CAMDEN, N.J.–The Philadelphia 76ers are continuing to find comfortability in terms of being able to get everybody on the same page. They have a few new pieces in their rotation and the offense has been a bit up and down to begin the season as they are a middle-of-the-pack basketball team.
One of those reasons is the injury to James Harden. The Beard is the one who runs everything on the offensive end of the floor, and without him, they need their guards to run the offense in an efficient manner while out on the floor.
The brunt of that responsibility will fall on Tyrese Maxey, but they need De’Anthony Melton to run the offense efficiently as well. While Melton has been terrific on the defensive end and he has been helpful on offense with his scoring, the Sixers need him to find his way on offense.
“He’s slowly coming around,” coach Doc Rivers said of Melton. “He’s just gotta learn out stuff and the pace we need him to do it at. The reason you don’t do it at the pace is because you don’t know the stuff. That’s the one thing coaches notice right away. When a guy is kinda half-running a set, it’s because he’s not sure if that’s the way the set should be run.”
Therefore, the Sixers ran the same sets over and over again at practice on Thursday in order to get him up to speed. They need the free agent addition to be able to handle the ball and run the offense.
“We just gotta get him more,” Rivers added. “We did it a lot today (Thursday), one set over and over again so he can run it at full pace so that’s exactly where he needs to be. Defensively, he’s fine. Offensively, we gotta integrate him better more and he’s gotta put more time into it.”
[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=71069]
[lawrence-related id=71078,71075,71072]