With the Sixers on the West Coast for a brief road trip, we're long overdue for a visit to the mailbag at PhillyVoice. I may not understand why Doc Rivers is playing DeAndre Jordan much more than you do, but I'm always happy to try to lend my insight on the topics you all hold near and dear to your hearts.

To the questions...

This is the thing — no one really knows whether Paul Reed or Charles Bassey can offer anything, or at least offer anything consistently, to this team. It has been so long since either has played regular rotation minutes that any evidence we could use from the past is based on lineups that are no longer relevant. Could Reed be the center in a group led by Seth Curry, Shake Milton, and/or Furkan Korkmaz? Doesn't really matter at this point.

To me, this is why the Sixers need to get a look at both of the young guys before the season ends, because both have merits in the lineups the Sixers want to play behind Joel Embiid. If you want to play a more switch-heavy style to appease James Harden and hide some of his warts on defense, Reed feels like a better choice on that front, a guy who can theoretically hold up better against smaller, quicker forwards and guards if it comes down to it. Bassey is a more traditional, drop coverage center, so switching everything wouldn't be his forte, but the rookie big is a more natural fit with Harden as a screen-and-roll threat. The Western Kentucky product is a big body who creates a lot of separation for his ballhandler on screens, and he has a lot of the traits (soft hands, light on his feet, big catch radius) that you want in a lob target. 

We also definitely know what Paul Millsap and DeAndre Jordan are capable of at this point, which is to say not much. If push comes to shove, I'd roll with Millsap between the two veteran options because I'm more confident his effort and mind will be switched on play-to-play, and you might get opponents to guard him out to the three-point line to open space up for drivers. Jordan has had some nice moments as an active rebounder, but his defensive awareness is a disaster and his finishing has slipped enough that his main utility is gone. He's a bigger guy to deal with bigger centers, I suppose, though I'm not sure how many of those the Sixers would actually draw in a playoff run.

Unfortunately, Rivers seems committed to the vets, so none of this really matters. He called Jordan's play "great" when asked about it recently, and Monday night's Miami game with Embiid resting was a tell-tale sign of how he views this "battle" for minutes. If Reed and Bassey couldn't get on the floor except for spot minutes in the case of the former, it's unlikely they're going to play real minutes before the season ends, and unlikelier still that he'd trust either in a playoff series.

As for Isaiah Joe, he has done nothing to inspire confidence in me, which I've touched on a few times in mailbags throughout the year. His shot is still purely theoretical — I think people gloss over the fact that one of his two seasons at Arkansas was below average from deep, and I get it, because the form looks pretty and effortless when he gets shots up. But there's limited evidence to suggest he's a trustworthy shooter, and he's not good enough at anything else yet to gain trust. With small chances to state his case recently, Joe has been foul-prone and ineffective.

Does that mean he should be buried forever? Certainly not, and guys are not going to improve sitting on the bench forever. Just limit your expectations here.

It obviously would have been better to hold onto helpful role players at the deadline and get James Harden, but for one, we don't know if that was going to be a realistic opportunity. As checked out as Harden looked in Brooklyn, perhaps a shot at contention there would have changed his mind and convinced him to stay alongside Kevin Durant. There was risk in that for the Brooklyn Nets, certainly, but risk for the Sixers in waiting until this offseason to make a push for him.

The bigger risk, obviously, was not getting a player of Harden's caliber now or ever in exchange for Simmons, with Daryl Morey needing to simply hope better days were ahead on the trade market. Even with the ups and downs they've had so far, it's reasonable to say the Sixers materially changed their ceiling and odds to contend for a title at the deadline, and that it was going to take a player like Harden in order to do that. Had the Sixers made a trade centered around, for example, a player like Tyrese Haliburton, they would probably have been a better team but not better in a fundamentally meaningful way. You're going from a team with a second-round ceiling to, well, a team with a likely second-round ceiling.

There is a ton of risk involved even with Harden on board, especially with how muddy the Eastern Conference playoff picture is. In the wrong matchup, it would not be shocking to see the Sixers lose a first-round series this season, an outcome that might lead to Wells Fargo Center being reduced to ash. But they also have a chance to go out and win a title, something that was not on the table before. Curry and Drummond would help, but they weren't providing that.

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I think it would be bad practice to drop players from the roster who at least have a chance to be long-term contributors as a result of the coach's refusal to play them. It would be one thing if they were stuck on the bench because of a guy like Andre Drummond, who played well and produced during his time in Philadelphia, but DeAndre Jordan and Paul Millsap lack both short and long-term upside as options behind Joel Embiid.

