Philadelphia 76ers: How Daryl Morey built a better bomb

Daryl Morey made the Philadelphia 76ers www.thebomb.com

The Philadelphia 76ers only returned seven players from the 2019-20 season.

In theory, that makes sense. That team wasn’t very good, lacked a clear and coherent identity, and was just generally not a whole lot of fun to watch. While some fans still tried to defend them out of a sheer sense of obligation – hello – it’s clear Brett Brown had taken his team as far as he could go, and they needed to make a change to really get things back on track.

Enter Daryl Morey, Philly’s new favorite Twitter follow, and the man (near) single-handedly responsible for turning the Sixers’ fortunes overnight.

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Under Morey, and new head coach Doc Rivers, the Sixers are beyond watchable – even for non-Philly fans now-eager to declare the club the best squad in the East. They’ve developed perfect spacing, a dominant post game, and have somehow turned Tobias Harris from a trade machine favorite to Philly’s new favorite son.

But here’s the thing, the Sixers aren’t that different from last season – not in practice anyway.

Again yes, I know, there are 10 new players wearing Sixers uniforms this season – I’m the one who shared the fun fact in the first place – but how many of those players actually see the court with regularity? Terrance Ferguson, Vincent Poirier, Isaiah Joe, Dakota Mathias, Tony Bradley, and Paul Reed have combined for 83 games over the season’s first seven games – or 144 minutes less than just Ben Simmons – and none of those players have appeared in more than three games so far this season.

That leaves the Sixers with an 11 man rotation comprised of seven returning players – Simmons, Harris, Joel Embiid, Shake Milton, Furkan Korkmaz, Mike Scott, and Matisse Thybulle – and four new players – Danny Green, Seth Curry, Tyrese Maxey, and Dwight Howard – who are steadily featured by Rivers in any given game. Of those four new players, only one, Curry, is averaging more than 10 points a game, and the team’s new wing pairing of Curry and Green are actually averaging less combined points per game than Al Horford and Josh Richardson one year prior.

So what gives? How are the new-look Sixers playing so much better than their 2019-20 counterparts when their starting lineup is averaging 6.5 fewer points per game? Is their initial strength of schedule really that bad? Well, first off yes, their initial seven-game schedule only included one 2020 playoff team and that squad, the Raptors, are a shell of their former selves, but that isn’t necessarily why things have been going so much better for the team in their initial run under Rivers.

No, the Sixers are playing some of the most enjoyable basketball we’ve seen these parts since AI stepped over Rivers’ head coaching protegee because Morey built a better bomb.

Without shuffling around the Sixers’ Big 3, Morey crafted a lineup that’s faster, has better spacing, and is just all around more coherent without sacrificing an ounce of defensive acumen at the other end of the court. He turned Horford – an underwhelming scheme fit with a massive contract – into his starting ‘three-guard’ and a third-string center and was able to land the second-most efficient 3 point shooter in NBA history for a guard who wanted a one-way ticket to Dallas and a second-round pick. But most importantly of all, he instilled a schematic identity that is as rigid as a No-Face from Spirited Away.

After having a head coach who didn’t really run a specific offense in 2019-20, and being linked to Mike D’Antoni for most of the offseason – a head coach who has adapted his philosophy to fit his best players but is pretty stringent to his scheme – it’s frankly incredible that the Sixers somehow lucked into Rivers as the 25th head coach in their franchise’s history – thanks again for firing him, Los Angeles Clippers.

You know, luck really was on the Sixers’ side this offseason, as they lucked into Rivers as their head coach, lucked into Howard after the Lakers passed on his services for Montrezl Harrell, and even lucked into Maxey at pick 21 – a player that no one expected would fall out of the lottery.

If a team goes all-in on shutting down Embiid – like the Hornets did in their second game of the season – the Sixers can pivot to plays designed to get the ball from Harris’ hands into the hoop. If the Sixers’ starting five comes out cold, Rivers can easily pull a hockey-esque line shift and give the one-two punch of Milton and Maxey a chance to get things going. Heck, we’ve even seen some Simmons games with the 24-year-old playing so free that he’s even knocking down corner 3s like the second coming of Ray Allen.

Simply put, the Sixers went from a team that could win one way, maybe, to an offensive smörgåsbord with seemingly endless options to put up points on an unsuspecting foe.

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Are the Philadelphia 76ers really the best team in the Eastern Conference? Will they continue their dominant ways when teams like the Brooklyn Nets, Miami Heat, and Milwaukee Bucks roll around, or will some cracks in Philly’s artifice begin to show under increased scrutiny? That, my friends, is the championship-caliber question. Fortunately, what we don’t need to ask anymore is how to fix the Sixers, as Daryl Morey has certainly done a bang-up job of that all on his own. That’s ‘the bomb‘ if you ask me.