Philadelphia 76ers were flawed last season; have those flaws been fixed?

Depth charge

The flaw:

Coach Brett Brown was pretty fair in the playoffs in terms of giving everyone on the bench some playoff action throughout the Brooklyn series and early against Toronto. He gave each bench player at least one game where they had a chance to shine and show they deserved to play more.

Unfortunately for Brown, instead of shining, he mostly got eclipses.

Both Brooklyn and Toronto featured a lot of athletic wings who could score off the dribble. That rendered most of the backups useless as they could not keep up. The Sixers bench was burnt so much on isolation plays and pick-and-rolls you might as well have nicknamed them ‘Toast’.

In the end, the only substitutes were forward Mike Scott and swing player James Ennis whom Brown could play consistently.

Teams cut down on their rotations in the playoffs but to have just seven players usable for an entire game is really cutting it to the bone.  When Brown tried to go eight deep and put in Greg Monroe to give Embiid a rest in the decisive Game 7, Toronto outscored them by a 12-point margin in the one minute, 49 seconds he was out.

A key reason for the Sixers lack of depth was the horrific job of finding talent by its general manager for the previous two seasons. Outside of Simmons, Colangelo’s drafts produced nothing despite plenty of talented players being available. His trade record was equally abysmal.

With no restocking of a bare cupboard, all the Sixers could count on were free agent signings and in-season trades.

Of the seven main players the Sixers used against Toronto, only two, Simmons and J.J. Redick (signed as a free agent) were acquired by Colangelo. Embiid was a holdover from the Sam Hinkie era and Jimmy Butler, Harris, Scott and Ennis were all acquired in trades by current GM Elton Brand during the season, when it became obvious the team needed help to contend for a title.

Simmons was actually a product of Hinkie’s tanking strategy, so you can say Redick is really the only player Eric Jr. could take credit for who contributed in the  playoffs.

Now, Colangelo did make sure not to sign anyone to one of those long-term stupid contracts that some teams love to lavish on mediocre players, so Brand had plenty of cap space to work with this off-season.

Fixing the flaw:

In the starting lineup, Brand basically swapped Redick and Butler for Al Horford and Josh Richardson.

However, Horford will most likely be at center when Embiid comes out. Having an all-star as the backup center will correct a huge flaw in the 76ers lineup. In the playoffs, the Sixers had four centers sitting on the bench they could not use due to their limitations (i.e. they got destroyed on defense). For insurance, he also signed veteran big man Kyle O’Quinn, a rim-protector and a hard worker.

Brand then moved to re-sign the two decent subs from the playoffs, Ennis and Scott (to the delight of the Hive).

With Horford pretty much sucking up all the salary cap space, the Sixers could offer only veteran minimum contracts to everyone else.

Still, Brand was able to ink two point guards, Raul Neto, a solid if injury-prone veteran who can shoot, plus the explosive Trey Burke, who scored 42 points against Charlotte in November 2017 and tortured the Celtics this past season (always a good thing).

Recent draft picks Zhaire Smith, Matisse Thybulle, Jonah Bolden and Shake Milton, all in their rookie or second year, fill out the roster and all show promise to be future contributors. Thybulle and Smith have the potential to be defensive-shutdown wings, something the Sixers were dying for last year.

In a possible Eastern Conference final against the Milwaukee Bucks, you can not project how many players will be in Brett Brown’s rotation. However, it should be safe to say he has a lot more to choose from than last year.

Verdict: Flaw fixed.