Philadelphia 76ers: Zhaire Smith and Landry Shamet shouldn’t play in playoffs

By Luke Swiatek | Aug 26, 2018

Zhaire Smith, Landry Shamet | Philadelphia 76ers (Photo by Jesse D. Garrabrant/NBAE via Getty Images) /

Philadelphia 76ers rookie guards Zhaire Smith and Landry Shamet might help the team in the regular season, but they should remain benched in the playoffs.

There’s a general adage about rookies in the NBA: even if they put up good stats, they rarely help the team win. The Philadelphia 76ers recently experienced an exception to that rule with Ben Simmons‘ play last year, but he’s clearly quite a special case.

Other rookies did help their teams in the playoffs too, though. Donovan Mitchell and Jayson Tatum were real leaders for their teams, and even later draft picks like O.G. Anunoby played an important role.

However, the Philadelphia 76ers aren’t the same as those teams, in that they have great depth at the positions in question. Mitchell was at least the second-best guard on his team, Tatum’s whole squad was injured, and Anunoby was the Raptors’ only wing capable of matching up with LeBron James.

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One could argue that in terms of strict positions, Zhaire Smith and Landry Shamet should see playing time. Marco Belinelli got 27.3 minutes per game in the playoffs, and the 76ers didn’t bring in another guard to replace him. Justin Anderson played a bit in the Miami Heat series, and now he’s gone too.

There’s definitely an argument to be made that Smith and Shamet should absorb Belinelli and Anderson’s minutes, but that’s unwise. Even if the Philadelphia 76ers didn’t add another guard, they still made other additions that should take away from Smith and Shamet’s potential minutes.

In the playoffs, the 76ers essentially used an eight-man rotation, and that’s not uncommon. Other than the starters, Brett Brown mostly employed T.J. McConnell, Marco Belinelli, and Ersan Ilyasova.

Amir Johnson started out the playoffs seeing heavy minutes, but his lack of any shooting ability hampered the offense. Don’t expect Brown to make the same mistake this year; Johnson will be planted firmly on the bench come the playoffs, and Dario Saric can play backup center in a pinch.

It felt like Justin Anderson had an important role against the Miami Heat, but he actually played only 4.7 minutes per game in seven appearances, and some of those minutes came in garbage time. Replacing his minutes will be easy.

So out of the eight-man rotation, Belinelli and Ilyasova are gone. Mike Muscala will likely absorb most of Ilyasova’s playoff minutes. Wilson Chandler should steal what’s left of Ilyasova’s minutes as well as some of Belinelli’s.

Chandler isn’t a shooting guard, so it seems odd to suggest that he could take Belinelli’s minutes. However, Belinelli actually spent 56 percent of his time at the 3 in the playoffs, and Chandler can certainly play the 3. Slotting him next to J.J. Redick on the wing should be a good balance of offense and defense.

There are also some interesting “switch everything lineups” that could be created by moving Robert Covington to the 2. A lineup of Simmons-Covington-Chandler-Saric-Muscala would have some real intrigue on defense.

Still, those two probably won’t take all of Ilyasova and Belinelli’s minutes, and there should still be some left. If the starters all received 32 minutes per game (a conservative estimate, especially for the playoffs), that leaves 80 total minutes per game for the bench.

McConnell, Chandler, and Muscala should take up around 60-70 of those minutes. Seems perfect, right? That leaves 10-20 minutes for Smith and Shamet to play in the playoffs!

If that was your thought, you’re forgetting someone else: Markelle Fultz. He’s a year ahead of the two rookies in development, has been working with Drew Hanlen all summer, isn’t currently injured (unlike Smith and Shamet), and was the No. 1 pick last year. If either of the two rookie guards is better than Fultz this year, something went incredibly wrong.

Who knows, Fultz could even be starting by the time the playoffs roll around. He certainly should be good enough to be the ninth and final man in the rotation.

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Smith and Shamet could be very useful pieces in the regular season this year. Shamet plays similarly to Belinelli, and Smith could be the lockdown guard defender that the Philadelphia 76ers have been looking for. However, if everything goes right, they shouldn’t be playing in the playoffs.