The Sixers Have a Passing Problem

We’re looking into whether it’s possible to trade for Nico Batum, or at least clone him.

There were just over six minutes left in the second quarter. The Knicks led 40-38, with the Sixers slowly gaining on them and building momentum. Caleb Martin knocked the ball free from Jalen Brunson, and the takeaway was secured near the sideline by Paul George.

PG then promptly threw one of the worst passes you’ll see all season. 

In a vacuum, that’s just a random negative play. Not a very repeatable situation, just move on to the next play. But in context, it’s a microcosm of the Sixers’ disastrous 2-8 start. The team clearly has talent, clearly has a good-enough roster to make big plays like a steal on Brunson, but is right now sorely lacking in the connective tissue that ties everything together. That missing connection can be seen in a lot of things — be it the team’s porous transition defense, or its inability to cash in on open looks from three — but nowhere has it been more apparent than in the way the Sixers have struggled to pass the ball. 

“It’s been a little bit of a theme. I don’t think we’ve passed it great this year,” Nurse said postgame following the 111-99 loss to the Knicks. “At this point, we’ve been a lot more high-turnover than we were a year ago … we’ve got a lot of different guys trying to handle the ball and make plays. It would be nice if we would get a little more on target.”

In 2023-24, the Sixers finished with the second-lowest turnover rate in the NBA at 12.2%. That number has risen to 14.4% to start this season, while the Sixers currently have the 5th-lowest assist rate in the association, with only 56.2% of their field goals this season being assisted. It’s been a problem all month, but it grew to its boiling point last night, particularly with some of the poor decisions George was making. 

Now, this is not a case of a player arriving in Philadelphia and suddenly losing an important skill. Ask any Clippers fan from the last five years about George, and they’d tell you that his errant passing is one of his biggest flaws. It’s not that George is a total black hole of offense who never finds his teammates, nor is he an incapable player who can’t occasionally make an impressive feed. But he’s just not super-consistent in his reads or his accuracy. There are roughly 2-3 possessions each game where he completely misreads the off-ball defense and thinks he has the acumen to fire a crosscourt skip pass through a tight window, only for it to be knocked away easily.

Whereas someone like James Harden has been trusted to run the offense of every team he’s played for dating back to high school and AAU, PG didn’t get to handle the ball much at all until he was in the NBA. He was an off-ball wing at Fresno State who randomly shot up from 6-foot-7 to 6-foot-9, and developed a refined handle seemingly out of nowhere. Modern NBA defenses are remarkably complex, and it’s hard to fully develop a perfect feel on how to pass through them. It’ll always linger that George doesn’t have that feel fully ingrained in him. 

This isn’t meant to let the rest of the Sixers off the hook for last night. They too were missing post entry opportunities to Joel Embiid left and right, and committing some rather ghastly turnovers. 

Watching the Sixers struggle for a full 48 minutes to enter the ball into the post, the most obvious takeaway is how desperately the Sixers miss Nicolas Batum right now. He was such a picture perfect fit with Embiid on the offensive end of the floor, in a way that no other wing in Philadelphia has ever come close to matching. 

See those plays where the defense is fronting Embiid in the post, and he has them sealed for a lob over the top? Every basketball die-hard knows the solution is to have someone flash middle and throw the high-low pass over the top. Most of last night, the Sixers simply stood still and waited far too long to figure out how they should get their best player the ball. None of them process the floor as quickly and accurately as Batum, who never let opponents last year get away with such a strategy. 

The only player who all night did figure out the high-low to Embiid was Jared McCain. Everyone has been impressed by how composed and confident the rookie is on the offensive end of the floor, and this play was just more evidence of how much he already means to the team.

McCain saw the opening, knew what needed to happen, and threw the correct pass without hesitation. There are a couple other players who process the floor well — namely Kyle Lowry and occasionally Caleb Martin off his drives — but neither of those are being defended like they can score right now. A player’s passing prowess is diminished if the defense knows that all they want to do is pass, and McCain right now is one of the few guys on the team who can threaten to both score a bucket or throw a great assist with the ball in his hands, especially with Tyrese Maxey sidelined for the next few weeks.

Now, when I say that the Sixers’ passing is their biggest problem, I mean it in the context of their on-floor play. Obviously on a macro level, the team’s biggest issue is the fact that the team’s superstar trio has yet to spend a single second on the court together this season. The injuries consistently keeping one of Embiid, George, or Maxey out have a joint negative effect on the team’s passing. The Sixers can’t develop on-court chemistry, and without a threatening scorer like Maxey on the court, it becomes much easier for the defense to condense space and clog passing lanes. If the day ever comes where we see all three superstars on the court together, the passing problem should be reduced, even if it doesn’t fade away in its entirety. 

But again, Maxey too hasn’t been a pristine passer this season. The great @Polarfall pointed out on Twitter that almost all of 27 Maxey’s assists this season come from the outside, i.e. Maxey’s teammates are almost always catching the ball outside of the paint before they finish off the assist. This has been a consistent theme through Maxey’s career. He’s a solid kickout passer, collapsing the defense before the ball back out to an open shooter on the perimeter, and his skip passing has grown over the years. But he’s not there as an interior passer. He often misses those potential high leverage plays, where a lay-down pass to the dunker spot, or a quick feed to his open big in the short roll 

With all things Maxey, this is very much some harsh nitpicking. His scoring punch is irreplaceable, and as a passer, he hasn’t been helped at all by the regression of Andre Drummond, who has accidentally clogged Maxey’s driving space and operating room on multiple occasions. Additionally, the young guard just recently turned 24 years old. With how often he improves, it can’t be ruled out that he’ll have patched this hole in his game within the next few seasons. But in the here and now, it’s stark that the Sixers’ roster is filled with flawed passers. 

Unfortunately with this passing problem, the solutions are pretty much limited to a) finding a way to get better passers on the team, and b) finding a way to actually get the entire team healthy. The only other option that crosses the mind is playing more directly through Embiid — the best playmaker on the team amongst its star talent. The defensive attention he draws is unmatched, and should open up looks to cutters and shooters alike.

It’s a large burden to place on a 30-year-old center who just played his first competitive basketball game in months, but the Sixers are already past the point of taking things easy. They’re currently on pace to finish the season with a 16-66 record. Even in the Eastern Conference, that’s probably not going to cut it. They have to start winning games, and they have to start winning them now. 

A lot of things need to change for that to happen, and near the very top of that list of fixes has to be a solution to the Sixers’ dreadful passing woes. 

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Daniel Olinger is a writer for the Rights To Ricky Sanchez, and author of “The Danny” column, even though he refuses to be called that in person. He can be followed on X @dan_olinger.

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