Sixers Depth Chart

[PhillyNj]

No, you just stick Curry on the bench. If we trade Tobi for CJ we have:

PG McCollum | Curry | Maxey
SG Green | Milton
SF Korkmaz | Thybulle
PF Simmons | Niang
CE Embiid | Drummond

Pairing Jo and Ben with three high volume 3PT gunners like McCollum, Green, and Korkmaz in the starting lineup is what we've always needed to do.

That one move makes us a real title contender.

I see the benefit of more threes but once again McCoulm is not a point guard.
And you can’t seriously want to start Korkmaz. He’s crazy inconsistent!

What is a point guard and why does the arbitrary definition matter so much to you? There are so many different archetypes of point guard. Low usage 3 and D guys are categorized as point guards. High usage scorers that don't defend are categorized as point guards. Playmakers that can't shoot are categorized as point guards.

There's not even a single category that really defines the position. You can be a point guard without having the ball in your hands much. You can be a point guard without being much of a scorer. You can be a point guard without being a great passer. You can even be a point guard without being able to guard the point. Arguably, the most defining characteristic of the position is that it's often assigned to the smallest guy on the court, but even that isn't certain.

Rather than repeatedly uttering "he's not a point guard" without an explanation, what specifically about CJ prevents him from filling that role?

In this case, you'd have CJ handling the ball in half court offense (which he's been excellent at), and on defense, you're likely hiding him on the opposing team's weakest offensive backcourt player. In a unit with Green, Korkmaz, Simmons, and Embiid, CJ would be the defacto point guard and I don't see any issues in terms of fit (other than the fact that you can likely spend resources better to end up with a better 5th starter than Korkmaz that can both shoot and defend).

This is a complex question and takes a in-depth understanding of the game. But the short version is point guards make their teammates better through a wide range of skills. Simmons can’t shoot causing a 4 on 5 on offense. McCoulmn can’t create shots for his teammates.

[TTP]

I see the benefit of more threes but once again McCoulm is not a point guard.
And you can’t seriously want to start Korkmaz. He’s crazy inconsistent!

What is a point guard and why does the arbitrary definition matter so much to you? There are so many different archetypes of point guard. Low usage 3 and D guys are categorized as point guards. High usage scorers that don't defend are categorized as point guards. Playmakers that can't shoot are categorized as point guards.

There's not even a single category that really defines the position. You can be a point guard without having the ball in your hands much. You can be a point guard without being much of a scorer. You can be a point guard without being a great passer. You can even be a point guard without being able to guard the point. Arguably, the most defining characteristic of the position is that it's often assigned to the smallest guy on the court, but even that isn't certain.

Rather than repeatedly uttering "he's not a point guard" without an explanation, what specifically about CJ prevents him from filling that role?

In this case, you'd have CJ handling the ball in half court offense (which he's been excellent at), and on defense, you're likely hiding him on the opposing team's weakest offensive backcourt player. In a unit with Green, Korkmaz, Simmons, and Embiid, CJ would be the defacto point guard and I don't see any issues in terms of fit (other than the fact that you can likely spend resources better to end up with a better 5th starter than Korkmaz that can both shoot and defend).

This is a complex question and takes a in-depth understanding of the game. But the short version is point guards make their teammates better through a wide range of skills. Simmons can’t shoot causing a 4 on 5 on offense. McCoulmn can’t create shots for his teammates.

Two major problems with the bolded.

1) Not being able to create shots for teammates hasn't disqualified other players from being classified as point guards.

Jamal Murray isn't great at creating shots for teammates and is considered a point guard. Patrick Beverley doesn't create shots for teammates and is considered a point guard.

2) I don't think that statement is even true.

His assist rate last season was higher than tons of point guards, and he doesn't turn the ball over much at all. He also has to have one of the highest assist to turnover ratios in the NBA when adjusted for usage.

It might even be that the only thing really stopping him from being considered as a point guard and a lead offensive option is Lillard's presence. Stick him on the Nuggets in Murray's place (who is very similar to him in terms of archetype), and we're for sure considering McCollum a point guard.

[FlyingArrow]

PG Simmons Maxey Riller
SG Curry Milton Springer Joe
SF Green Thybulle Korkmaz Henry
PF Harris Niang Reed
C Embiid Drummond Bassey

It looks like this is what we have right now. Obviously a Simmons move of any sort would radically alter the landscape.

Minutes per game prediction, taking into consideration the fact that players will miss games. I expect Simmons to 'rest' more than usual. Embiid and Green likely to have a couple nagging injuries that knock them out for a couple weeks each. Ranked by total minutes played during the season.

