A Practical Look At The Sixers Future
Mike O’Connor is the best O’Connor in basketball writing. Previously of The Athletic, you can find Mike on Twitter @MOConnor_NBA. Mike’s writing is brought to you by Body Bio, supplements based on science, focusing on your gut and brain health. Get 20% off E-Lyte, Gut+, and all Body Bio products with promo code FIRECJ at Body Bio’s website.
If you read my unhinged manifesto prior to Game 7, you might be wondering how I’m processing that loss. The answer is: just about exactly as I predicted. I feel an unfamiliar sense of apathy. That game didn’t send me into a rage, it just gave me a cold dose of clarity: this team, or at least this version of it, is not worth caring about in the way that you’ve been caring about them.
Will I ever regain the level of Sixers enthusiasm that I had prior to that game? Probably not. But life goes on. The Sixers will always be a part of my life, and so, I now am stuck with the uncomfortable question of how to make the experience of following them a more fulfilling one.
That exercise naturally involves taking a hard look at every aspect of this organization, analyzing where things went wrong, and how they can get better. And boy, is that a difficult process. So, let’s break it into parts. I’ll first discuss my feelings towards Doc Rivers being fired and what I’d like to see in the next coach, followed by some thoughts on James Harden, and lastly, an uncomfortable discussion about Joel Embiid.
The Doc Rivers firing
Even from my perspective as someone who viewed Doc Rivers as less of a saboteur than most of the fanbase, I was fully supportive of Rivers’ firing last week. After three straight crushing playoff losses, it was time for a new voice, and Rivers was lacking in any specific achievement he could hang his hat on.
With all that being said: if the reasons for his firing, as reported by Ramona Shelburne, were that he was too aggressive in holding James Harden accountable for his off-court antics, and did not cater to Harden enough on offense, that thought process is an embarrassing organizational failure and the front office should be ashamed.
Ramona says there were multiple team meetings where Doc tried to reign in Harden’s extracurricular activities when he wasn’t performing
But the main disagreement was that Harden basically doesn’t want to run an offense based around another player. No surprise.— DFAntastic (@PhillyTradesman) May 16, 2023
There are plenty of good reasons to fire Doc Rivers; those two are not among them. I’m not perturbed by the decision, I’m perturbed by the organization’s thought process in getting there. I’ll touch on this more in a bit, but I’m unbelievably fed up with this organization’s habit of bringing in loser-ass players and catering to them at every turn.
This might be a bit of a pipe dream, but my foremost priority in the next head coach is someone who will help instill some semblance of a culture, and will foster a level of toughness that recent Sixers teams have never had. This is a tricky task – remember, that was the exact selling point for hiring Doc Rivers – and one that, again, goes above just the head coach. But with that being said, I think the best candidate for that job is Nick Nurse.
Sixers fans likely underestimate what a psycho Nurse is. He plays ultra-aggressive schemes and runs short rotations with high minutes for starters. He has a quick hook for players who make mental mistakes or lack defensive effort. He is not shy about calling players out to the media – he was once asked about Gary Trent, Jr.’s limited minutes and sait that he only fits their team if he plays aggressively on defense, “and if he doesn't, he doesn't fit us.” He has also called out Pascal Siakam very harshly on a number of occasions.
There is a chance that hiring Nurse would end in a dumpster fire; his high-demand coaching style, constant call-outs, and overall intensity could wear on Embiid (and Harden, if he’s back). But frankly? I don’t care. Embiid and Harden have not earned the right to be pampered. I’d rather take a chance on a high-intensity and innovative coach than bring in a laissez-faire coach like Mike D’Antoni whose biggest calling card at this stage is that he keeps his stars happy.
