With all of the Eagles and Flyers stuff going on, I felt like it made more sense to wrap the Spurs, Cavs, and Pacers games together into one article.  We don’t need a standalone post for a 27-point road loss on the second night of a back-to-back, do we?

If it feels like a blur, it probably is. This is the part of the season where the games start to bleed together. You’re likely running around trying to get holiday things done while the team slogs toward the inevitability of the buyout market as we near the halfway point of the 82-game schedule. That’s all good and well, but unfortunately the Sixers are now hitting a hellish stretch of the schedule that includes a home game with Toronto followed by five straight road games against Boston, Portland, Utah, Phoenix, and the Clippers.

Let’s reset and refocus here, because they’ve lost three of four and are now sitting in fourth place at 20-12. We’re judging the Sixers not necessarily game-by-game, but trying to identify what their post-Jimmy Butler trade strengths and weaknesses are. What does this squad need? What are they good at? Where are they lagging behind? It’s a cumulative grind towards the playoffs.

I think it’s four things: perimeter defense, depth, the power forward position, and managing Joel Embiid. If we’re justifiably looking ahead to the postseason and how this team matches up against the best squads in the east, then these things would probably go into the Sixers’ “premortem,” as Brett Brown likes to say.

Perimeter defense

DeMar DeRozan went for 20 last night and Spencer Dinwiddie put in 39 off the bench last week. The Sixers are still getting gashed by opposing guards seemingly every other game.

The scheme is one thing, and I think Joel Embiid is sagging off way too far on pick and rolls, so maybe Billy Lange has to think about what they’re doing to defend those plays. The other thing is that I just don’t think they have enough solid back court defenders on the roster in the first place, which is the same exact problem they had last year.

Quick exercise –

These are the lineups the Sixers would likely be facing in the Eastern Conference finals or semifinals. Do they have the horses to get ideal matchups against these groups? –

  1. Kyle Lowry
  2. Danny Green
  3. Kawhi Leonard
  4. Pascal Siakam
  5. Serge Ibaka

and…

  1. Kyrie Irving
  2. Jaylen Brown/whomever
  3. Jayson Tatum
  4. Marcus Morris/Aron Baynes/Gordon Hayward/etc
  5. Al Horford

Take your pick of small and power forwards for the Celtics. They messed around with the lineup while fighting through their slump.

Who matches up 1 to 3? You can put Ben Simmons on one guy and Jimmy Butler on another. Good, that’s two guys who can defend almost anybody. Who’s the third? There isn’t one.

The issue is that you’re leaving yourself open to switch-hunting with JJ Redick getting mismatched, so assuming you don’t have a different wing by that point, you probably have to tweak the scheme moving forward, maybe start blitzing pick and rolls or not going auto-switch one through three.

These kinds of possessions are killers:

You start with Butler on DeRozan but allow the switch onto T.J. McConnell instead. DeRozan backs him down and gets a tough shot to fall, plus the foul.

Does this need to be switched? Look at how easily Butler could have gone over this pick:

That’s also a moving screen on Bryn Forbes, but who’s keeping track? Point is, you’re allowing the mismatch without even really putting up much of a fight. The ease with which opposing teams find mismatches should be infuriating to Sixer fans.

They still don’t have the guys to guard three decent perimeter players, and if Ben Simmons is one of them, then you’re leaving Wilson Chandler or Mike Muscala at power forward, where they’d have to tangle with the likes of Pascal Siakam and others. They even had Chandler guarding Victor Oladipo the other night, which seems crazy to me, but I guess it is what it is with the injury situation.

Markelle Fultz would have really helped in this department. Maybe he still can.

Bench depth

No Fultz and No Zhaire Smith, so right now your top draft picks of the last two years are not in the picture. Amir Johnson is pretty much out of the rotation at this point. Jonah Bolden is on the fringe. Richaun Holmes was given away for nothing.

That means rookie Landry Shamet is a key depth piece and Furkan Korkmaz, whose option was not picked up, needed to play starter minutes last week in lieu of Jimmy Butler. That trade was a 2 for 1 that put you down a man to begin with, and both two-way contracts are being used up on guards, one who is a rookie coming off a back injury and one who is probably just a G-League player.

When you look at the top teams in the east, here’s who’s coming off the bench:

  • Toronto: Jonas Valanciunas, OG Anunoby, CJ Miles, Fred VanVleet
  • Bucks: George Hill, Ersan Ilyasova, Tony Snell
  • Celtics: Terry Rozier, Gordon Hayward, Marcus Smart, Daniel Theis
  • Pacers: Cory Joseph, Tyreke Evans, Domantas Sabonis, Doug McDermott

Would you roll with the Sixers’ bench or take one of those groups instead? You’re probably going with the four other teams.

