The Sixers cannot make the track of disappointment they've left in the recent past disappear. But, that doesn't mean there isn't cause for optimism in the present and future.
Here are five reasons you should be bullish on the 2024-25 Sixers.
The last anyone in Philadelphia saw of Harris, he put up a donut in a three-point loss that dashed the Sixers' hopes of forcing a decisive Game 7 against the New York Knicks.
One postseason earlier, Harris mustered all of two points in a home Game 6 against the Boston Celtics. A win would've punched the Sixers' ticket to the Eastern Conference finals. A loss forced a Game 7 in Boston. Everyone and their therapist knows what happened.
By the end of Harris' Sixers tenure, the sentiment coming from Philadelphia was "anyone but him". All parties were ready for a change.
His mostly disappointing time with the Sixers shouldn't have been about the player in a vacuum. It should've been about the player in the context of the contract the Sixers offered him.
Harris' on-court product never came close to validating the contract. By the end of year five, there were times in which he was actively harmful to the Sixers' hopes of winning meaningful regular-season games. A four-game stretch without Tyrese Maxey comes to mind - blown leads to the lowly Brooklyn Nets and Memphis Grizzlies, and a beatdown-turned-near-comeback against the New Orleans Pelicans.
The Sixers went 1-3 while Maxey was out with a concussion. Harris was effectively missing in the close loss to the Grizzlies. Had the Sixers won that game, they'd have avoided the Play-In tournament and faced the Cleveland Cavaliers in the first round of the 2024 playoffs. Mind you, they won two games against the Cavaliers while Joel Embiid was out with his meniscus injury. There's a reasonable argument that one more regular-season win would've put the Sixers in excellent position to get to the Eastern Conference finals.
The point isn't to prove that Harris was outright awful over his five-and-a-half years in Philadelphia. He wasn't.
The point is that Harris always left the Sixers and their fans feeling like they were chasing their tails after a misallocation of resources in the summer of 2019. By the end of the contract, the marriage had run its course. Practically anyone replacing Harris would feel like a step in the right direction.
The 'anyone' is Paul George.
To be sure, there are risks involved. He's in his mid-30s. His injury history is not clean. He has a checkered playoff resume. But, he's galaxies better than Harris.
Estimated Plus/Minus (EPM) had George ranked as the eighth most impactful player in the NBA in 2024, according to Dunks & Threes.
Harris did not rank in the top 50 of the league.
George might not have the on-court personality that Jimmy Butler had in high-leverage moments, a factor that gelled well with Philadelphia. But, he's the best-fitting co-star Embiid has ever had on the wings.
I don't need to inundate you with the statistics. He takes a lot of threes, and does so accurately. He can handle the ball in spurts and still break individual defenders down from time to time. He doesn't get to the rim quite as often as he used to. But, when he does, he's efficient.
The last time we saw George defend, he was cast away from the action, watching from the weak side of the floor as Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving shredded his Los Angeles Clippers in the first round of the 2024 playoffs.
That raises some questions.
But, what should get you jazzed up is that George should be the perfect third head next to Embiid and Maxey. There is no positional overlap. And for the first time in the Embiid era, the Sixers have a true wing who both is a great shooter and can create his own jump shot over various types of defenders.
That's a skill that has sorely lacked in all of their playoff failures of this era.
None of this is to suggest that George will be gaffe-proof when the Sixers need him most. There will be bad games. They might come at inopportune times.
But, this is to suggest that his standard is so high - quite a bit higher than Harris' - that a sub-standard day at work for him is still likely much more helpful to Philadelphia's cause than Harris' bad days were.
Philadelphia made it clear all offseason that wing depth was a priority with the cap space they had.
The biggest fish, George, came first. But, the Sixers continued to reinforce the issue.
They re-upped Kelly Oubre Jr and lured Caleb Martin away from the Miami Heat. They convinced Guerschon Yabusele to negotiate a buyout from Real Madrid in favor of coming back to the NBA on a league minimum deal.
That doesn't even account for what Ricky Council IV showed last year and the athleticism KJ Martin possesses to theoretically guard in space.