Player / GP MPG
Tobias Harris / 73 34
Joel Embiid / 67 34
Ben Simmons / 64 32
Seth Curry / 73 28
Tyrese Maxey / 75 26
Danny Green / 55 28
Matisse Thybulle / 73 20
Georges Niang / 65 22
Andre Drummond / 61 18
Shake Milton / 68 15
Furkan Korkmaz / 60 12
Paul Reed / 52 10
Charles Bassey / 32 10
Jaden Springer / 30 10
Grant Riller / 24 10
Isaiah Joe / 18 10
Aaron Henry / 10 5


Taking total minutes played divided by 82 games gives something like this as a minute breakdown by position. Keep in mind that all these numbers look low because the MPG is reduced by games missed:

PG Simmons 21, Maxey 24, Riller 3
SG Curry 25, Milton 12, Springer 4, Joe 2, Thybulle 5
SF Green 19, Thybulle 13, Korkmaz 9, Henry 1, Harris 6
PF Harris 24, Niang 14, Reed 6, Simmons 4
C Embiid 28, Drummond 13, Bassey 4, Niang 3

Biggest surprise to me when adding up these numbers was that there's an actual lane there for Riller. Obviously if anyone plays lights-out they can earn more playing time, but it's usually hard to even find the opportunity for a 3rd string or 2-way player. But as the roster is now, I'd expect to see Riller get maybe a dozen games at 12+ minutes... whenever Maxey or Simmons rest. That's enough time to earn his keep or enough to prove himself unworthy of a roster spot. Although I don't really expect the roster to stay as it is now anyway.

[TTP]

PG Simmons Maxey Riller
SG Curry Milton Springer Joe
SF Green Thybulle Korkmaz Henry
PF Harris Niang Reed
C Embiid Drummond Bassey

It looks like this is what we have right now. Obviously a Simmons move of any sort would radically alter the landscape.

Minutes per game prediction, taking into consideration the fact that players will miss games. I expect Simmons to 'rest' more than usual. Embiid and Green likely to have a couple nagging injuries that knock them out for a couple weeks each. Ranked by total minutes played during the season.

Player / GP MPG
Tobias Harris / 73 34
Joel Embiid / 67 34
Ben Simmons / 64 32
Seth Curry / 73 28
Tyrese Maxey / 75 26
Danny Green / 55 28
Matisse Thybulle / 73 20
Georges Niang / 65 22
Andre Drummond / 61 18
Shake Milton / 68 15
Furkan Korkmaz / 60 12
Paul Reed / 52 10
Charles Bassey / 32 10
Jaden Springer / 30 10
Grant Riller / 24 10
Isaiah Joe / 18 10
Aaron Henry / 10 5


Taking total minutes played divided by 82 games gives something like this as a minute breakdown by position. Keep in mind that all these numbers look low because the MPG is reduced by games missed:

PG Simmons 21, Maxey 24, Riller 3
SG Curry 25, Milton 12, Springer 4, Joe 2, Thybulle 5
SF Green 19, Thybulle 13, Korkmaz 9, Henry 1, Harris 6
PF Harris 24, Niang 14, Reed 6, Simmons 4
C Embiid 28, Drummond 13, Bassey 4, Niang 3

Biggest surprise to me when adding up these numbers was that there's an actual lane there for Riller. Obviously if anyone plays lights-out they can earn more playing time, but it's usually hard to even find the opportunity for a 3rd string or 2-way player. But as the roster is now, I'd expect to see Riller get maybe a dozen games at 12+ minutes... whenever Maxey or Simmons rest. That's enough time to earn his keep or enough to prove himself unworthy of a roster spot. Although I don't really expect the roster to stay as it is now anyway.

Shake is for sure going to be ahead of Riller for PG minutes too, and we have other guys that would slide into additional minutes like Korkmaz/Niang/Joe/Reed before Riller gets into the rotation.

Riller is the 17th man right now and even with a good preseason, it's hard to see him being greater than 14th or 15th in line for minutes when the season starts. He's going to be the 4th point guard and it's likely going to take 2 of them being out to get on the court for real minutes. It's exceptionally unlikely he gets minutes outside of garbage time unless he significantly breaks out in some way.

[FlyingArrow]

PG Simmons Maxey Riller
SG Curry Milton Springer Joe
SF Green Thybulle Korkmaz Henry
PF Harris Niang Reed
C Embiid Drummond Bassey

It looks like this is what we have right now. Obviously a Simmons move of any sort would radically alter the landscape.

Minutes per game prediction, taking into consideration the fact that players will miss games. I expect Simmons to 'rest' more than usual. Embiid and Green likely to have a couple nagging injuries that knock them out for a couple weeks each. Ranked by total minutes played during the season.

