Are Philadelphia 76ers Trying Too Hard?

Dec 7, 2015; Philadelphia, PA, USA; Philadelphia 76ers guard

(1) drives against San Antonio Spurs center

(33) during the first quarter at Wells Fargo Center. Mandatory Credit: Bill Streicher-USA TODAY Sports

Are Philadelphia 76ers Trying Too Hard?

I have two sons with five years age difference. They are grown now, but in their youth my older son had a perpetual shadow. Whatever his older brother did, my younger son felt he could do too. Courage? Bravery? Unreasonable expectations? Didn’t matter. He wanted to “belong”, to be considered on par with his older brother. At a younger age, his mind processed his circumstances in the best way he knew how, to try with absolutely no regard to failure. When you are young, that’s the process of learning. You try, discover what you cannot do, and then try again until you can.

When I watch the Philadelphia 76ers take the basketball court, invariably there will come a period in the game when either they forget that they are an NBA basketball team as well, or they see what their opposition can do on the basketball court and they try to follow suit. It feels as though they are overwhelmed on the court, as though they are going through the motions while other teams simply glide along on their plays. Are we trying too hard?

Philadelphia knows how ultimatums go. When Andy Reid’s Philadelphia Eagles fell to 4-8, they rebounded with a four game winning streak to knot up the season at .500. However, owner Jeff Lurie would have none of it, and claimed the season was “Fool’s Gold”. From that moment, the team panicked. Players quit, coaches were fired mid-season, and the Eagles became a poster child of how not to win in the NFL. Might the story have played out differently if Lurie had remained silent to the press? We’ll never know.

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But there is a growing sense that the 2016 NBA draft is having a similar effect on this team. Rather than act as incentive to foster and promote player development, more and more it seems as though players are falling into bad and familiar habits, which in turn leads to turnovers, poor shot selection, and another loss in a string of losses.

#Sixers Stauskas: "The way we look at it, we come in every game and there’s no pressure on us. Everyone’s always expecting us to lose."
— Rod Beard (@detnewsRodBeard) December 12, 2015

The plan has been that this is the third season of losing. But the start of the year set the entire team back. With so little time to mesh, the team patched promoted and pushed ahead with all of the healthy bodies they had available. Since that time, the team has seen the return of Robert Covington, Tony Wroten, and Kendall Marshall, and is eager to see the return of senior statesman Carl Landry. But the young men who “made do” got into habits of trying to do too much. As the teams fortune’s remained stuck in losing, oncoming now healthy players assumed the burden of playing minutes and the team’s success, and they too struggle to find close losses, let alone wins.

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There is one Achilles heel with analytics. It simply needs data, lots of data, to become meaningful. Right now, a majority of this Sixers team is sitting on a third of an NBA season as their baseline. Much of this roster has not played meaningful minutes together. The head coach, Brett Brown, is trying to change the taste of a cake by guessing at the way the batter looks. This team needs to take a deep collective breath, pause, and learn to play within themselves.

The team is weak on fundamentals. Turnovers demoralize, bad shooting deflates, but bad defense destroys any chance this team has of winning. A year ago, we won games because we had great defensive games. Our first win was 85-77 over the Minnesota Timberwolves, our second was an anomaly, a 108-101 win over the Detroit Pistons that ended tied after four quarters at 100-100. A third win on December against the Orlando Magic was a 96-88 defense success followed by a successive win against the Miami Heat 91-87. Four wins a year ago on a very bad team.

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This season, the Sixers found their defense against the Boston Celtics, but on a night they held the Celtics to 84, they only managed to score 80. The second best defensive showing has been a pair of 91 point games. The Sixers defeated the Los Angeles Lakers 103-91 on one such occasion, but lost to the Milwaukee Bucks 91-87 previously. The Sixers had managed to hold opponents to 92 point on three occasions, but lost to the San Antonio Spurs 92-83, the Dallas Mavericks 92-86, and the Memphis Grizzlies 92-84.

Success in the NBA is not always scoring. These Sixers are simply too young and raw to be getting benefits from all of the basketball analytics approach. Right now, this team needs to hang it’s hat on something. It worked when it was great defense, and it still can work. The arrival of Mike D’Antoni will mean the team is laying the groundwork for offense going forward. But does that give Brett Brown more time to secure the defense, or will the roster demands of offense dictate who plays the most minutes?

The Philadelphia 76ers are a young and new team in a seasoned veteran NBA. Are Philadelphia 76ers trying too hard to score? Perhaps. Eventually, this team will be as seasoned and veteran as their competition. Until that time, stop trying to outscore opponents. Perhaps the answer to winning now is simply to be honest with ourselves. We were good at defense a year ago. Let’s try to restore that before engaging in shoot outs.