Sixers roundtable: Potential starting five and second unit for 2021-22

Roundtable, Potential starting five and second unit: Ben Wieland

With Ben Simmons holding out indefinitely, it currently seems unlikely that he’ll even play a minute for the Philadelphia 76ers this season. For Simmons’s replacement in the starting five, they need to turn to the only real option who can approximate Simmons’s playmaking ability: Tyrese Maxey.

Still just 20-years-old, the dynamic slasher is already the team’s most threatening ball handler. If the flashes Maxey showed of a pull-up 3-pointer are legit, then he’ll be a dangerous player. Defensively, if he can pressure opposing ball-handlers with the intensity he showed in flashes last season, Maxey should be at least passable in spite of his size limitations.

The rest of the starting lineup should remain the same around Maxey. This team is a little bit undersized with Maxey and Seth Curry in the backcourt, but should be able to make up for the lost physicality by running teams off the court thanks to five capable three-point shooters and the variety of offensive threats — with the exception of Danny Green, every starter would be above-average at creating their own shot.

Maxey’s addition to the starters will require a bit of a shakeup to the bench rotation as well. Here are the top five non-starters the team has, in order of how many minutes they should play.

Matisse Thybulle, who qualified for an All-Defensive team in just his second NBA season, is the best option behind Maxey to play big minutes. He’s already proven to be perhaps the best defensive playmaker in the NBA, and it wouldn’t be a shock if Thybulle played his way onto the court over Curry or Green in crunch time every once in a while.

Paul Reed has to get his shot at some point and it should be sooner rather than later. He does everything Daryl Morey loves in a modern big: shoots, scores, and switches on defense. In a bench role, Reed will be an awesome sparkplug and rack up strong numbers, just like he did last season in the G-League.

Furkan Korkmaz, who recently celebrated his 24th birthday, is a versatile wing shooter who’s improved his game every season with the Sixers. Especially when Maxey and Thybulle — two players who haven’t yet forced defenses to respect their shots — play together, Furkan will be key as a knockdown bomber off the bench.

Georges Niang has proven himself as an NBA stretch four, and the bench unit is going to need at least a little bit of size. If nothing else, Niang should be reliable.

Shake Milton also makes sense off the bench, though his role is a little bit less defined with a logjam at the shooting guard position Shake slides into. While it’ll be hard to find minutes on a team with Thybulle, Korkmaz, Danny Green, Curry, and Maxey all capable of playing Shake’s position, he should definitely get at least a few looks as a microwave scorer.