Philadelphia 76ers: Tobias Harris giveth and taketh away

Four games isn’t a lot in the grand scheme of an NBA season.

It accounts for roughly 4.87 percent of the season and, especially in November, doesn’t affect the team’s standings all too much with oh so much basketball left to play.

Still, when a team like the Philadelphia 76ers drop four in a row, even when they are shorthanded due to injury/COVID/personal issues, it’s enough to make many a fan wonder what’s going on and whether the roster might be in need of some mid-season adjustments to right the ship before it gets out of hand.

One such area that isn’t quite a five-alarm fire but is an area of concern moving forward is the play of Tobias Harris, who is coming off of his own COVID illness. Since returning, Harris has returned to his old scoring self, but at the end of his first two games back, he’s come up flat when his team has needed him most.

The Philadelphia 76ers need to accept Tobias Harris’ limitations.

Tobias Harris is a big reason why the Philadelphia 76ers kept things competitive in their eventual loss to the Indiana Pacers.

He scored 17 in the first quarter, hit 3-4 shots from beyond the arc and 9-10 from the free-throw line, and ultimately finished out the game with a team-leading 32 points to go with 11 rebounds and three assists.

When Harris entered the fourth quarter with a little less than six points left to play, the Sixers were down 10 and needed to turn to their highest-paid player to try to snap a season-high three-game losing streak before it ballooned up to four.

That, unfortunately, didn’t happen.

Harris took three shots from the court in the fourth quarter and missed all but one of them, closing out the quarter with two points and no other earned statistics for his efforts.

Yikes.

Now I know Harris is coming back from a symptomatic bout with COVID, which has surely affected his conditioning at least somewhat, but it’s been a bit of a pattern to see Harris pick up the lion’s share of his points in any given game during the first 36 minutes of the game only to go largely silent in the fourth quarter, even if Doc Rivers tries to run the offense through his most tenured star like he did in the team’s previous loss to the Toronto Raptors.

But how can this be? I mean, Harris has a complex offensive skill set with an ability to hit shots from anywhere and contribute as both a passer and a rebounder. His shot chart routinely features makes from all over the halfcourt, and his increasing willingness to dish out passes to his teammates has helped to keep the Sixers’ offense potent in games without Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons. What is it about the final frame of any given game that doesn’t really work for the pride of Tennessee?

Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s just one thing.

When Harris is on the court with the ball in his hand, you can almost see him processing the game in real-time. He doesn’t make the sort of choreographed plays as a passer you used to see from Simmons, where he draws away a defense’s collective eyes with misdirection, and he doesn’t seem to size up a defender looking for his best way to attack.

No, too often times you’ll see Harris take the ball, dribble a few times and then shovel it out to a teammate with nothing to show for his efforts but a few seconds off the clock. He doesn’t drive into the paint and kick it out to an open shooter when he draws in the double team or attempt to switch onto a smaller defender off a screen. Heck, Harris doesn’t even drive past a defender to pick open one of his fellow shooters around the arc; he just sort of takes the ball, looks at the basket, and then passes it to Seth Curry.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Curry as much as the next Sixers fan, but he isn’t the player who should be dribbling around in the mid-range looking for a jump shot through the trees.

That player should be Harris, except it isn’t.

No, as much as we would like Harris to be the second coming of Jimmy Butler or a forward like Paul George or Kawhi Leonard with ice in his veins, he just isn’t that player. He’s a really good offensive weapon who can pick up points in bunches and keep a team competitive for much of the contest, but when the game clock is winding down and the pressure mounts, he’s far better suited as a secondary option waiting on the wings for an open 3 than an elite offensive penetrator who gets points on the board one way or another.

The problem? Embiid isn’t that guy, and, if he was here, Simmons isn’t either.

No, for the third year in a row, the Sixers find themselves a team without a closer with only two players, Tyrese Maxey and Furkan Korkmaz, showing any real efficiency clutch time. While one of those two could conceivably develop into a Butler-esque killer, it feels like that aspect of the team is still sorely missing, which is a big bummer when you consider just how expensive the roster is as presently constructed.

*sigh* I guess when you whiff on Markelle Fultz and Jimmy Butler in subsequent seasons, you’re going to find yourself with an unbalanced Big 3.

In 2020-21 the Philadelphia 76ers were at their best when they played the role of frontrunners. They could score early and often, forge an insurmountable lead, and allow the reserves to close out a game with Ben Simmons, Tobias Harris, and Joel Embiid on the bench. But when the games got tight, especially in the playoffs, the team often found themselves without the resources needed to close things out and secure the W, even if their personnel would suggest they were the better team. Is that on Harris? No, it’s on Elton Brand and company for paying him big money to fill a specific role that just doesn’t suit his style, especially after having him in the building for half of a season. If Daryl Morey is wise, he’ll do his darndest to fill out the Sixers’ roster with a guard who embraces contract in the fourth, assuming that player isn’t already on the roster (Tyrese Maxey).