Here’s how the bench has done over the last four games vs. the opposing team’s bench:

  • Sixers bench 35, Spurs bench 56
  • Sixers bench 38, Cavs bench 50
  • Sixers bench 15, Pacers bench 39
  • Sixers bench 31, Nets bench 70

The bench has been outscored 215 to 119 in that span. They need help badly.

The power forward position

In a world where Butler, Simmons, Embiid, and Redick want and need the ball in their hands, Wilson Chandler doesn’t need to provide a ton offensively, but he needs to give them more than what he’s currently giving them. Chandler put up 0 points and 5 rebounds in the Indiana loss and 3 points and 6 rebounds in the Toronto loss. He’s been alright in games against lesser competition, but there are a lot of forgettable lines on his game log.

Here’s how his per-36 numbers stack up against missed target Nemanja Bjelica, the traded Dario Saric, and teammate Mike Muscala, who has bounced back and forth between the four and five:

He’s dead last in point production and rebounding among all four players, and while he’s shooting better than Muscala and Saric, he’s hardly a threat to get to the foul line and get some cheap points that way.

Bjelica turned out to be a big miss, didn’t he? He’d be a really nice fit on this squad as a stretch four who more closely fits what Saric and Ersan Ilyasova were able to provide last season.

I asked Brett Brown after the Pacers loss last week what he needs from Chandler and what can realistically be expected of a 31-year-old veteran coming off a hamstring injury and playing in a new system:

“What we need the most is defensively, you know, just doing what most times he does. The assignment, where you have Oladipo, probably is a little bit foreign to him. When you’re missing Jimmy, and now you get back to who is going to be the primary ball defensive player out of that core group, you look around and you’re probably not going to have Ben do it, probably not going to have JJ do it, so Wilson, his tenacity and his ability I think for us was the likely choice. Offensively, it always helps when our four man can make some threes. They packed the paint. Mike and Wilson had opportunities and they just didn’t go in tonight. But those two things come to my mind quickest.”

Chandler played a ton of small forward in his career and really is probably better suited to that position right now. If he improves over the course of the season to the point where he can give you baseline 3 and D contribution, you could theoretically bump Butler up to shooting guard and play a 1/2/3 of Simmons, Butler, and Chandler. That might solve your perimeter defense issue, but I don’t know how much Chandler really has left in the tank.

This team could really use a power forward in the buyout market, which would also allow Muscala to play more five off the bench, where I think he’s been better this year. Looks like slim pickings out there right now though, the power forward market. Kenneth Faried, anybody? I don’t see a quick fix on the horizon.

Managing Joel Embiid

This is sort of a combination of a lot of things, namely:

  • 1,055 minutes is 8th most in the NBA and 1st among all centers (sure, a lot of that was due to the frontloaded schedule)
  • he’s second in the NBA in usage (31.4%)
  • his three-point and field goal percentages are down slightly
  • he’s probably still shooting too much from the perimeter
  • he’s hot and cold in recognizing and passing out of double teams

Indiana did a nice job of doubling him and making entry passes difficult. I still think the Sixers are wise to hammer home a bazillion “elbow” sets each game, because Joel seems to get the majority of his post-ups on that two-man action with Redick.

In December, his three point attempts per game are down to 3.7 from a 4.2 mark in November, but he’s only hitting at a measly 15.4%. He’s actually 1-13 from three over the past three games and his turnover number is up by almost one full cough-up per game.

To me, both of those things say he’s hitting a bit of an early wall.

Joel is always at his best when he thinks less, when he just “feels” his way through a game and goes about his business in a more linear type of way.

Case in point:

That’s a different way of getting him the ball in the post. Let him walk down LaMarcus Aldridge off a horns set, easy entry, Joel feels the hand on him, and then rips through for a foul and basket. That’s four whole seconds from entry pass to bucket on a three-point play.

Joel does a lot of things well, it’s true, and that’s a good problem to have. But you’ve gotta keep him focused and you have to limit these games where’s he’s shooting 5 and 6 three pointers. Jimmy Butler needs to take more shots and you have to find new wrinkles to get Embiid in the post, which falls on Brett Brown and Monty Williams to figure out.

They’ll beat the Knicks on Wednesday to improve to 21-12, then who knows what happens in the next six games, because it’s gonna be tough sledding.