Five Sixers Season Predictions
The Sixers will be the top seed in the Eastern Conference, but won’t win the East.
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.
Well, folks… we have arrived. After a characteristically chaotic offseason around the NBA, the regular season is finally here.
That means it’s time for one of my favorite columns to write each year -- prediction time! These will be all over the place, from significant on-court developments to strategic decisions and everything in between, big and small.
We’ve got a long way to go here, so let’s get started:
Prediction #1: The Sixers will be the top seed in the Eastern Conference, but won’t win the East.
When you look around this conference and account for not just talent level, but team contexts -- teams’ ultimate goals and aspirations, injury concerns and ability to upgrade the roster, among other factors -- you can build a pretty compelling case that for the second time in three years, the Sixers will boast the best record in the Eastern Conference.
Here’s the argument, including some topics we’ll get to soon: Joel Embiid will be gunning for an MVP selection, James Harden may improve substantially after a healthy offseason and increased familiarity with the group, Tyrese Maxey could make another leap, Tobias Harris seems to finally be mastering his role, and PJ Tucker gives them exactly what they lacked last season in his energy and toughness.
This is a team with several motivations to perform at an extremely high level during the regular season. Of course, the team will insist that their only goal is winning a championship, but there is no doubt that the regular season matters more to the Sixers than it does to battle-tested teams like the Milwaukee Bucks and Boston Celtics.
So, let’s talk about those two teams -- I believe Milwaukee and Boston, in either order, are in their own tier as far as Eastern Conference teams go. With that being said, they are also two teams who know what they have and likely won’t push the envelope in the regular season in the way a team like the Sixers might.
Hence the second part of this prediction. While the Sixers have loads of talent -- and I believe they will without question be one of the league’s very best teams -- I am just not ready at this point to put them in that upper echelon with their aforementioned rivals.
Could they prove me wrong? Absolutely. A team with Embiid and Harden leading the way with a reliable supporting cast by their side could absolutely reach the greatest of heights.
I don’t think it’s unrealistic to expect the Sixers to join that top tier by the end of the season. Maybe they will, and maybe the second part of this prediction will end up looking foolish. Only time will tell!
Prediction #2: Three-guard lineups will flourish and become a staple of the rotation.
Okay, I know this is an insanely nerdy thing to be thinking about, let alone writing about. But cohesive three-guard lineups have thrived in the NBA over the last few years, and I believe the Sixers have more than enough to find success by going down that path.
Of course this starts with Harden, one of the best engineers of offense in NBA history, and Maxey, a budding star who improves at an incredible pace. But to me, what unlocks this possibility is the acquisition of De’Anthony Melton.
Melton, sporting elite defensive versatility on the perimeter thanks in large part to his 6-foot-8.5 wingspan, is the exact type of player who can enable Doc Rivers to get creative with how he uses his guards.
Harden and Maxey’s minutes will almost certainly be staggered to ensure that one of them is on the court at all times, which is sensible. But we saw last season that Maxey actually thrives even more when sharing the floor with Harden, despite the concerns of many that he would fade into the background a bit after the Harden trade.
So, we know that the Harden-Maxey dynamic is smooth. Melton is a tremendous role player, and part of that is because he can easily blend into just about any unit and use his outlier skills on the defensive end to make those groupings better.
Rivers is not exactly known for his schematic creativity, but the prospect of a Harden-Maxey-Melton lineup intrigues me a whole lot, and at some point they will try it. Hopefully that point comes early on in the season, because once these three-guard lineups become part of the rotation, I believe they will stick for the rest of the season.
Prediction #3: Matisse Thybulle will be traded.
Thybulle, who will become a restricted free agent after this season (barring an unexpected last-minute contract extension), is in an odd spot. Typically this is the point in a promising prospect’s career in which the league anticipates a breakout season occurring. But here we are entering Thybulle’s fourth NBA season, and it’s unclear if he’s meaningfully better now than he was as a rookie.
Of course, Thybulle’s defensive production is absolutely tremendous, and he’ll stick in the league for a long time because of it. However, on a Sixers team with lots of defensive talent on the roster and the need for offensive-oriented role players, Thybulle has become an awkward piece to fit into this rotation (if he’s even in the opening night rotation at all).
It is not remotely hyperbolic to suggest that Thybulle is one of the very few worst offensive players in the NBA among regular rotation players of the last handful of years. Outside of one hot streak as a rookie, he has always been a poor three-point shooter. His ball-handling is an even bigger weakness.
I say all of that to say this: for these reasons, it stands to reason that Thybulle is far more valuable to a younger team or one in need of perimeter defense that can sacrifice some offensive production than he is to the Sixers, who represent the inverse scenario.
Prediction #4: Tyrese Maxey will earn legitimate All-Star consideration.
Maxey made an enormous leap from year one to year two, and it’s hard to imagine that someone who has improved as much as he did has another leap in him somewhere.
But at some point, we should all just accept that Maxey is not normal. The Sixers have a tremendously talented young player on their hands, and it’s one with a work ethic so strong that the team has on multiple occasions literally locked him out of the gym to make him take a day off.
This is also a player so coachable that Rivers got choked up talking about him at the end of last season. Maxey is universally appreciated -- the city of Philadelphia absolutely adores him, and he’s earned respect and admiration from his teammates.
Maxey’s skillset is remarkable given his age and experience level. Any indicator one looks at suggests that his swift ascension into a full-fledged star will continue this season.
Becoming an All-Star is not an easy feat -- especially for a player in the stage of their career that Maxey is currently in. But Tyrese Maxey is different.
Prediction #5: James Harden will earn a long-term contract.
We can come up with questions about this Sixers team for days. But the biggest uncertainty is the quality of play the team will get from Harden. Will he get close to the Houston version of himself? Will he take a backseat in big moments? Can he lead an efficient offense deep into the playoffs? Can he continue to make Embiid, Maxey, Harris and the rest of his teammates better?
I am skeptical that Harden will be close to his Houston form at any point in the rest of his career. The athletic limitations are what they are, and his play in Houston was MVP-level every single season.
But, with Harden’s first full season in Philadelphia set to kick off, you can mark me down as a firm believer that Harden will be better than the already-great version we saw from February to May of this year.
Preseason is preseason, but Harden’s burst and explosiveness looked much better over the last few weeks than it did at any point last season. That kind of subtle change would do absolute wonders for Harden and the team as a whole.
I believed Harden would step up and be better in last season’s playoffs than he was in the regular season. Aside from a few shining moments, that prediction turned out to be off the mark. For the Sixers’ sake, let’s hope belief in Harden won’t backfire.