The Philadelphia 76ers Subtle Small Ball Success

While much of the Philadelphia 76ers have focused on big men and fitting so many into the roster, would it be a true surprise if the team suddenly shifted its focus to load up on guards and develop a small ball scheme?

Small Ball. Guard City. The antithesis of big men crashing boards, blocking shots, and the bump and grind of muscling to get a shot up at the hoop. It’s a strategy of getting the opposite of what your opponent can defend. They go big and slow? You go small and fast. Foot speed, ball movement, anything to get the tempo of the game past the comfort zone of the opposition. Make them labor for breath, fight to cover real estate. If they build skyscrapers around the inner city real estate surrounding the hoop, dash to the suburbs and pummel them with treys from the perimeter.

In short, hit them where it hurts. Be where they ain’t.

The mantra of the Golden State Warriors, the team with an incredible 53 win 5 loss season so far, and on track to end up with the highest winning percentage in the NBA, is bound to get some converts. After all, their nearly flawless performance each night on an NBA basketball court is loaded with excitement, and they seem to be getting better. The Warriors have placed 6’7″ power forward Draymond Green at the center position, sometimes giving away up to 7 inches to his opponent.

"“This is a copycat league. The success of Golden State has propelled coaches to play more small ball than maybe they even wanted to. More teams will push the envelope.” said Randy Wittma of the Washington Wizards"

And so, the NBA has been moving to the small guy. When the Indiana Pacers got burned by the smaller and faster Miami Heat in post season, they have adopted the tactics of the enemy

"It wasn’t even about the Warriors,” Vogel said. “It was about not being able to overcome LeBron and Miami three straight years. We couldn’t even throw the ball inside. We had a lot of turnovers just trying to do that.”"

And so, the focus of the league is on small guys, while the focus of the Philadelphia 76ers remains on the big guys. Or does it? You see, the Phoenix Suns were once run by the pair of men who truly introduced small ball into the NBA. They won games with it, but never the championship.  But the rest of the NBA did not close the book on the effort.   Some coaches took notes.  Some coaches took interest.  Eventually, some coaches took the NBA by storm.  And so, the Golden State Warriors have tugged hard on the rest of the league to follow them in their excellence.

Meanwhile, the Philadelphia 76ers continue to load up on big men, draft picks… and as 2015 drew to its close, the team signed on a new assistant head coach, a man with some interest in the NBA small ball craze.

None other than the godfather of small ball himself, Mike D’Antoni.

Next: D'Antoni Started It All

D’Antoni Started It All

And so, while the Golden State Warriors decimate the rest of the NBA, the man who brought small ball to the NBA has quietly rejoined his former GM/Owner in Philadelphia. And what is Mike D’Antoni’s thoughts about the success of his small ball scheme? The Warriors incredible success has even surprised Mike D’Antoni, who was ahead of everyone but Don Nelson in the small-ball revolution.

"“Shoot,” he said, laughing, “maybe we didn’t even go small enough in Phoenix.”- Mike D’Antoni"

You see, that Phoenix Suns team was all about pace, space and pass. The very same mantra drilled into the head of the Sixers players by head coach Brett Brown. In that first full season under D’Antoni, the Suns led the NBA in pace, averaging 98.62 possessions per game—a full possession (97.54) more than the next-best team and five more than the league average (93.57). They attempted 24.7 three-pointers per game—nearly nine more than the league average (15.8).  And they fact that neither D’Antoni, nor his then and present boss Jerry Colangelo, had tasted the ultimate success.