Wings, forwards, whatever you want to call them - that's six of them. The Sixers have more flexibility to switch on defense in the playoffs than maybe ever before in this era. They have legitimate two-way players on the wings, mitigating the need for lineups that serve up multiple candidates for the opposing offense to turn into delicious dinners just so that the Sixers' own offense can sustain some level of function beyond relying upon Embiid.
While George is an outlier in that group when it comes to age, they by and large have the youthful legs and agility to fight against dribble penetration.
That goes hand in hand with our next point.
It's great for Andre Drummond that he is arguably the best rebounding big in the NBA. Having him is not necessarily all that useful to the Sixers unless Embiid misses 20-plus games again this season. This is not to raise questions about whether Drummond can be good in the role he'll have with Philadelphia. This is not even to raise questions about whether signing him was a good move for the Sixers.
This is about the fact that his playing time will be limited in Philadelphia's best-case scenario.
In that scenario, Embiid isn't missing any extended time to recover from injuries. Sure, there'll be the occasional game off. But, he'd avoid extended absences.
That's far from a guarantee. But even if it comes to fruition, he's still statistically not nearly as prolific a rebounder as Drummond is.
He should inch closer to Drummond in that regard if the perimeter defense lives up to expectations.
If the Sixers can deny dribble penetration, Embiid has the leverage to stay close to the rim. The more possessions he can stay by the basket on defense, the better the Sixers will inherently be on the defensive glass. He won't have to worry about containing the ball, so he won't be out of position as the possession unfolds.
If the perimeter holds strong, the Sixers should have a good command of the defensive glass. That's half the battle.
Philadelphia finished 19th in the league in three-point attempts per game last season.
You're not winning the math battle with 33.3 tries per contest.
Part of that is skewed downward by the time Embiid missed. The guy with the most scoring gravity on the team being gone makes defenders stay closer to their home assignments. The open threes aren't so open anymore.
On the other hand, it's probably skewed upward some by the fact that Embiid is a midrange mastermind and not having him should mean that you're taking more threes - regardless of whether or not they're decent looks.
With or without Embiid, it didn't help that one starter would rather have a tooth pulled than take eight triples per game. It didn't help that a handful of players relied heavily on context to determine whether they'd let it fly. It didn't help that some of their more willing shooters missed significant time with various injuries.
If all goes well, the Sixers will have more than a chance to win the math game every time they take the floor.
2024-25 Sixers | Projected three-point attempts per 36 minutes |
Paul George | 8.2 |
Eric Gordon | 7.1 |
Tyrese Maxey | 7.0 |
Kelly Oubre Jr | 6.6 |
Reggie Jackson | 6.1 |
Kyle Lowry | 5.8 |
Caleb Martin | 4.5 |
Ricky Council IV | 4.4 |
Joel Embiid | 3.7 |
If we add these Basketball Reference projections up, that's more than 50 threes attempted per 36 minutes across just nine players on the roster.
There's some important context to include here. First, more than 50 threes per 36 means that there's an entire quarter left out of the data. That would suggest that Philadelphia projects to attempt nearly 60 threes per 48 minutes across those nine players, and probably more than 60 threes per game across the whole roster.
That's absurd.
Second, not every player in that table is going to play 36 minutes per game. In fact, ideally, none of them would.
But, it proves that there is real, meaningful three-point volume across the roster.
Not only do the Sixers have the requisite firepower from deep; they have players who will shoot from multiple steps beyond the arc rather than just when toeing the line.
They'll have the volume and the spacing to really spread the offense.
One of the attractive features of pursuing George was that Philadelphia would not have to expense draft equity to acquire him. In fact, the Sixers did not make a trade this offseason.
All they did was spend cash - build a supporting cast of mostly tradable salary, if you will.
That puts them in strong position to identify areas of need as the season progresses and use their four tradable first-round picks to potentially pursue a significant player as the deadline nears. Alternatively, they could pursue multiple players to bolster the bench, sending out picks with salary filler in various deals.
As good as the team looks right now, they have room to look even better in February.