Player / GP MPG
Tobias Harris / 73 34
Joel Embiid / 67 34
Ben Simmons / 64 32
Seth Curry / 73 28
Tyrese Maxey / 75 26
Danny Green / 55 28
Matisse Thybulle / 73 20
Georges Niang / 65 22
Andre Drummond / 61 18
Shake Milton / 68 15
Furkan Korkmaz / 60 12
Paul Reed / 52 10
Charles Bassey / 32 10
Jaden Springer / 30 10
Grant Riller / 24 10
Isaiah Joe / 18 10
Aaron Henry / 10 5


Taking total minutes played divided by 82 games gives something like this as a minute breakdown by position. Keep in mind that all these numbers look low because the MPG is reduced by games missed:

PG Simmons 21, Maxey 24, Riller 3
SG Curry 25, Milton 12, Springer 4, Joe 2, Thybulle 5
SF Green 19, Thybulle 13, Korkmaz 9, Henry 1, Harris 6
PF Harris 24, Niang 14, Reed 6, Simmons 4
C Embiid 28, Drummond 13, Bassey 4, Niang 3

Biggest surprise to me when adding up these numbers was that there's an actual lane there for Riller. Obviously if anyone plays lights-out they can earn more playing time, but it's usually hard to even find the opportunity for a 3rd string or 2-way player. But as the roster is now, I'd expect to see Riller get maybe a dozen games at 12+ minutes... whenever Maxey or Simmons rest. That's enough time to earn his keep or enough to prove himself unworthy of a roster spot. Although I don't really expect the roster to stay as it is now anyway.

Shake is for sure going to be ahead of Riller for PG minutes too, and we have other guys that would slide into additional minutes like Korkmaz/Niang/Joe/Reed before Riller gets into the rotation.

Isaiah Joe and Springer are going to be competing with each other for 3rd string minutes. I'm probably way off on my predictions for both of them because one of them will win out - and take 90% of the minutes away from the other one. But with Curry/Green/Milton/Thybulle/Korkmaz ahead of them there aren't many leftover SG/SF minutes to fight for anyway.

On all your others - no disagreement there. Korkmaz, Niang, Reed, and Milton should be regular rotation players (but with each of them sitting out for rest and bad match-ups much more often than the starters). But other than Shake, none of the others are PG so they won't affect Riller's minutes. If Simmons is here, I'd expect him to be 'resting' a lot more often than usual. That's going to open up a lot more PG minutes, and there will be chances to try out extra combinations. If Simmons is still here, I'd expect to see enough open PG minutes for Riller to get the backup minutes for a few games. I predicted 24 games played and 10 minutes per game for Riller. Not a ton, but it's more than I would have expected before adding things up. For comparison, I expect the other 2-way player (Aaron Henry) to get almost zero minutes. Henry would have to beat out both Joe and Springer before getting any minutes worth mentioning.

[FlyingArrow]

Riller is the 17th man right now and even with a good preseason, it's hard to see him being greater than 14th or 15th in line for minutes when the season starts. He's going to be the 4th point guard and it's likely going to take 2 of them being out to get on the court for real minutes. It's exceptionally unlikely he gets minutes outside of garbage time unless he significantly breaks out in some way.

I think Riller's 15th. Well ahead of Aaron Henry, just based on the competition Henry faces at his position. And ahead of either Isaiah Joe or Jaden Springer... one of those will win out for 3rd string minutes while the other will get almost nothing.

Not saying Riller is going to see the court a lot, but I don't think it takes 2 of Simmons, Maxey, and Milton to be out. If Simmons isn't playing, Maxey will start and they'll experiment with the backup. Milton, Curry, Riller would all get some time as the backup PG. Maybe Springer, too. Same thing when Maxey rests. If that's 20-25 missed games between Simmons and Maxey (more than usual due to resting Simmons more), that's when Riller would get his 12+ minutes. Milton and Curry will still play more minutes than Riller, but they'll play most of their minutes as SG.

(And this is all probably a moot conversation since Simmons seems likely to be traded anyway.)

[TTP]

Biggest surprise to me when adding up these numbers was that there's an actual lane there for Riller. Obviously if anyone plays lights-out they can earn more playing time, but it's usually hard to even find the opportunity for a 3rd string or 2-way player. But as the roster is now, I'd expect to see Riller get maybe a dozen games at 12+ minutes... whenever Maxey or Simmons rest. That's enough time to earn his keep or enough to prove himself unworthy of a roster spot. Although I don't really expect the roster to stay as it is now anyway.