Hiring Monty Williams or Frank Vogel would feel virtually the same to me; they fit into the middle class of NBA coaches who neither elevate nor hinder your team. I respect Mike Budenholzer’s innovative abilities, but ’m not sure I could stomach hiring another coach with that many playoff choke jobs after this franchise’s recent history. Sam Cassell would be a nice story – he would be my preference in the unlikely event that the team trades Embiid and rebuilds – but it’s damn near impossible to know what you’re getting from tenured assistants in their first try at a head coaching job. So, if the goal is to contend again, I’d go for a more known commodity.
The James Harden dilemma
Back in March, I wrote a detailed explanation of why I felt the Sixers had to re-sign James Harden no matter what. Reading it again now, the logic still holds up – it’s very unclear how the team could reach even a fraudulent contender status if they let Harden go. And yet, after watching these playoffs, I can no longer summon the desire to run it back with Harden.
Andrew Unterberger put it best in his piece last week:
“It's all gotta stop. What we saw in Game Seven was not something we're an offensive tweak or gameplanning adjustment away from fixing. They don't need an offensive genius or a defensive specialist as a head coach, they need a fucking exorcist. At the very least, they need a material change to the character of this team -- and as Spike said on Wednesday's pod, that's near-impossible to do when you have a core of Embiid and Harden, two guys who historically both tend to wilt under the brightest spotlights and don't seem able to hold one another accountable in such situations. I hate to be this guy -- hate -- but at this point, the evidence before the court is incontrovertible: Joel needs a co-star with a little more internal fortitude, a little more of that fabled Dog In Him, and one who can pull whatever there is there to get out of Jo as well.”
The Sixers desperately need a cultural change. That word – culture – has been rattling around in my brain nonstop over the past week. Throughout the early years of The Process, culture was a word often cited by its critics. Their reasoning, on its face, was obviously wrong – you can absolutely tank for a few years and still have a good organizational culture – but the key to it all is that you eventually have to bring some winners in the building.
And for 10 years, all we’ve had are losers – or at least non-winners. Nerlens Noel. Jahlil Okafor. Ben Simmons. Markelle Fultz. James Harden. Tobias Harris. Joel Embiid. Be it play style, off court habits, or simply their mental makeup, this team has brought in loser after loser, and so, it’s no surprise that they have a rotten culture.
What’s worse, the team has repeatedly bent over backwards to appease these losers. Ben Simmons wants his brother to be his shooting coach? Sure thing! He doesn’t like Jimmy Butler? No problem, he’s gone! Tobias Harris isn’t sure about re-signing? Let’s do a backdoor favor to sign his brother to the G-League team. Doc Rivers tries to hold James Harden accountable and doesn’t hand him the keys to the offense? OK, he’s out.
This pattern needs to stop; the Sixers need to stop bringing these types of players in, or if they do, they need to establish the organizational infrastructure to keep them in check.
If that means taking a step back from contender status and letting Harden walk, so be it. I’m fine with the Sixers no longer being a pseudo-contender; I just want to watch a team that won’t quit when it matters most as everyone points the finger at someone else. I want a team with some fucking character.
The Joel Embiid problem
Speaking as someone who has been a loud proponent of all things Joel Embiid over the past several years, these playoffs have changed my opinion on him dramatically. Since Embiid’s career began (post-injuries), I’ve never felt so down on the possibility of him leading the Sixers to a championship.
Coming into these playoffs, what were the biggest criticisms of Embiid in the playoffs? He can’t stay healthy, his skill set becomes less valuable against elite defensive teams with aggressive schemes, and he lacks the heart and mentality to lead and will his team to a championship. In all three of those areas – durability, skill set, and mental toughness – Embiid’s postseason was an absolute disaster.
Each of those three things are disturbing, but the thing that has fundamentally shifted my perception of Embiid was the lack of mental toughness he showed in a number of ways throughout the series.
The idea of “mental toughness” is often over-simplified; it doesn’t just mean that you’re willing to fight your opponent or dive for a loose ball (though Embiid graded out quite poorly in that department, as well). Mental toughness also means remaining disciplined, staying focused, and making the right decision over and over again in the heat of the moment. In that sense, Embiid completely cratered – if anything, he became more and more mistake prone as the series went on and was often hesitant in the biggest moments.
