With the regular season getting close to its conclusion, the Philadelphia 76ers faltered in another tough test, falling to the upstart San Antonio Spurs on the road to fall to 43-36 on the season. Now, they are slotted in at seventh place in the East, which will hoist them into the play-in tournament if the season ended today.
Despite the hosts missing Victor Wembanyama, the Spurs did not have much problem putting the 76ers away in the second half. The bench was their downfall once again. San Antonio’s second unit outscored Philly’s, 50-18 — that is simply not a formula that resonates with winning to any degree.
While the team’s struggles with bench scoring is not anything new — they have the fifth-lowest scoring second unit in the league — Nick Nurse’s decision to tweak their starting lineup by opening games with Kelly Oubre Jr. and demoting Dominick Barlow to the bench has very clearly backfired already.
The 76ers are fixing what isn’t broken by starting Kelly Oubre Jr. over Dominick Barlow
The 76ers have to strike a more meaningful balance between their scoring attack with the starting unit and the bench, and by realigning Oubre's role so that he has to play next to the starters, the bench has been sapped of another capable shot creator who can lift them in spurts.
With four ball-dominant players next to him, there is simply little use for whatever Oubre can generate for himself. He is relegated into strictly being a three-and-D cog, which is obviously not the best way to optimize his skill set.
Barlow has started for the majority of the season, and despite his relative lack of individual offense, he simply fits well with the starters as someone who can smoothen things out on offense while being an impactful piece on the defensive end and in the rebounding department.
The race remains pretty tight for the final two guaranteed playoff spots in the East, but the 76ers cannot just walk away from something that has been working all season long. They should avoid that itch to get edgy at this juncture. Put simply, stick to what has been working.
Hopefully, Nick Nurse and his staff will refrain from trying to be mad scientists. The 76ers can no longer afford to veer away from what has worked well for them, and it is high time for them to realize that their players can be optimized in a much better way by simply reverting to the norm.