5. Cutting turnovers
The Sixers having turnover issues was inevitable coming into the season. Their starting point guard is a rookie, and their leading scorer only played 32 games before this year. Having high usage players with so little experience is a recipe for a high turnover rate.
The Sixers rank dead last in the NBA in turnovers per game and turnover percentage, according to NBA.com, and neither is particularly close. On the year, Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons average 3.8 and 3.6 turnovers, respectively.
Interestingly, according to 82games.com, the Sixers have actually committed fewer turnovers off of bad passes than their opponents. Instead, the large majority of their give-aways have come from ball handling errors.
Related Story: Should Fultz return this season?
This shows that the Sixers could find success cutting down on turnovers by making smarter decisions involving dribbling and driving into traffic.
On Thursday against the Cavs, they did just that. Embiid and Simmons only had two turnovers each, and the entire team only had ten.
When asked after the game, The Process saw even more room for improvement.
Joel Embiid on Sixers 10 turnovers: "That’s pretty good. We can do better."
— Jessica Camerato (@JessicaCamerato) March 2, 2018
On the second half of the back-to-back, the Sixers once again took care of the ball with just 11 turnovers against Charlotte.
Next: 5 reasons the Sixers will compete for 2018-19 championship
In the playoffs, the Sixers won’t be able to turn the ball over 20 times and beat the league’s top teams. They’ll need to improve their ball security to have any chance of going on a deep run.