Philadelphia 76ers: Why is Raul Neto getting so many minutes?

How does playing Raul Neto help the Philadelphia 76ers moving forward?

For the second straight game since the Philadelphia 76ers‘ season restarted, Raul Neto not only made it onto the court but earned double-digit minutes as Brett Brown‘s de facto backup point guard.

But, like, why though?

In the Sixers’ re-opening night game of the season, the move made some sense, as starting point guard Shake Milton was having a brutal outing after wading through the drudge of four months of overly optimistic expectations. To his credit, Neto did help to give the 76ers’ offense some much-needed pop, as his +14 RPM easily led all players not named Joel Embiid despite only scoring a pair of points in 21 minutes of action, but why go to the 6-foot-1 Brazilian ball-handler for a second straight game? Milton had himself a lovely game as the Sixers’ starting point guard and ended up playing 26 minutes – seven more than his 19 minutes against the Pacers.

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For the second straight game, the Sixers opted against using Ben Simmons as their reserve point guard, lining up the 24-year-old almost exclusively at forward for his 25-minutes of action pre-ejection. I know Coach Brown wants to get Simmons as much work as possible at forward, but shouldn’t he also work on finding the right four players to surround his 6-foot-10 point forward with when Embiid is off the court?

And then there’s Alec Burks.

For whatever reason, Burks just can’t seem to rise up Coach Brown’s wing rotational ranks, which, for the life of me I can’t understand. Burks is a walking bucket who has scored 12 points in 22 total minutes of action while knocking down all four of his 3 point attempts. His left-handed, herky-jerky style of play could contrast nicely with the games of both Milton and Simmons, and his size – 6-foot-6, 214 pounds – would allow the Sixers to retain their height when Milton leaves the court.

If he was a speedy second unit option who could blaze down the court for a quick score like the Spurs’ Patty Mills I could understand giving him the nod over the team’s slower guard options, but it’s not like Neto even tries to score the ball when he has an opportunity; no, he’s a throwback point guard like Ricky Rubio without a DETOLF filled with Euroleague trophies.

So, if Neto isn’t much of a scorer, is just sorta there defensively, and almost certainly won’t be in the Sixers’ playoff rotation barring an absolutely insane confluence of events, why exactly is he playing at all?

Next. Matisse Thybulle has to be in the playoff rotation. dark

These final eight play-in games are technically being played to decide playoff seeding but for the Philadelphia 76ers, that doesn’t really matter. They are already locks to make the playoffs even if they lose all eight games, and can only move so much in either direction regardless of their record. No, these final eight games give Brett Brown 384 pre-playoff minutes to iron out his rotation for when the games start to count in mid-August. Unless I’m way off base, wasting any of those minutes of Raul Neto feels sort of like a waste, especially when players like Alec Burks and Ben Simmons could use some actual work.