Embiid got clamped by Al Horford in crunch time of Game 4. He became so passive that P.J. Tucker had to scream at him. He didn’t even touch the ball in crunch time of Game 6, and was a non-entity on offense in Game 7. He finished the series with 12 assists and 20 turnovers. The Celtics did a good job of mixing up their coverages on Embiid’s post-ups and isolations, and Embiid failed again and again to make the right split-second reads in those moments. He threw careless passes, dribbled into traffic, and was late to recognize when help was coming. On top of all that, he simply missed lots of clean looks, especially in crunch time of Game 6.
Embiid’s nearly disastrous Game 4 will be forgotten by history thanks to Harden’s heroics. Game 6 will stick with him quite a bit, but nowhere near the extent of Game 7. I will never be able to move past a single thing about Embiid’s Game 7. He was horrendous on defense, as well as on the glass – he had three rebounds at halftime. His body language was horrific; he looked disinterested in being there. He was nothing even resembling a leader. Throughout the entire third quarter run, Embiid was careless with the ball, gave the bare minimum effort on defense, and hardly spoke to his teammates. I’d say that I’ve never seen anything like it, but we saw practically the same thing in Game 6 against Miami last season.
In both of those games, you could (and should) blame the team as a whole, instead of just Embiid. But it’s always, always, always on the best player to set the tone of those types of games. In both of those games, Embiid did not show the slightest degree of leadership – there were blown rotations, missed box-outs, and sloppy passes left and right, and Embiid just jogged end to end saying nothing. Any true leader would have sent a message to his teammates – explicitly or implicitly – to say, “hey man, I’m the leader of this team, and we don’t do that shit here.”
The cherry on top of it all was Embiid’s postgame demeanor. Schmoozing it up with Tatum, grinning and trolling Giannis in his postgame comments, and simply not showing anywhere near the level of disappointment that even the average Sixers fan felt – it was shocking. It was simply not the way that champions handle a loss of that severity and magnitude.
All of this puts me in a very strange mental place with Embiid. I truly like him as a person, admire his story, and am extremely appreciative of everything he’s done for this franchise. I still think the world of him as a regular season player, but I’ve never felt worse about him being the leader of a championship team, and I’m incredibly tired of expecting him to be that player.
If the notification came across my phone tomorrow that Woj is reporting that Embiid has requested a trade, I don’t think I would feel crushed. I desperately wanted the Embiid era to end in a championship, but I’m about ready to give up on the possibility of it ever happening, both because of his limitations and the limitations of the team around him. If the team could secure a mammoth offer that would set them up for the next decade, I’d be alright with it. I so badly want an organizational identity shift, and I’m not sure that can happen without trading Embiid.
All of this is mostly irrelevant – they aren’t trading Embiid. But I figured that my feelings on the subject are worth exploring, as many Sixers fans likely feel the same way. As I outlined in my piece before Game 7, I’m ready to settle into a different mental approach towards the Sixers. I’m ready to settle into appreciating a 48-50 win team built around Maxey and Embiid for a handful of seasons with an outside chance of making it out of the second round every year. Embiid is a marvel to watch in the regular season, so I’m going to appreciate the experience of watching him, enjoy the small things, and not get wrapped up in the idea of him winning a championship, as I have been for the recent past.
My disappointment from this season will eventually fade, and I will settle into a point of uninspired clarity. I’m prepared for the rest of the Embiid era to essentially be like an upgraded version of the Doug Collins-era Sixers – a scrappy team that makes for a satisfying nightly watch with a fighting chance in any given playoff series, but no real chance of winning a title. Expecting anything more has only led to crushing disappointment in the past, and there seems to be no reasonable justification for bringing that expectation into the future. I wish I felt differently about Embiid, and the team’s overall situation, but that path only brings about misery.