else’s bed,” Rivers added. “We kind of have that focus on just focusing on ourselves. We’ve had enough drama of our own with guys in and out with guys with COVID, and guys getting over it. I would say I don’t have a gauge yet.”
The Sixers will take on the Brooklyn Nets on Saturday in a matchup where they truly can’t test themselves and see where they’re at. The Nets will have one of their stars in James Harden, but they will be missing Kevin Durant to the health and safety protocols and Kyrie Irving due to a dinger injury. That is just the landscape of the NBA right now.
This post originally appeared on Sixers Wire! Follow us on Facebook!
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