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In a nice interview with Sports Illustrated’s Jake Fischer, D’Antoni gave his thoughts on the small ball revolution and the current wave of NBA elites taking advantage of that style. When he was asked to analyze the success of the Warriors and relate is to this own early success with the Phoenix Suns:

"SI.com: Obviously you had a tremendous amount of success in your first year as the head coach in Phoenix, as did Steve Kerr this year. Did his immediate success remind you of yourself? D’Antoni: Yea, and they played a very similar style. They have Stephen Curry who can shoot it as well, if not even better than Steve Nash, and a lot of the same type of players. Draymond Green can guard inside, outside, plays a little bit like Shawn Marion. Everyone has their strengths and weakness and everybody’s a little different, but they played a very similar style that we tried to play in Phoenix. SI.com: There was always a knock on your Suns teams struggling to defend. Does that make the Warriors’ run even more impressive, the fact they were able to push the tempo, play small, but still lock in defensively? ​D’Antoni: Yea, it does. And that’s a credit to the individuals they have. They have some great defenders. I think we kind of got a bad rap, we defended a lot better [in Phoenix] than what people were saying and when they didn’t think we could win that way. So, that’s what they knock you on. But we were just a couple steps away from winning a championship and it just didn’t work out for us. That’s why you gotta give Golden State credit. They took that and just went up another level. Winning 67 games in the regular season is incredible. They just did it all year. SI.com: On that note, when Alvin Gentry said after Game 6, ‘Tell Mike D’Antoni he’s vindicated,’ how did that make you feel? D’Antoni: Well, Alvin always makes me feel good. Alvin’s great and he didn’t have to say that but that was obviously—I appreciated it and it was nice. But, I didn’t feel vindicated anyway. I was just happy for him and happy for a bunch of good guys winning. SI.com: There are a ton of teams starting to fully embrace this small ball strategy. Did you ever anticipate this would become so widespread, where teams like the Indiana Pacers essentially just banished Roy Hibbert because they didn’t want to play with traditional big guys anymore? D’Antoni: Well, the league has always been a copycat league. I’m sure somebody is going to come up with something else and it will then go some place else. It’s just the game has changed. The rules have changed and the ability of players to be able to shoot threes and space the floor and be a power forward and be able to space all the way out to the three-point line—even centers can go out and shoot threes—it’s changed and people have to follow that. You give it enough time and I just think that it was kind of going that way anyway. And then what Golden State did, I just think it put everybody on notice and in order to beat them, you’re going to have to play that way. I think it’s a great thing. Obviously, I like that type of basketball. I like watching it. I think it’s exciting and I think fans love it. You’re trying to win and entertain and I think the Golden State Warriors accomplished both. SI.com: I read about the presentation you gave during the Las Vegas Summer League and, essentially, you said to build a team’s offensive attack around a post player playing with his back to the basket is wasting an opportunity offensively. Why do you think that? D’Antoni: If you look at the stats around the league, a post-up is not a very good shot. [Laughs] It just isn’t. Now again, in our business and leagues, a lot of times you say something and people take that as 100%: You’re always going to have post-ups and you’re always going to have 15-foot shots. They have not become the best shots. The best shots are layups and foul shots and three-point shots. So you try to gear your offense to where you can exploit those three things. And then, other teams are smart: They run you off the three so you have to shoot a 15-footer, or you can get a mismatch inside where you can post-up, and when you get a mismatch, you have to exploit that. But to go down and put your best offensive player on the block against their best defensive player, it’s just not a great option anymore. It just isn’t. – Interview October 2, 2015 of Mike D’Antoni by Sports Illustrated writer Jake Fischer"

Next: Some Small Ball Success for Sixers

Some Small Ball Success For Sixers?

And so, the Philadelphia 76ers sit on four draft picks, and four big men (if you consider Jahlil Okafor, Nerlens Noel, and newcomers Joel Embiid and Dario Saric) converging into a fork in the road.  Does the team go small?  If they do, is this a complete change to the team culture?

Well not exactly.  The team current head coach Brett Brown is a disciple of the “pace space pass” dogma, and has infused that thought process onto his players from the get-go.  Part of the 2014-2015 season was centered on the Sixers experimenting with a small ball version of their own.  You see, the team had struggled through a 4-28 run early last season.  But they eventually did find a groove, going on a short 8-13 sprint.  How did they do that?  Brett Brown had the Sixers playing small ball by minimizing the minutes that big men Nerlens Noel and Henry Sims played together. When they shared the court, there was only so much room to operate in the paint and on the baseline; the defense took a few steps in, the lane became clogged and the Sixers struggled to find quality scoring opportunities because of it. After January 5, 2015, Brown preferred to surround one big man with a point guard and three capable shooters (at least by the Sixers’ standards).  That led to an improvement in the team’s fortunes.  That same concept of going small has resurfaced in 2016 as well.

