Philadelphia 76ers not giving up on Al Horford and Joel Embiid pairing

The Philadelphia 76ers head coach hasn’t given up on trying to make his duo of centers play well while on the court together.

There has been a lot of negatives surrounding the Philadelphia 76ers this season. The lack of depth, the lack of high volume 3-point shooters, Ben Simmons‘ unwillingness to take outside and the recent slew of injuries are just the major issues that have plagued the franchise. However, probably the biggest issue has been the fit of big man Al Horford, especially with center Joel Embiid.

There’s no doubt that the two big men aren’t a great fit and I even wrote about why they shouldn’t play together anymore. Sadly, it doesn’t appear head coach Brett Brown has read that article because unlike myself, it appears he hasn’t completely given up on the pairing just yet.

According to Kyle Neubeck of PhillyVoice, Brown plans to experiment with playing the two centers together once Embiid returns from injury and while point guard Ben Simmons is still unavailable due to the injury he’s dealing with. Neubeck theorized that Brown might have a starting five featuring the two big men moving forward as well.

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There are two reasons why I think this shouldn’t be completely surprising. The first being this wouldn’t be the first time that Brown has featured a starting lineup with Al Horford and Joel Embiid that didn’t include Simmons. In the four games that those types of lineups existed, the Sixers went 2-2.

Not bad all things considered, but one could understand if Brown wants to see what those two bigs can do without a non-shooting point guard. With Simmons unwilling to take outside shots, there isn’t enough space for Embiid and Horford to play well together. Without Simmons might be a different story.

This also wouldn’t be the first season in which Brown tried to make two centers play together. Back during “The Process”, the Sixers had both Jahlil Okafor and Nerlens Noel and the two failed to play well together. It wasn’t surprising that Noel-Okafor frontcourt failed. Neither big man was a threat shooting outside and Okafor’s poor defense made the situation worst.

Obviously, compared to Okafor and Noel, the duo of Embiid and Horford are a lot better. Both are still solid enough defenders and are solid 3-point shooters. Those two factors alone made pairing the two this past offseason a feasible task to begin with, but it just wasn’t worked out up to this point.

There’s sound logic behind trying to see how these two big men play without Simmons, but I still think it won’t work based on what I wrote about the two centers playing together in the past. However, it appears for now that fans of the Philadelphia 76ers will get to see Horford and Embiid share the court for a while longer.