The Philadelphia 76ers have had a very busy offseason as they retooled their roster around stars Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons. The front office made some moves to bring in more shooting and that excited the star duo.
One of those shooters they brought in was Seth Curry in a trade from the Dallas Mavericks. He shot 45.2% from deep with the Mavs in the 2019-20 season and the hope is that he can provide the floor spacing the team needs around the stars.
There is one thing that Embiid would like to have with Curry and that is a relationship with him like he did with JJ Redick. When Redick was in Philadelphia, he played the two-man game with Embiid and they played off each other a lot with dribble hand-offs and Redick would run his defenders off Embiid’s screens to get himself open for shots.
That is what Embiid is hoping to rekindle with Curry.
“We’re learning every single day, especially with Seth, I would probably want to have the same relationship I had with JJ,” Embiid said. “Especially on the floor, the way we move and the way we move off of each other, I’ll be setting screens for him and he sometimes will be setting screens for me and just play that two-man game. I think we have some potential there.”
The Sixers have been running Curry, along with Danny Green, with Embiid a lot so far in practice and coach Doc Rivers has been liking what he is seeing from any pairing with the big fella.
“Anybody with Joel, it turns out to be a decent play,” laughed Rivers. “I’m half-joking with that, but a lot of guard-guard action. I don’t know we ever thought it wouldn’t work or it would work, we didn’t know how good it would work and you can see a lot of the guards are pretty smart.”
The Sixers open up the season on Dec. 23 against the Washington Wizards so Embiid and Curry will have that much time to figure out how they will play on the floor. [lawrence-related id=40071,40066,40058]