So too, we’ve heard again and again that the team just cannot harmonize when both Jahlil Okafor and Nerlens Noel play on the court at the same time.  Once more, the team suffers because there are too many bodies at the post and not enough of a threat from the perimeter.   Last year, the deadliest roster was the lineup of Michael Carter-Williams, K.J. McDaniels, Robert Covington, Luc Mbah a Moute, and Noel had logged the most minutes out of any Sixers’ lineup; and while doing so they’d also outscored opponents by 14.9 points per 100 possessions over the 19 games they had played together. This is particularly impressive when considering that the Sixers as a team have been outscored by 10 points per 100 possessions for the entire season.

The biggest reason for this is the group’s performance on the defensive end. They limited opponents to an eFG% of 41.6%; that was the lowest of any lineup in the NBA that has logged more than 80 minutes. This isn’t because of a small sample size, either. This group has played 152 minutes together, one of the fifty most frequently played lineups in the league.  Three of those five are no longer with the team, as the team traded MCW and McDaniels, and did not re-sign Mbah a Moute.  But that lesson remains embedded on coach Brown.

Next: Sixer Small Talk

Sixers Small Talk

Josh Wilson examined that small ball revolution in terms of the Sixers, and the fact that the team has gone counter to the craze by bringing in big men.  Has the team resisted the herd mentality to their benefit, or to their demise?  As Josh says in his article “buckets will never be outdated”.  As long as a team can space the floor, the post is owned by the tallest sky scraper who can score down low.

Well, the fact is that we’ve seen some of the best play from the Sixers this season when they have gone small, despite the bigs.  When one of the bigs was injured, or suspended, the team learned to make do, sometimes by going small ball.  We saw the team field a small roster of McConnell, Stauskas, Grant, Covington, and Okafor before Ish Smith arrived on the team.  But even that roster had Jahlil Okafor at the post.  Have they ever played a roster without either Noel or Okafor recently?

And of course, the small ball lineup that finds some success now feeds the appetite for more small ball.

And to go small means to emphasize the pace. Of course, with a team having limited success, and the small ball version of the team generating some of that, you will begin to see the appearance of the logical questions…

And there it is, the question that shakes the #TrustTheProcess to its very core. Is this team on the road to success, only to be traveling the wrong way? Is the team holding a hand of diamonds with no clubs, only to find clubs are trump? Well that’s tough to believe. One of the most astute persons in terms of true value is the Sixers president and general manager Sam Hinkie. In his track record, he sells high and buys low. As we found from the 2014-2015 chapter, the team has since traded two of the players who made up that year’s small ball lineup. In the meantime, the team drafted Jahlil Okafor and Richaun Holmes – two big guys. But are the Sixers sinking their future into the hands of big men, or simply buying low, developing big men, and then giving the team a roster of little guys?

Next: Moment of Truth

A Moment of Truth

Eventually, any discussion about the Philadelphia 76ers winds up at the draft. That is not coincidence, as virtually all of the Sixers current scheme of getting from the worst team in the NBA to the best must begin at some point. I had hope it would have already begun by now, but I was dishearteningly wrong.  So the Sixers languish in another nosedive as the season draws to a close.  Once more, the team seems to be more about questions than answers.  Once more, the team is counting on draft picks to align and bless the cursed lot of the Philadelphia 76ers by giving them a dared-hoped-for opportunity to get two of the top five NCAA prospect NBA hopefuls this year.

But what does the NBA draft hold?   Does it give the Philadelphia 76ers THE players who fit, glue the roster together and make it all rocket on the tracks of progress to that distant goal of being an playoff winner?   Well, draft analysis will be coming soon, but for now, let’s see what Philadelphia executive Jerry Colangelo has to say about the upcoming draft?

