The Philadelphia 76ers have to make a decision about Isaiah Joe

The Philadelphia 76ers‘ rotation is weird.

The team hasn’t had a single player appear in all 50 of their games thus far, and seven of their current players, Shake Milton, Charles Bassey, Paul Reed, Charlie Brown Jr., Myles Powell, Jaden Springer, and Ben Simmons (obviously) have appeared in 30 games or fewer for one reason or another.

Pretty weird, right? But wait, it gets even weirder. Because of COVID, the Sixers had to sign not one, not two, but three players to 10-day hardship contracts, with CBJ beating out the odds to earn a two-way contract in place of Aaron Henrey, who eventually re-signed with the team’s G-League affiliate, the Delaware Blue Coats.

But do you want to know the weirdest part of this entire ordeal? I’ll give you a hint; it’s not that the team doesn’t have a 5-man lineup with more than 222 minutes of on-court action. No, the weirdest part of the Philadelphia 76ers’ utilization of their 2021-22 player utilization had been the sporadic deployment of Isaiah Joe, who enters and exits Doc Rivers‘ rotation seemingly at random with little rhyme or reason.

The Philadelphia 76ers need to make a decision about Isaiah Joe’s role.

Paul Reed and Jaden Springer have played a combined 191 minutes for the Philadelphia 76ers so far this season. For one reason or another, the team appears incredibly disinterested in giving either player a serious run with the big team and has instead made both players fixtures of the Blue Coats.

Is that the wrong call or a strange decision that the Sixers’ front office would be wise to change course on? Most definitely, Reed one hundred perfect could have a role with the Sixers, as could Springer situationally over the team’s two-way players, but frankly, once one accepts that it’s probably not going to happen before the trade deadline, the sooner one can stop grieving an opportunity that never presented itself.

Isaiah Joe’s minutes, by contrast, have come far more liberally, as he’s played 442 minutes over 35 games of action, which is good for a little over 12.6 minutes per game. Over those 35 games, Joe has played 20-plus minutes on eight occasions, most recently on January 25th, but he’s only done so more than two games in a row on two occasions, when the team was without Tyrese Maxey in December and without Danny Green later in January.

So what gives? Is Joe just the odd man out of the Sixers’ rotation; a player too good for Delaware but not better than the team’s nine regular contributors? Or is there something else going on, namely Doc Rivers’ unwillingness to play Joe over guys like Furkan Korkmaz, Shake Milton, and even sometimes Charlie Brown Jr. when the team is at full strength?

Frankly, it feels like a little bit of both.

Statistically, Joe’s second season has been a bit of a disappointment. He’s hitting 3s well below the league average at 32.3 percent on 99 attempts, and his field goal percentage of 34.9 is the third-worst mark of any player on the team behind only CBJ and Powell. Is some of that on his usage? Sure, it’s hard for a volume shooter, which Joe certainly is, to get into a rhythm when they don’t get a long enough leash to put a few misses behind them, but hey, that’s the life of a mid-bench shooter; long leashes aren’t a guarantee.

And then there’s the topic of Joe’s other talents, namely that he isn’t a particularly good defender, ball handler, cutter, or rebounder by NBA wing standards. Sure he tries, and has certainly bulked up more than his rookie season, but Joe remains the skinniest player seemingly every time he steps on the court and routinely gets pushed around by smaller guards.

But do you know how a player gets better at defending, ball handling, cutting, and rebounding at the NBA level? By actually defending, ball handling, cutting, and rebounding at the NBA level against other NBA talents.

Right now, the Sixers are a really good team. They have flaws, sure, but they’ve ridden Embiid’s MVP-caliber performances to the third spot in the East and could very well still finish out the season with the best record in the conference.

Considering how the team looked two months back, that’s a pretty incredible feat.

Still, of the 17 players technically on the Sixers’ roster, only two, Maxey and Seth Curry, are connecting on more than 40 percent of their 3 point shots. After watching Korkmaz and Milton go multi-game stretches without a made 3, it’s hard to see a perfectly gold Joe sitting on the bench in street clothes waiting for his next opportunity to play.

Will that day eventually come? That, my friends, is the big question.

On one hand, Joe was a guy Daryl Morey liked so much coming out of college that he gave him the ever-elusive guarantee that he’d draft him should he fall to pick 49. Then again, according to Jake Fischer of Bleacher Report, the Sixers have brought up both Joe and Reed in trade conversations to gauge their value across the NBA, so maybe the team isn’t as interested in developing their 22-year-old shooter alongside their 21-year-old point guard, and 24-year-old defensive small forward. Maybe they instead would like to secure a proven commodity with a longer NBA track record like, say, Mike Muscala, and Joe’s contract is nothing more than matching salary with a marketable ceiling?

Either way, come February 10th, I think we’ll have our answer.

Could Isaiah Joe eventually become the Philadelphia 76ers’ next great homegrown marksman? Potentially so, Joe has the short memory and killer instinct that a shooter needs to be successful in the NBA; he just needs to get his efficiency percentages up to make his playing time undeniable. But will he ultimately have the opportunity to become that player? Unfortunately, it feels less likely than one year ago. No, whether due to his shooting percentages or Doc Rivers’ preference for playing older players, it would appear Joe needs a miracle, an injury, or a streak of incredible luck to fully secure a spot in the rotation, be that Philly’s or some other team across the NBA.