Shake is for sure going to be ahead of Riller for PG minutes too, and we have other guys that would slide into additional minutes like Korkmaz/Niang/Joe/Reed before Riller gets into the rotation.

Isaiah Joe and Springer are going to be competing with each other for 3rd string minutes. I'm probably way off on my predictions for both of them because one of them will win out - and take 90% of the minutes away from the other one. But with Curry/Green/Milton/Thybulle/Korkmaz ahead of them there aren't many leftover SG/SF minutes to fight for anyway.

On all your others - no disagreement there. Korkmaz, Niang, Reed, and Milton should be regular rotation players (but with each of them sitting out for rest and bad match-ups much more often than the starters). But other than Shake, none of the others are PG so they won't affect Riller's minutes. If Simmons is here, I'd expect him to be 'resting' a lot more often than usual. That's going to open up a lot more PG minutes, and there will be chances to try out extra combinations. If Simmons is still here, I'd expect to see enough open PG minutes for Riller to get the backup minutes for a few games. I predicted 24 games played and 10 minutes per game for Riller. Not a ton, but it's more than I would have expected before adding things up. For comparison, I expect the other 2-way player (Aaron Henry) to get almost zero minutes. Henry would have to beat out both Joe and Springer before getting any minutes worth mentioning.

With some exceptions, most of these guys aren't just competing with their own positions for minutes though. Henry, for example, doesn't just have to beat out Joe and Springer for minutes. He has to beat out the other guys that are like 9th-15th in line for minutes as well.

This is because the team is often just going to prefer to go down from like a 10 man rotation to a 9 man rather than play Henry at this point. Or they'd just prefer to shift the positions around in their rotation to get a guy like Reed more minutes. The team might even prefer to run some clunky lineups with guys higher up in the rotation rather than giving their raw 2 way guys minutes.

As for the bolded, that's a pretty big deal though. Your original post and projection implied that Riller's path to minutes is just one of Simmons or Maxey missing games, something that might be an occasional occurrence. However, with Shake as an additional barrier, you now require two of Simmons/Maxey/Shake to be simultaneously unavailable, something that should be a fairly rare occurrence.

It's just extremely unlikely Riller plays over Shake much. Shake has played the most non-Simmons PG minutes of anyone on our team the last few years. Doc clearly trusts him to an extent - he gave Shake an increased role and nearly 1500 minutes last season, and then came back to him in game 7.

I'm not saying that Shake will keep all of those minutes and he might not even be in the rotation to start the season, but I've got to think that 200 or so of those minutes you have assigned to Riller would go to Shake first. Shake might not even end up with the ~1000 you projected for him, but they wouldn't be going to Riller either (likely more to Korkmaz and Reed).

[TTP]

Riller is the 17th man right now and even with a good preseason, it's hard to see him being greater than 14th or 15th in line for minutes when the season starts. He's going to be the 4th point guard and it's likely going to take 2 of them being out to get on the court for real minutes. It's exceptionally unlikely he gets minutes outside of garbage time unless he significantly breaks out in some way.

I think Riller's 15th. Well ahead of Aaron Henry, just based on the competition Henry faces at his position. And ahead of either Isaiah Joe or Jaden Springer... one of those will win out for 3rd string minutes while the other will get almost nothing.

Not saying Riller is going to see the court a lot, but I don't think it takes 2 of Simmons, Maxey, and Milton to be out. If Simmons isn't playing, Maxey will start and they'll experiment with the backup. Milton, Curry, Riller would all get some time as the backup PG. Maybe Springer, too. Same thing when Maxey rests. If that's 20-25 missed games between Simmons and Maxey (more than usual due to resting Simmons more), that's when Riller would get his 12+ minutes. Milton and Curry will still play more minutes than Riller, but they'll play most of their minutes as SG.

(And this is all probably a moot conversation since Simmons seems likely to be traded anyway.)

I'd be extremely surprised if Riller gets more minutes this year than Isaiah Joe. Joe is probably 12th/13th in line for minutes right now, with a chance to improve on that with a strong preseason.

The problem with thinking about minutes in terms of strings is that it's not like football where like a right guard goes out and you have to sub another guard (or at least another offensive lineman) in.

Let's say Niang is either hurt or playing poorly. Your depth chart would logically conclude that Reed would see an increase in minutes. However, if Joe has been outperforming Reed in general, the team likely prefers to get Joe minutes, shifting Matisse over to the 4 and playing small. So even though Niang/Reed and Joe don't play the same position, they're still in direct competition for minutes.

It's also worth mentioning that I think Seth Curry gets point guard minutes ahead of Riller too.