Shocking Sixers Lineup Data, PJ Tucker, Paul Reed Riding The Pine
Tucker has made a career out of proving people wrong and showing up in the biggest spots.
Adam Aaronson, whose legal name is Sixers Adam (@SixersAdam on Twitter), covers the Sixers for The Rights To Ricky Sanchez. He believes cantaloupe is the best food in existence, and is brought to you by the Official Realtor of The Process, Adam Ksebe.
With huge wins over the Brooklyn Nets and Denver Nuggets last week, both coming on national television with playoff-caliber atmospheres, the Sixers’ approval hit an all-time high. The win over the Nuggets was the team’s 20th in its last 24 games, featuring an iconic performance from Joel Embiid to outduel the NBA’s two-time reigning MVP, Nikola Jokic, in a game during which Doc Rivers impressively pressed all of the right buttons.
But as we all know, the Sixers are predictably unpredictable. And so, after absolutely dominating the lowly Orlando Magic during the first quarter in South Philadelphia on Monday night, looking primed for a blowout victory, they imploded, eventually losing by 10 points in what was one of their worst all-around showings of the last few years.
This last week has been a perfect microcosm of the Sixers experience over the last several seasons. They flash tremendous potential, rope you in with that promise, and then disappoint you soon after you start believing in them.
So, what’s the mood now surrounding this team? For me, it’s cautious optimism — as brutal as the loss to Orlando was, this is clearly a terrific team that will likely receive at least one reinforcement at the trade deadline in a couple of weeks.
Let’s take the temperature of this team with a few interesting numbers:
Some shocking lineup data
One of Rivers’ tendencies that has caused so much frustration recently is his implementation of all-bench lineups. Ever since Tyrese Maxey was moved to the bench, we’ve seen multiple stints for these lineups in just about each game.
Lately that unit has been led by Maxey, playing alongside Shake Milton, Matisse Thybulle, Georges Niang and Montrezl Harrell.
This grouping has had some ugly stretches of late. And so when I checked the team’s numbers with each lineup, I was stunned to see that the aforementioned grouping has a Net Rating (point differential per 100 possessions) of +13.1, according to Cleaning the Glass. This is a massive number on its own, but seems especially large when recalling some of its brutal lowlights.
This unit has played 143 possessions, according to Cleaning the Glass. This isn’t an enormous sample size, but it’s enough to at least be monitoring. In fact, it is the fourth-most frequent lineup the Sixers have used so far this season as they’ve dealt with an injury bug hitting several key players at different points of the season.
Once the playoffs arrive, I still believe it is unnecessarily risky to use these lineups and have Embiid, James Harden and Tobias Harris all off the floor at the same time. And because of that, I don’t exactly see the need to continually put those lineups out there. But give Rivers some credit: the numbers confirm that it has indeed been successful to this point.
The PJ Tucker problem
Tucker, the most-targeted punching bag of Sixers fans on the roster, has had well-documented struggles offensively this season, where he seems to no longer have any utility whatsoever. Aside from the occasional solid screen or offensive rebound, he’s a nothing on that end of the floor -- in fact, he’s a negative.
Of course, Tucker was not brought here to lead the team in scoring, but for his toughness and defensive versatility. But while he has flashed those abilities at times, his offense has been so disastrous that he can’t be relied on in the highest-leverage minutes.
While Rivers continues to put Tucker in the starting lineup, he knows he can’t go to the veteran wing when the chips are down. In the team’s last 15 games, Tucker has seen the floor during the fourth quarter in only seven. In the fourth quarters which he has played in, he’s only averaged 3.9 minutes, dead-last on the Sixers.
Tucker is a player known for stepping his game up in the playoffs. And maybe he will — he certainly did last weekend, playing exceptional defense on Jokic in the second half and coming up with a big put-back layup. But the Sixers spent their entire mid-level exception on Tucker, giving him the maximum amount of dollars possible and the longest duration possible (three years), with every single penny guaranteed. To invest that type of trust and capital in a player while hoping to contend, only for that player to mostly look unusable down the stretch, is a brutal look.
Tucker has made a career out of proving people wrong and showing up in the biggest spots. For his sake, hopefully I will soon become another person who he’s dis-proven. But that seems less and less likely as the season goes on.
BBall Paul riding the pine
We knew going into the season that the backup center rotation spot would be up for grabs, with Harrell and Paul Reed being the two primarily vying for those minutes. Reed got the first crack at it, but was unspectacular. Ever since, Rivers has gone back and forth between the jumpy-but-talented youngster and the veteran he knows and trusts.
But Harrell dominated that share of playing time this month. In the entire month of January, Reed appeared in just seven games, averaging only 10.6 minutes per contest. He only played at least 14 minutes twice -- in both games, he gave the Sixers great energy off the bench in wins.
There is no doubt that Reed is a work in progress. He often suffers defensive lapses and is not particularly skilled on the offensive end. But Harrell is in his eighth season in the NBA, and is very much a guy whose strengths and weaknesses are easily-defined. He has a high motor and can serve as a decent lob threat when playing with an excellent pick-and-roll ball-handler (like Harden). But he is disastrous defensively, and because of his 6-foot-7, 240-pound frame that is far below average size for a center, he isn’t a particularly strong rebounder.
Everyone knows that Harrell is usually passable in the regular season and unplayable in the playoffs. And that very well may turn out to be the case with Reed -- but why won’t the Sixers actually allow him to get those valuable reps now so that he at least has a chance of showing the kind of promise he flashed late last season and even in last year’s playoffs?
Harrell is not a good NBA rotation player in the year 2023. Reed might not be either. But it’s silly to not even give him a chance to disprove that assumption.