Philadelphia 76ers 2022-23 Season Preview
Harden & Embiid are the most formidable offensive pair in the NBA.
Welcome to the 2022-23 previews for every NBA team! These breakdowns are designed to look at stats, film & anything I found interesting in my preparation for the upcoming NBA season.
If you liked this breakdown feel free to share it & if you have any other scenarios, plays, or thoughts on any future breakdowns let me know in the comments below!
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Note: if you are reading this in the e-mail-only form some of the gifs and videos do not always show up correctly. Stats taken from Cleaning The Glass, specific offense/defense notes after February 10th.
Stats
Net Rating: +3.3 (9th)
Offensive Rating: 117.1 (13th)
Good
Foul drawing. Welcome to life with Joel Embiid & James Harden. Since the trade, the 76ers were 1st in the NBA in FT Rate, making 28.8 FT per 100 field goal attempts. This is very unlikely to slow down and will probably increase with the development of Maxey.
Bad
In such a small sample size, shooting can be weird so I don’t read too much into this stat but the 76ers didn’t shoot the ball particularly well after the trade. Ranking 18th in the NBA with an eFG% of 54.6 - specifically poor from short mid range.
Ugly
As dominant as Joel Embiid is, he has never been a great offensive rebounder, never ranking higher than the 72nd percentile in fgOREB% - or the % of rebounds off his teams missed field goals. The 76ers as a team only rebounded back 23% of their misses after the trade, and I don’t expect that to improve much next season.
Defensive Rating: 113.0 (10th)
Good
The 76ers were a good defensive rebounding team however, only allowing teams to rebound back 24.7% back of their misses ranking 6th in the NBA - which likely shows that their offensive rebounding philosophy is to not crash the boards.
Ok
A good combination of not fouling and contesting shots typically means a high quality defense. The 76ers ranked 13th in defensive FT rate, and 10th in defensive eFG% - both a good sign of what was a top 10 defense.
Ugly
Both before and after the trade, the 76ers didn’t really turn teams over and that makes sense with their defensive scheme, although it does a bit of a disservice to one of their best weapons in Maxey. Giving Maxey more chances to get out and run will be beneficial for everyone, so creating more turnovers would help that.
Film
Punch Embiid
The 76ers post up Joel Embiid. I hate to give away secrets of teams in the NBA, but that is what they are going to try and do.
55% of Embiid post-ups came from the left block, a clear sign of his preference of which block he wants to get his looks from.
27% of his post-ups came from the right block, and 18% of his post-ups came from duck-ins and seals inside the lane - one of the favorite aspects of his game. Doc Rivers even drew up an ATO special in their training camp for this exact action:
Touch Slice
One of the most common ways the 76ers get Embiid into the post is to run “Touch” action or throw it to Embiid before the initial action.
This then flows into a “Slice” screen from a guard toward the ballside block to get Embiid better post position.
Horns Short
Probably the hardest set to defend once the 76ers added Harden, they design this ballscreen action out of Horns to get Embiid rolling downhill into space. The ballscreen is set at an angle around the 3 point line and the player at the opposite elbow dives to the ballside to create the short action.
Most of the time the player starts off lower or just goes before the ballscreen is even set.
This allows Embiid to read the defense and see if he should hard roll to the rim for finishes, or pop into open space for mid-range pullup looks.
Embiid/Harden Ballscreen
The Embiid/Harden pairing is so special, sometimes all you need to do is run a basic ballscreen, which the 76ers run often and especially as an empty side ballscreen.
Running the empty ballscreen means defenses have to really decide how they want to guard it since if they switch they are screwed, and if they drop then there will be no helper on the roll man Embiid.
Delay Turn Chicago
Doc Rivers & the 76ers in the first 2 games have used this “Turn” action out of 5-Out to get Harden going downhill to his strong hand - coming off Chicago action and forcing the defense into a single tag decision. Full Breakdown:
This action really didn’t take off until the 2018-19 season in Houston where they ran it constantly both After Time Out and as a regular play including sideline out of bounds.
Starting off in 5-Out (Delay) setup the ball is passed to the big in the middle of the floor.
When it hits the bigs hands the player in the opposite corner - more or less the wing in most setup - sprints toward the top of the key then flips into a pindown.
Harden would then come off the handoff going downhill with a big rolling to the rim, forcing the defense to choose to either defend the roll man or the shooter lifting up for a catch and shoot 3.
There is another option to defend it as the Knicks did, to just blow the entire coverage completely and have nobody defend Harden or Embiid and allow an easy score.
Against Minnesota the 76ers did try this Sideline out of Bounds, however, nothing came of it - but I expect them to continue to look for that action as well.
Guard/Guard Ballscreens (Harden)
Besides looking to get the ball to Embiid in the post, the 76ers will continue to run the normal “Harden” centric offense, setting guard on guard ballscreens to look to get him mismatches and advatanges.
My favorite version of this and one that I expect more of this season is the Maxey/Harden ball screen pairing.
If you liked this breakdown feel free to share it & if you have any other scenarios, plays, or thoughts on any future breakdowns let me know in the comments below!
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5-Out Breakdowns | Space & Pace Clinic | NCAA “Delay” Series Playbook
Note: if you are reading this in the e-mail-only form some of the gifs and videos do not always show up correctly.
Outwork Yesterday.
Coach Pyper