August 28, 2024
Geoff Burke/USA TODAY Sports
Is 2024-25 a championship-or-bust season for Joel Embiid and the new-look Sixers?
Sixers training camp — which is being held in The Bahamas at the beginning of October — continues to get closer, with a revamped roster looking to take the team to heights it has not reached in more than two decades. Let's get into some of your questions:
From @JeremyPease2: How far must the Sixers advance to be successful?
This right here is the question, isn't it? I think the gut reaction of many would be that the Sixers need to make the Eastern Conference Finals in 2024-25. That is an understandable sentiment; the Sixers have not been there since 2001 and it has become a frequent punch line. Getting out of the second round — finally — would lift some weight off the shoulders of Joel Embiid, and even relieve Sixers President of Basketball Operations Daryl Morey of some external pressure.
There is no doubt that if the Sixers were to get out of the second round, it would mean a lot more to them than the same accomplishment would mean for the average NBA organization. Particularly if they were to close out a second-round series on their home floor, it would very possibly become the most memorable moment of this era of Sixers basketball for the time being. Achieving that, in a general sense, could be considered a success.
But there are two more rounds to win after that! As joyous of an occasion as it may be for the Sixers and their fans if they earn an Eastern Conference Finals berth, what happens if they follow it up by getting their doors blown off against a team like the Boston Celtics? Suddenly, that moment would not have the same significance.
The Sixers should be considered heavy underdogs in a potential series against Boston as things stand now — and the same can be said for 28 other NBA teams — but Embiid is 30 years old, Paul George will turn 35 years old at the beginning of May 2025. They don't have time to wait out a potential dynasty in the making.
From @sixerssean: If you could go back in time, would you hire Doc Rivers over keeping Brett Brown?
I will begin with this statement: I always believed that Brett Brown could be the head coach of the Sixers deep into their run of contending for championships, and that he was almost exclusively a convenient scapegoat that folks tried to pinpoint as the lone issue to overlook massive, fundamental problems within the organization. The disaster that was the 2019-20 season simply was not Brown's fault, but by the time that dreadful campaign ended, it seemed like having a new voice in the room was the right play. So, I still would have gone with Doc Rivers at that point.
While I believe Brown was dealt a brutal hand for nearly the entirety of his Sixers tenure and was a perfectly good coach, there is one other reason that, in retrospect, I think the change was a positive. Rivers embraced using Embiid on offense in a different way than Brown did, and Embiid almost instantly went from an excellent scorer to one of the two or three best scorers in all of basketball.
Certainly, some of that can be attributed to Embiid's personal growth, but the differences in his usage under Rivers were stark compared to his time playing for Brown. In particular, Rivers sold Embiid on a vision of being more perimeter-oriented: instead of having his back to the basket on so many of his touches, Embiid became a lethal face-up player, turning the nail into his signature territory on the floor. This did not just diversify Embiid's shot diet and make him less predictable, it also made a massive difference in his quest to limit turnovers and turned double-teaming him into a much more difficult proposition for opposing defenses.
With four floor spacers surrounding him, Joel Embiid operates at the nail and knocks down an easy mid-range jumper. pic.twitter.com/VM1Ny655XC
— Adam Aaronson's clips (@SixersAdamClips) August 28, 2024
Maybe Brown would have eventually cracked this code if given more time with Embiid; maybe Embiid would have eventually solved the puzzle all on his own. But Rivers accelerated that process, in turn accelerating Embiid's ascent into one of the most dominant big man scorers in the history of the NBA.
From @Wking1080: Which Process Era Sixer would help this team the most?
You will get a different definition of "Process Era" depending on who you ask. To me, that means someone who played for the team while Sam Hinkie presided as General Manager, which does make this exercise a bit more difficult. I don't know if you've heard this before, but the Sixers typically employed below-average players during that time period by design. The Sixers won a combined 47 games in the three seasons that Hinkie led the charge, and that is because they didn't have a whole lot of players who would help teams trying to win a championship.
After spending an embarrassing amount of time pondering the options, I landed on three different contenders:
• Many are worried about the Sixers' lack of traditional power forwards. How about adding 2013-14 Thaddeus Young to this group for some toughness and skill at the four? In his age-25 season — his final campaign in Philadelphia—- Young was forced into a featured offensive role and averaged 17.9 points, 6.0 rebounds and 2.1 steals per game while averaging 34.4 minutes per game. Young would not be used the same way on a team like this one, of course, but he would give the Sixers a terrific athlete and competitor with plus defensive skills and some scoring juice at a position of need.
• While he had not blossomed into the peak version of himself yet, it was clear when watching 2015-16 Robert Covington that the makings of an elite role player wing were there. 25 years old at the time, Covington was a non-factor as an offensive creator, but was a willing, high-volume three-point shooter who was turning into an excellent defender at multiple positions. Ideally a three more than a four, Covington had the requisite size and length to slide up a position if needed.
• This is a bit of a wild card answer, but the third player who came to mind was 2015-16 Nerlens Noel. Only 21 years old and in his second year of NBA action, Noel posted his second straight season as one of the most productive defensive players in the entire NBA on a per-minute basis. Noel had strong block numbers and ridiculous steal numbers, and made a leap from brutal to below-average offensively. As a third-string center behind Embiid and the returning Andre Drummond, young Noel's defensive skillset could come in handy.
If I had to choose one, I would lean towards Young because he fills the most obvious gap in the Sixers' current rotation. But Covington and Noel have stronger cases than one might realize.
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