Philadelphia 76ers forward Tobias Harris is off to a terrific start to the 2020-21 season. He has fully embraced his role as the team’s third-best player behind Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons and he and the team are sitting atop of the East and he’s currently averaging a career-high 20.2 points per game.
He is also shooting a white-hot 44.4% from deep and he has also taken it to the basket strong. He is flourishing under coach Doc Rivers again after his time with him with the Los Angeles Clippers as well. However, it was not always like this for him in Philadelphia.
Harris signed a 5-year $180 million max contract in the 2019 offseason and he did not live up to that deal in the 2019-20 season. He was up and down and he shot just 2-for-15 from deep in the playoffs in the bubble.
Harris joined ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski on “The Woj Pod” and he discussed how he handles the contract and the pressure that comes with it:
When I signed the deal, I knew the expectation, and that was to win a championship. Last year, playing on that deal, and as a team, when we are underachieving, and the expectation is, well how come you’re not putting up max player numbers, like, 27 points a game? 10 rebounds, whatever, and for me, it was like one of those things where I said I’m not going to adjust my game for numbers so I can please fans. I’m always going to play, how I play and that is to do what I need to do for us to win. And after the bubble last year, we have a disappointing playoff and I couldn’t even really go on those social media apps without like seeing it, or hearing it. I’m saying it because like it was something I really had to as a man in person say to myself, like, ‘Do you know who you are as a player?’ and the answer was yes like I know how good I am, and I know what I’m capable of doing.
Harris clearly has been able to build off his self-belief and continue to move forward. He is a huge reason why the Sixers are at the top of the East and he is a guy who has a serious case to be an All-Star for the first time in his career this season.
As far as what happened in the bubble, Harris also opened up on the failures down there:
We were pretty deflated there. From that to the playoffs, Ben goes down, and we’re playing without our without our point guard. It was like the perfect storm of us just basically crashing and it wasn’t the best environment for us as well too. We were such a really good team at home, playing at home and embracing our home crowd and then to go into the bubble, where we’re losing guys injuries, we didn’t have the best chemistry. It was tough.
The Sixers are a team that feeds off the passion of the Philadelphia crowd. For all of their warts and flaws in the 2019-20 season, they were 29-2 at home and if the season did not go on hold due to the pandemic, maybe they would have been able to figure it out.
Nonetheless, the Sixers are a very good team at the moment and Harris is a big reason for all of that. As the season wears on, it will be very interesting to see how the team continues to progress.
This post originally appeared on Sixers Wire! Follow us on Facebook!
https://embed.sendtonews.com/oembed/?SC=ayufArUoAC-1141235-7498&autoplay=on&V=2&format=json