Philadelphia 76ers roundtable: Projected playoff rotations
Philadelphia 76ers roundtable for playoff rotation.
There’s going to be questions about the Philadelphia 76ers playoff rotation in the Disney bubble until games actually begin. With that in mind, several of our writers at The Sixer Sense came together and gave their predictions to what the Sixers playoff rotations could look like.
It should be noted that the writers made wrote these predictions prior to the start of the Orlando bubble (sorry for the delay for this articles’ release). With that in mind, they had no knowledge of 76ers head coach Brett Brown was going to shift Ben Simmons to power forward, start Shake Milton at point guard, make Al Horford a full-time reserve, and have both Matisse Thybulle and Furkan Korkmaz in the second unit.
They also didn’t know that Brown was going to have a 9-10 player rotation as well and nothing appears to be set in stone at this point either.
Uriah Young
If Brett Brown doesn’t want to change his zip code in 2021, he’s going to have to commit to a lineup that can quickly produce positive results. His best bet is to make one key switch in the starting five, swapping out Al Horford for Shake Milton.
Doing so will add another legit wing scorer who can create space on offense. This would make Horford the sixth man off the bench, giving Embiid early rest for fresher fourth quarter legs.
From there, the substitution pattern should look like this – Thybulle, Korkmaz, Burks, and Robinson III. Mike Scott just misses any leftover minutes, unless Brown needs Scott as a perimeter threat and his streaky 3-point shot somehow gets into a rhythm.
I predict Simmons won’t get over 30 minutes a game the first few games, so Shake will get quality time running point, however, Neto will have a chance to prove he can execute floor general duties. Should Brown make this decision with his rotation right away, he may build cohesion that can pay dividends once the first round of the playoffs begins.