Philadelphia 76ers: How to mask Tobias Harris’ defense

Philadelphia 76ers head coach Brett Brown has a lot of things to figure out this season, including how to minimize Tobias Harris’ defensive flaws.

There’s plenty of questions surrounding the Philadelphia 76ers entering this season. A good portion of those questions involve the makeup of the Sixers starting five, especially on the defensive side of the ball. The defense of the team’s starting small forward Tobias Harris could be a big issue.

Throughout his career, Harris has never been anything more than an average defender, if that. His career Defensive Plus/Minus score is minus-0.4. Harris is a combo forward, but is better defensively as a power forward, because he lacks the lateral movement to keep up with opposing small forwards on a regular basis. With the addition of Al Horford this offseason, Harris will have to play a position up which puts him at a defensive disadvantage.

This is a tough problem for Brett Brown to solve, but not an impossible one. There’s several things that Brown can try to do in order to limit how Harris gets exposed by quicker perimeter players. Probably the most simplest solution is to make sure that Harris can play power forward as often as possible when he’s on the court.

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Brown has been know to stagger is rotations so that he always has two or three starters on the court most of the time. Brown could simply have Harris split the backup power forward duties with reserve Mike Scott, so that Harris isn’t on the court that often with the combination of Horford and Embiid. Obviously, there will be times that Harris will be playing small forward, but limiting his minutes at that position will mask the defensive issues he would experience there.

Most of the last season, the Sixers switched on the defensive end. There were really only two situations in which the 76ers defenders didn’t switch the players they were guarding. First was at the center position, which made sense. Jonah Bolden and Embiid were the only centers on the roster last year that could keep up with perimeter players. Keeping Embiid close to the basket and not wearing him out defending guards was another reason Embiid didn’t switch.

J.J. Redick was the only other player in the starting five that didn’t switch regularly on defense. That was because, he was the weak link on the defensive end. Despite being a sharpshooter and important to the team’s offense execution, he still hurt the the Sixers on defense. Redick would usually stick to his man, because if he switched, other teams would take advantage of the mismatch.

Brown could apply to the same defensive rules that Redick had for Harris. This would help limit Harris to defend players that won’t beat him off the dribble. Having Harris guard opposing team’s spot up shooter and not switch off that type of player would limit his defensive exposure whenever he is at the small forward position.

There’s a formula that Brown and the Philadelphia 76ers can use to help mask Harris’ defensive limitations. If he players at power forward often, it will limit his time defending perimeter players. Whenever he is at the small forward spot he should be fine defensively if he limits the times switches and guards opposing spot up shooters.