How likely is it that either/both of Paul Reed and Charles Bassey ultimately become NBA contributors? Frankly, we haven't seen enough of either at this level to find out. But you can at least see the outline of rotation players in those two, and they're (theoretically) in a position where the Sixers will always be in need of some quality minutes. Given the low likelihood of getting a playable/productive guy in another spot before the playoffs, I think you hold onto two decent-ish prospects for now instead of burning them for what would amount to minimal upside.

I think there are very realistic scenarios where Rivers is not the head coach next year. To circle back here, it is not outside the realm of possibility that the Sixers lose a first-round series this season. Think about the fire and brimstone that would come down if they dropped a series to the Brooklyn Nets in round one. It's unlikely to be a first-round matchup based on where things sit today, but what if they somehow end up in a slugfest with the Boston Celtics, who have been on an absolute mission since the start of the new year? You don't go out and get James Harden and then feel satisfied with early defeat.

That's without consideration for how the Sixers might lose in the playoffs, should they lose at all. Rivers did not exactly drape himself in glory in their round two loss to Atlanta, and though I think he sits somewhere on the competency spectrum between where his fans and critics place him, I don't sense that there's significant local support for him. He's an easy fall guy if things go south, especially if some of his past tendencies come roaring back on the big stage. And frankly, if one of his stars faceplants on the big stage, booting the coach is one way to immediately take a bit of heat off of Harden or Embiid. Always consider the optics.

But these are all hypotheticals, and I don't love hypotheticals regarding potentially firing someone. Rivers has overseen a team that has grown closer despite a lot of challenges over the last couple of years, players have taken steps forward under him, and they have won a lot of games. I'm happy to question decisions when I think they're screwy, I'll just save the more heated debates and claims for other people.

I wouldn't pour dirt on your bet just yet, but I don't see it as an especially likely outcome. A second-year player making a jump to good starter is a great story and sign for the Sixers, but it doesn't fit the profile of the type of player who usually wins this award. While it's an admittedly dumb way to think about the award, seven of the last eight players to win the award scored at least 20 points per game, the lone exception being Pascal Siakam in 2019. All of those guys also won the award in their third season at the earliest, and that has been a pretty consistent dividing line for most of my life. The most recent second-year players to win a Most Improved award were Monta Ellis and Gilbert Arenas in 2007 and 2003 respectively.

Do I think Maxey deserves consideration? Absolutely. He was asked to jump from occasional rotation guy to nailed-on starter and de factor leader of the perimeter for a good team, which is quite difficult on its own, and he has massively improved his volume and efficiency. That's hard to do. But is he going to beat out a guy like Darius Garland, an All-Star who is leading a playoff team? Is he beating Ja Morant, who will probably end up on a lot of MVP ballots after a sizable step forward? Probably not. 

Most people are not going to give you real answers or be receptive to your questions if "badgering" is your tactic of choice. 

On a serious note, I do think people's understanding of reporter/team relationships is skewed locally by what they hear in Eagles press conferences. "Badgering" is a much more frequent occurrence there for a bunch of reasons, but I haven't found it effective to try to follow how they approach media availability, either to get answers that are useful to me/the fans or build the trust you need with people to know things you have to know away from press conferences.  With a football team, you're only speaking with the head coach a few times a week. In fact, there are designated days when coordinators tend to talk to the media instead of the head coach. By contrast, we're talking to Rivers and Rivers alone at least twice on game days and at a minimum every other day based on practice availability and so forth. 

Perhaps more importantly, under a 17-game schedule, an NFL game is worth a little under five NBA games, or over a normal week's worth of basketball games. So most trends, a la the backup center rotation, are worth watching play out for at least a small chunk of time before actively pressing Rivers about it, even if I think something like Jordan at backup center is dumb before it actually happens. Other reporters have their own choices to make, but I don't especially want to be the reporter whose brand becomes "the annoying backup center guy," or even the overly negative guy for that matter. When the story is, for example, Maxey going crazy in the fourth and bench players coming out of nowhere to steal them a win against the Heat, you're just kind of being an irritant if all you can think to talk about is the center rotation.

At the moment, we are discussing the Jordan/backup center problem with Rivers a couple of times each week, and I think that's probably about the airtime it deserves. If/when it looms large in an important game, that will tick up.

There is a chance in the sense that I have learned to rule nothing out entirely in my time covering the league, but I can't imagine the Sixers shelled out everything they did in order to get James Harden, only to turn around and say, "Thanks, but no thanks" when they have a chance to lock him up long-term. 

But while we are on the subject...

