What’s wrong with Tobias Harris?

Loaded question. We could simply say he’s not having a great shooting year. Different offensive flow without Ben Simmons. Perhaps the COVID recovery is playing a role. Seth Curry wasn’t himself last season after getting the virus, and then had a really nice playoff performance. That’s something we can never rule out.

Whatever the culprit, Harris is putting up some poor numbers. He’s currently 29% from three, which is a whopping 10 percentage points lower than the mark he put up last year. His field goal percentage has dipped to 45%. Free throw percentage is also down as he contributes one fewer point per game despite logging two more minutes on average.

He was booed by the fans on Monday night, then chirped back in a 20-point win where he scored 14 points on 15 shots. Going through the video, it looks like a classic case of just missing shots.

I clipped most of his field goal attempts here:

To be honest, this reel isn’t as bad as I thought it would be. The threes he took were good threes – a trailing look, a catch-and-shoot corner look, and a pull-up after Daniel Theis decided to go under a Joel Embiid screen.

At midrange, he looked more assertive trying to back down smaller wings. That’s always been his bread and butter, but maybe the gripe here is that he could have worked those defenders down closer to the rim instead of settling for a handful of looks around the nail.

If you go back a couple of weeks, his shot selection and decision making was all over the place, which you can see in this clip:

There’s some really funky stuff in there. Deferring on open three-point looks. A couple of floaters, which aren’t a big part of his game. There was some off-balance stuff as well, though you do see a couple of strong takes against Dillon Brooks and a good downhill attack against Steven Adams.

That’s the funky thing in all of this. Tobias Harris shows flashes of being the borderline All Star we saw last season. You still see him identify mismatches and blow by bigger guys. He still tries to back down smaller twos and threes. For whatever reason, it’s not translating to made shots or consistent finishing. There’s also the issue of defense, and nobody would confuse Harris for the second coming of Bruce Bowen. He’s not such a plus-player on that side of the floor that you can overlook his lack of performance on the offensive end, ala Ben Simmons or even a Matisse Thybulle situation.

Sometimes when things boil over with the fans it signals a change. The frustration crests, and then you bottom out for a bit, then hit the pause and reset button. Maybe that will happen with Harris. And of course this is all exacerbated by the fact that he’s earning $35.9 million this season. On most nights, these Harris performances would be fine for third or fourth options, but he’s being paid like a first option. Tobias can’t be putting up these kinds of numbers when he’s earning more than CP3, Devin Booker, Bradley Beal, Jayson Tatum, etc.

The Ben Simmons hold out situation is enough of an issue. The Sixers can’t have a $36 million dollar guy playing like a $12 million dollar guy. Tobias knows that, which is why he’s just as frustrated as everybody else.