The 2024 Sixers’ Preseason Playbook
The third paragraph of this article is out for tonight’s game with an undisclosed injury.
No one would blame a Sixers fan if they wanted preseason basketball to meet its permanent and terminal end following what’s happened this October. Paul George hyperextended his left knee and *could* miss the long awaited 2024-25 season opener against the Milwaukee Bucks. First-round draft pick Jared McCain sustained pulmonary contusions following a nasty fall that required him to make a hospital visit. Tyrese Maxey left the closing game five minutes in with a thumb contusion. Fans didn’t even get to see Joel Embiid, who probably won’t play a preseason game ever again, and who himself isn’t a confirmed good-to-go for the season opener.
Not great! Still, it’s been nice to watch real basketball and break down what’s happening on the court, which is exactly the purpose of today’s piece. Here’s an in-depth look at the offensive actions the Sixers have been running through the six games of the 2024-25 preseason:
FLIP DHO
“Flip” is a staple to the Nick Nurse offense, and one I broke down last year for The Ricky. Unsurprisingly, it’s been back plenty and often for the Sixers in preseason play:
It’s an extremely simple concept — a dribble handoff with momentum, as the two players come at each other with speed from opposite angles, before the ball is pitched back to the player directly behind him. No need to overthink it, just get someone running downhill at the basket as quick as possible.
Likewise, flip has the same secondary progression in Nurse’s offense as it did last year. If there’s no immediate opening, the offense pivots to a stationary, second-side handoff to keep everything moving and flowing in the halfcourt.
Take note of the players Nuse is running flip for — Ricky Council, Kelly Oubre, Caleb Martin, KJ Martin. Those guys are four of the most athletic players on the entire roster, and all of them have big, wing-sized bodies. This action is all about momentum and quick-hitting burst; running it for the team’s slower bodies like Kyle Lowry and Eric Gordon wouldn’t make as much sense.
Double Drag
No earth-shattering discovery to be made with this play, double drag is one of the most common initiating actions in the entire NBA. Plenty of teams run it more often than others, but you’d be hard-pressed to find an NBA game in 2024 where no one is running double drag.
The play occurs when two staggered ball screens are set up top, often at a diagonal angle for the lead ball handler to cross sides of the floor immediately after they break the midcourt line. It was most often run last year for Tyrese Maxey, though this preseason it’s been a more common action for McCain and George.
Not surprising that two of the best pure shooters on the team get to experiment with double drag reps. Defenders can easily get caught up in the traffic and leave room for a pull-up three, as George so helpfully displayed against Minnesota.
Motion Strong
Once again, back to the basics this preseason. Motion strong is just a fancy way of saying that one player starts in the corner and has two staggered pindown screens set for them. Unsurprisingly, this action is most often run for shooters to potentially get quick looks from three if their defender is caught on either screen, and thus Gordon and McCain have received the bulk of the motion strong looks thus far.
(Side note: McCain had pretty meager free throw attempt numbers in the preseason, but I’d be interested to see if he could increase those this season via grifting).
Don’t be shocked to see motion strong a lot for both Maxey and for George once he returns from his injury. Both of them are clean fits into the shooter role for this play, though with Maxey it likely necessitates someone like Kyle Lowry on the floor to initiate the offense so that he can play off-ball.
Also worth noting that the Sixers dabbled in blending double drag and motion strong together this preseason, with the two ball screeners from the first action immediately pivoting to setting pindown screens on a couple of occasions.
It’s one of motion strong’s best qualities as a set action, it blends so easily into other plays that it can be incorporated at almost any time. Just watch here how motion strong being run in the opposite corner for McCain opens up space for an impromptu pick and roll between Jeff Dowtin and KJ Martin.
Side note two that’s actually more than just a side note — KJ has played pretty well all preseason. He’s smart, he screens well, he spams the euro step button whenever he has the ball in transition, and he’s a pretty effective passer out of the short roll. Very comfortable with him getting minutes as the backup four in regular season action for the first couple months of the season.
The BLOB
If your brain hasn’t been permanently poisoned with basketball jargon like mine has, BLOB stands for baseline out of bounds play. I don’t know the exact term for this specific set call, but I do know that it’s far and away Nurse’s favorite design, given that the Sixers ran it all the time last year, and are back at it again this season.
A shooter (most often Maxey, but in this preseason it’s also been used for McCain) sets a back screen for one of the forwards to dive to the basket, then immediately curls toward the corner where whoever is playing the five for Sixers sets a little reverse pindown screen for them to potentially open up for a three-point shot.
Admittedly, the play has not found much success this preseason. This is what it’s supposed to look like, courtesy of a made Maxey movement three from the series against the Knicks.
Obviously, it helps when Embiid is setting the big man screen, as the former MVP draws in a lot more defensive attention than anyone else on the Philly roster.
Naturally, Embiid’s absence in this entire article is the outsized elephant in the room, seeing that the Sixers’ offense is all but guaranteed to run in a vastly different fashion when he’s healthy. However, most have already braced for the fact that the Sixers should be without Embiid for a minimum of 20 games this season, if not many more. Drastic load management is just going to be the standard operating procedure moving forward.
We’ll probably see Nurse continually experiment and tinker with the Embiid-less offense as the season progresses. But so far through a preseason’s worth of hoops, it looks like the Sixers will be playing a lot of the same hits that they did last year, with the hope that improved personnel will make it all flow a lot more smoothly.
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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