Any time a team plays without its star player for an extended period of time, it makes subtle adjustments to its playing style and assigned roles to everybody on the roster.
For the Philadelphia 76ers, they had to do that when Joel Embiid missed nine games while in the league’s health and safety protocol after testing positive for COVID-19. The Sixers had a tough time winning during that span, but the guys had to step up and play different roles with Embiid out.
The team has been missing many other pieces as well. That lack of continuity can mess up a team, and it has been hard for the Sixers to develop any consistency.
“It’s gonna be a process,” said Tobias Harris. “We’ve pretty much had different lineups all throughout the season. It’s gonna be a process of rhythm and feel and then just getting the chemistry of how we’re gonna play, getting familiar with where guys like the basketball, how other teams are playing us as well so night in and night out, we’re gonna have different defenses that are going to be presented to us and we have to figure out how we can be successful out there.”
The Sixers had issues attacking the zone defense in their win over the Orlando Magic on Monday. They looked a little disjointed, which could be a chemistry issue with it being only the second game with Embiid back in the lineup.
“Maybe, we should know how to play with each other, but I mean maybe there’s a little adjustment getting used to playing with him again,” added Seth Curry. “We just gotta figure it out and try to win games in the process.”
They were playing very well before the big fella went down and they are going to have to figure out how to find that rhythm back.
“It’s not gonna happen in a day,” added Harris. “We need to figure out ways that we can continue to improve that type of chemistry game by game and how we can use tonight’s game get off to a good start and staying like that throughout the game but that’s gonna be a challenge and no one said it’s going to be easy, we just gotta figure it out.”
This post originally appeared on Sixers Wire! Follow us on Facebook!
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