"“This draft is a draft of smalls. It’s really not a draft of bigs. That’s kind of interesting. You need to weigh all of these factors. When do you really pull the trigger. When is the right timing? – Jerry Colangelo"

Smalls. Again with the smalls. Haven’t the Sixer given up that small game?  Well, a recent piece of Brian Seltzer on Sixers.com discussed the team going small ball, when Brett Brown had run out a three-guard backcourt configuration featuring T.J. McConnell, Ish Smith, and Isaiah Canaan. McConnell is listed at 6’2” tall, while Smith and Canaan both stand at 6’0” tall. He goes on to highlight that lineup was first featured in the almost-upset win over the Golden State Warriors, and the same group surfaced with good success in the loss to the Orlando Magic. The group was responsible for cranking out the bulk of a 21-7 spurt that trimmed the Sixers’ 29-point deficit to 15 points in the third period.

So the team has been getting success with smaller guys.  But the team planners seem to be building a bigger team.

Something has to give.

Next: One More Angle

One More Angle

So the Sixers have success with the small lineup, the team has the former GM/Owner and head coach who innovated the small roster in the NBA. The team has previously been drafting bigs, whether purposefully or by the roll of the dice.  But the team has divested of smalls.   Of all the accidents, fates, and even the random chances that occur in the NBA, there is a decidedly purposeful hand at work from Hinkie to go bigger while the rest of the NBA goes smaller.

Does it continue?

Well let’s think of this from one more direction.  The facts that have lined up so far are conflicting as we have presented them so far.  But what if we reframe the team’s outlook on the rebuild?

If the team wanted to go big, what would they need?   First they would need larger bodies.   So far, the team has plenty of those and more on the way.  Secondly, they would need to speed up the game for those big men.   Right now, the team has the original architect of the fast pace offense, Mike D’Antoni, and the head coach is a strong advocate of the “pace space pass” mantra.  But that message is lost on the wrong type of player.

But who are the Sixers bringing in?  Which one player have the Sixers invested more time, effort, and organizational currency to support?    It would seem that Joel Embiid is that kind of hybrid player who has a potential to bring the speed of smaller players to a 7’2″ frame.  The Sixers are also looking at a young man in the form of Dario Saric who is a big man who can pass the ball as sweet as anyone.  That “pace space pass” will certainly be promoted on the floor whenever Saric suits up as a Sixer.   Saric pushes the ball up the court.   That gives the Sixers alley-oop a feed from virtually anywhere on the basketball court.  If fast breaks lead to points, then Saric leads to fast breaks.

While the team remains in this holding pattern, the losses pile up and hope diminishes.  But the holding pattern is not indecision.  Joel Embiid is the focus of this team’s future, and therefore all major moves are awaiting his outcome.  Once he is in place and running up and down the basketball court, the team can elect the center who compliments his style best.  With the two big selections, the team can then slide Saric to the three, and then work the back court.   Should the team end up with Ben Simmons, he could very likely end up as the team’s point guard, ala Magic Johnson.  To round out this roster, you slide Robert Covington to the two spot.  What you end up with is the tallest lineup in the NBA.   If they can compete on defense, this team will take the league by storm. You see, virtually every team is shifting small to some extent.

Next: Philadelphia 76ers Tumbling In Eighth Straight Loss

While the scheme to optimize this projected Sixer roster has yet to be developed, the team has the man who designed the small ball concepts.  If anyone can find a way to counter that offense, it’s the combination of Mike D’Antoni and Brett Brown.  Meanwhile,  the final determination of which picks the Sixers will receive and where those picks will fall has yet to happen.  But with two of the players in the form of Joel Embiid and Dario Saric on their way, the total impact of this NBA draft is mitigated.

Small ball may be a huge success in the way the Golden State Warriors roster plays right now, but eventually the code will be cracked and the next innovation will take its place.   The Sixers are banking that the next wave of NBA success is big men, and while they enjoy some success with small ball now, that experiment should change when the 2016 roster is finalized.