I have found it very difficult to evaluate Harden, broadly speaking, which makes it hard to give an across-the-board evaluation of the team. His best performances have been absolutely electric, Harden canning stepback threes and punishing every last team who decides to send two at him on-ball. But his play in some spots has been downright mystifying, filled with overpassing, inability/unwillingness to beat bad defenders in isolation, and some moments at the rim where his lack of burst and explosion has led to some ugly rejections.

There's simply no way for me to know with any certainty what the cause behind all that is. There are moments where I think it's Harden simply saving some juice for the playoffs, and moments where it looks like Harden just doesn't have the bounce physically that he used to, leading to him compensating by avoiding those situations and leaning on his passing. Even a diminished Harden makes the Sixers more dangerous on offense than they were with a non-shooter running the offense, obviously, but a diminished Harden may not be enough to put the Sixers on the level they need to be in order to win a championship.

To me, the big question heading into the playoffs is how teams will choose to defend Harden and Embiid in the middle of the floor and how those two respond to it. The majority of teams have sent two toward Harden on-ball, leaving Embiid to attack the low man in space, which has been to Philadelphia's benefit. The numbers also say Harden is still absolutely elite when teams hand him single coverage — since joining the Sixers, he has averaged more isolation possessions than any player in the league and has posted the best efficiency there by a healthy margin, averaging 1.2 points per possessions, over half a point clear of second and third place for the season (DeMar DeRozan and Kevin Durant). It hasn't felt like that, though, and I do wonder if teams might eventually abandon the two on-the-ball approach and dare Harden to try to beat them as a scorer. That would have seemed like an insane proposition a few years back, but it feels better than letting Embiid attack single coverage now.

I think if seeding breaks nicely and the Sixers get the best versions of Embiid and Harden in the playoffs, they have championship-level potential. Sprinkled in between a handful of shootouts, the Sixers have turned in some impressive defensive outings for a team that frankly doesn't have a lot of talent on that end. Harden has actually exceeded expectations there for me in terms of his effort and commitment to scheme, and while that still leaves him in just passable territory overall, playoff defense relies as much on buy-in as anything else. They're not going to win a title on the back of their defense, but they're not totally hopeless, I don't think. Heck, Tobias Harris has overachieved there recently, doing a good job with a handful of tough assignments.

Or, you know, Harden's free throws could dry up and they could draw a monster defensive team and get sent home packing early. There's genuine uncertainty in the Eastern Conference playoff picture for the first time in a while, and that's exciting for me, even if it isn't for fans. I'm looking forward to seeing what this group is made of. 

I actually think this is the most accessible FromSoftware game you're ever going to play. Elden Ring is a huge, daunting experience that I still have not completed despite spending quite a bit of time with, but it uses its open world to make the formula a lot more approachable to first-timers.

Here's how FromSoft games usually work — you're placed within an elegantly-designed, ever-expanding labyrinth that opens up and expands for you over time. You're constantly running into doors, elevators, and other barriers that can't be opened or crossed on your side of the path, but as you work your way through the area and either beat or get closer to bosses, you'll find yourself back on the other side of that door, a useful shortcut in place. The challenge for most people who give up on these games is that getting to those moments and triggering the shortcut openings is half of the battle, with many people dying so frequently to normal enemies or getting curb stomped by bosses that they never see most of the world or begin to feel powerful before giving up.

There are still mandatory bosses and parts of Elden Ring that players have to beat in order to move the story forward, but you're not forced to simply power through things if you feel under-equipped to deal with a certain area. The open-world in Elden Ring allows you to simply wander around the map, growing more powerful in both character level and learned experience. In fact, there's a boss that presents itself to you basically immediately after stepping foot in the open world that will undoubtedly hand you your ass, but you can return to it later and wipe the floor with it by simply sneaking past and ignoring it in the early game.

That takes some, but not all of the sting out of the game and makes it a bit more friendly to newcomers. I've played a lot of Souls or Souls-like games and I honestly think this is probably the best possible introduction to these games. You still have to play on the game's terms and learn how combat ebbs and flows, in addition to figuring out builds that work for you and things of that nature. But rarely have I had the feeling that I was simply doomed to be stuck in a certain area unless I was stubbornly plowing through a boss fight to challenge myself. Unless we're talking about Starscourge Radahn, eff that guy forever.

TK TK

Put it this way — I'm not sure Doc Rivers is as receptive to feedback on rotations and sub-patterns, at least coming from the front office. That's not to say he's opposed to collaboration or accepting input from others, only that the locker room is his domain and he carries himself that way.

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