Philadelphia 76ers: Tobias Harris has to at least attempt 3s

Matisse Thybulle had a tough time in the Philadelphia 76ers‘ 135-87 loss to the Boston Celtics.

He missed all six of his 3 point attempts – the most 3s he’s attempted in a game all season – had a plus-minus of -24 and scored just one measly point after only connecting on one of his two free-throw attempts.

And yet, Thybulle wasn’t the Sixers’ worst performer of the game. For all of the bricks he laid on the side of South Broad Street, he at least tried to provide Joel Embiid with support from around the arc, even if floor spacing isn’t exactly what Thybulle is known for.

But do you know who didn’t try to space the floor for Embiid? Yeah, that’d be Tobias Harris, who didn’t even attempt a 3 pointer in a contest that saw the Boston Celtics set a new franchise record with 25 made 3s and went 2-7 from the field in a game his team lost by 48.

Will the eventual arrival of James Harden help to alleviate the Philadelphia 76ers’ offensive woes? Yes and no. On one hand, adding one of the best perimeter scorers in NBA history certainly won’t hurt the team’s offensive potency, but if players like Tobias Harris aren’t going to at least attempt to space the field, even a pair of MVP candidates won’t be enough to punch a ticket to the NBA Finals.

Tobias Harris needs to embrace a new role in the Philadelphia 76ers’ offense.

The Philadelphia 76ers are not what you would call a fast team.

They rank 27th in pace, lack athleticism on the wings, and have finally embraced an offensive identity built around a dominant big man who likes to methodically break down a defense with his elite ISO game. Is this the best way to play? No, not necessarily, Kevin Durant, for example, wanted the Brooklyn Nets to want to run a free-flowing offense that was diametrically opposed by James Harden’s preferred style of play, but when you have a player like Joel Embiid, who can score on anyone and quite literally changes how opposing teams play defense, it’s a viable strategy.

But the Sixers aren’t just slow because of Joel Embiid.

No, when you watch any given Sixers game, you will often see Tobias Harris take a would-be catch-and-shoot 3 and drive it into the paint, only to pass the ball out to Embiid, Tyrese Maxey, or

Seth Curry

someone else to make something out of a possession with a few fewer seconds on the clock.

Don’t believe me? Well, let’s take a look at the numbers: Through 57 games, Harris ranks second on the Sixers in average minutes played at 35.2. He receives an average of 69.2 touches per game, which is 4.9 fewer than Embiid, and yet, he actually possesses the ball for 2.294 seconds longer than “The Process,” which is a pretty big discrepancy, especially when you compare the number of shots and assists each player averages per game.

That, my friends, isn’t good.

If Harris was a point guard, or even a point forward, this sort of discrepancy wouldn’t be understandable. Maxey, Curry, Shake Milton, and even Myles Powell all average a longer seconds per touch than either Harris or Embiid, but that’s because they have to get their teammates into the offense and make decisions at the top of the key. While Harris is a deceptively good playmaker, as he’s averaging a career-high 3.6 assists per game, when he gets the ball, it’s usually with the intention of attempting to score.

But wait, it gets worse; of Harris’ 14.9 shots per game, only 4.4 come without taking a dribble, which is fewer catch-and-shoot attempts than Georges Niang (5.0), who only takes 7.6 shots per game. By contrast, Harris attempts 5.8 shots per game off of three or more dribbles, including 1.5 attempts on seven-plus. While Harris is making half of these attempts in any given game, which is solid, these are almost always low-percentage 2 point shots that are needlessly time-consuming and often come inside the arc but outside of the restricted area.

So what are the Sixers to do? They have an elite ISO scoring paint presence who draws in additional defenders from around the arc and are about to fold in another ISO specialist who can score from anywhere and holds the ball for an average of 6.11 seconds per touch; where does Harris’ high-usage game fit into that equation?

Well, as his game is presently constituted, it really doesn’t.

Ideally, when a team runs a lot of ISOs, especially with elite offensive players like Harden and Embiid, the best solution to combat double teams and zone coverage a collection of perimeter shooters who can get themselves open beyond the arc and drain open 3s when the ball comes their way. While this isn’t the most fun style of basketball for the 3-and-D players in question, as they essentially watch the offense unfold with no guarantee of a touch, when a player embraces that mentality, as Niang certainly has, it can fast make them a favorite among their teammates.

Does Harris have that mentality? No, his father/agent Terrell Harris complained about how Brett Brown kept his son in the corner, and Tobias backed that up with an appearance on J.J. Redick’s “The Old Man and the Three” podcast. But as Harden described in his introductory press conference, it’s his job to get the most out of players like Harris and Maxey, even if the individual roles of each player have to change from what happened earlier in the season.

I know they technically haven’t shared the court together outside of some run in practice, but Harden might want to start with the number of 3s Harris takes in any given game, as a goose egg on the stat sheet isn’t going to cut it moving forward.

Objectively speaking, Tobias Harris is a good shooter from 3. He has a career shooting percentage of 36.6, shot over 40 percent from 2017-19, and has attempted five or more 3s per game during three of his past five seasons. When Harris attempts shots from deep, especially ones of the catch-and-shoot variety, they have a tendency to go in, and yet, for one reason or another, he’s attempted fewer and fewer of said shots with each passing season since his high-water mark under Doc Rivers in LA. If the Philadelphia 76ers are going to re-tool on the fly and fold James Harden and his ISO-heavy game into the fray, Harris is going to have to attempt more 3s, take fewer mid-range 2s, and hold the ball for a few fewer seconds per game. Why? Because even when 3s aren’t falling, the threat of the shot forces opposing defenders to stay true to their man for the entire shot clock and thus allow scorers like Harden and Joel Embiid to cook, as Matisse Thybulle will tell you.