A new coach, an off-season rebuild and the quick turnaround could give the Philadelphia 76ers a chance to shake off the stagnant end to their playoff campaign, writes Sky Sports NBA analyst Mark Deeks
Saturday 19 December 2020 18:03, UK
Due to the unique coronavirus-induced circumstances, the NBA offseason just gone has been by far the quickest on record.
There is normally more than three months between the NBA Draft and training camp; this year, however, there was barely three weeks. And yet for the Philadelphia 76ers, it seems this was time enough for them to blow through the concrete both on and off the court that saw the team stagnate last season.
It has been an offseason of quick and significant change for the Sixers. One draft night and one week of free agency saw them bring in the key acquisitions that will change the short and medium-term prognoses of the franchise, and just as importantly, saw them ship out some key departures.
Specifically, residual draft assets left over as the last vestiges of 'The Process' went out to the Dallas Mavericks along with Josh Richardson in exchange for Seth Curry. Al Horford was moved to the Oklahoma City Thunder in exchange for Danny Green, Vincent Poirier and Terrance Ferguson.
Expiring contract fillers, Ferguson and Poirier are not relevant here, and nor really are the draft assets that were given up to facilitate these deals. They are assets worth having, certainly, but not nearly enticing enough to turn down two important deals for the team.
It is perhaps true to say that the 76ers have given up the two most talented players in each of those deals - or at least the more all-around talents.
Yet the balance that the acquisitions offer, plus the significant salary cap liberalisation that comes from dumping Horford's contract and tying Curry down cheaply, means that where once the team was floundering and underperforming, flawed in its construction. Not to mention tied to a difficult-looking future with a lack of salary cap flexibility, they can now look forward to potentially a renewed title window.
Horford was brought in the summer of 2019 as a free agent not necessary for reasons of fit, but because the cap space available at that time was a one-time-only deal that the front office had to use or lose, and he was the best player they could get with it.
With the drafting/trading of Markelle Fultz not working out, and The Process in the past, the best remaining chance of adding one extra star was to go out and buy one, which Horford, although in decline, still was.
If nothing else, it was felt that he would help to fill the massive void in the rotation behind the notoriously fragile Joel Embiid.
Yet attempts to play Horford at power forward alongside Embiid did not work - the league has moved on considerably since the early days of his career, when Horford almost exclusively played the position, and as the league has gotten quicker, he has gotten slower.
The move also bumped Tobias Harris down to the small forward position when he is arguably better at power forward, and so too may be Ben Simmons. A career point guard who, nevertheless, due to his notorious shooting limitations away from the rim, is probably better as a power forward himself in the uber-Lamar Odom style.
If Horford's role on the team going forward was only going to be as a reserve fifth man, he was getting paid way too much for that role, and even if they had just salary-dumped him, there was value in the Sixers doing so to reset a mistake the previous summer and give themselves more leverage and freedom to upgrade the team in the future.
But they did not just do that. They also acquired Green, a player who, albeit limited offensively, has been a key role player and fifth starter on back-to-back championship-winning teams.
The three-and-D style he plays in is well documented by this time, and although he misses too many open three-pointers to be a Klay Thompson-calibre type, his game is also exactly what the Sixers have needed so as to not have to rely on the improved yet limited Furkan Korkmaz quite as much.
In terms of shooting, there are very few better than Curry, who ranked in the 98th percentile in spot-up shooting last season.
It was difficult for Curry to stick in the NBA initially, having a pure shooting guard's game in a frame that is undersized even for the point guard position, and yet he has been one of the major beneficiaries of the shooting explosion around the league, because he does it as well anyone.
Almost as well as his brother, in fact. Absolute money with his feet set, Curry can also do a little bit of the dribble and stays in plenty of motion, an excellent pure floor spreader who opens up the offensive playbook and who scores a good volume of points on a tiny amount of dribbles.
The Sixers, ironically, ranked quite highly (eighth) in three-point shooting percentage last season despite the well-documented need for spacing, but that percentage came on a relatively low volume, and it came without the multi-positional shooting that their pass-heavy style and reliance on Embiid could have benefited from.
Now pairing Green and Curry along with the 40 per cent outside shooting of both Korkmaz and breakout sophomore Shake Milton, the 76ers have caught up with modern offensive principles while also having the small-ball punisher in Embiid and the universal defensive talents and transition play of Simmons.
All it cost them was draft assets that likely would not have yielded starters anyway, and two players in Horford and Richardson who, while good, were only ever acquired as the best they could get at the time, not because they addressed many needs.
The Sixers also have a new coach in Doc Rivers, plus spending power to work with after Green's deal expires. 'Spending power' is not merely a measure of how willing ownership is to pay the luxury tax; it also means operating suitably below the apron to be able to use all available assets, and also to have contracts of all sizes so as to construct trades.
Having four huge ones on the books, as the Sixers figured to do before the Horford trade, meant stymieing the roster construction, and to be sure, the roster as constructed was a couple of levels below championship contention and falling off the wrong way.
In removing him, and finding a much better fit at shooting guard, the 76ers may have practiced addition by subtraction.
