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The Six Things You’re Missing if You Aren’t Paying Attention to the Sixers: Not Last
By Jim Adair
Published:
From a season high (home win against the Cavs) to a season low (shooting 30.1% while getting blown out by the lowly Bucks), the Sixers are a hard team to consistently keep up with. Sometimes, you see some signs of what years to come could bring. Sometimes, Michael Carter-Williams goes 1-13 from the floor. It’s rough. But the good news is that you don’t have to watch almost every game, because I do, and here is what you’ve missed:
1) Still not the worst, three days running:
2) Towards the end of the Sixers’ win over the Cavaliers, the strategy seemed to be “Give the ball to Tony Wroten.” The Sixers’ website has (really awesome) animated diagrams of those last plays, which do not adequately display the reckless abandon of Wroten-ball.
3) Robert Covington, new fan favorite and the Sixers’ only real three-point threat, is still raining them down. Covington has attempted 131 three-point shots this season, and among players who have attempted that many, Covington’s 42% is sixth in the NBA.
4) After Sam Hinkie traded the rights to one person you’ve never heard of for a bunch of other stuff you’ve never heard of yesterday (more on that later), word leaked out that the L.A. Clippers are interested in Wroten. Keith Pompey reported that they were just “preliminary discussions, expressing interest,” but Wroten is committed to playing for the team whose uniform he’s wearing. “You hear about the rumors; you let the team and my agent handle that,” Wroten said. “Obviously, I’m here.”
5) Nerlens Noel’s year has been fairly shaky. On one end, he’s rebounding better, playing better in the paint, and putting up a double-double every once in a while. On the other, per John Gonzalez:
He’s taken 237 shots this season, 123 of which have come from five feet or closer. Of those, he’s hit 52.8 percent, according to NBA.com. That’s not great. Could be better. On shots from more than five feet, he’s made only 32 of 114. That’s 28 percent. That’s really not great. Pretty awful, actually. Could most definitely be better.
He does some things like this, though:
6) Back to that trade: Sam Hinkie traded the draft rights to some dude who came here in the deal that sent Alexey Shved to the Rockets for some cash, a player that was immediately waived, and the draft rights to some other random dude. For a more confusing look at it, here’s the relevant portion of our updated Sam Hinkie Trade Insanity Flowchart™:
So yeah, Thad Young has become Luc Mbah a Moute, a first round pick, a second round pick, a foreigner we’ll probably never see, and a pile of cash. #togetherwebuild
When he's not writing about sports here or ranting about them on Twitter, Jim is probably watching X-Files on Netflix or drinking a beer somewhere. Jim has nothing against hockey, it's just not his style. He once met Duce Staley at a Sixers game.