76ciology wrote:mjkvol wrote:76ciology wrote:There’s a video in youtube that got me thinking about Embiid.
Basically he said how the biggest problem on Embiid on Sixers offense is how it takes a lot of time to set him up then he would survey the court. With surveying the court he would read where his teammates are and where the defense is. Then he would do his move.
The problem is against good teams. Specially in a 7 game series. Teams eventually can figure him out on defense and what his tendencies are. In the moment he surveys the court, the defense also surveys the sixers offense. Where is he likely to kick it out and how they are going to rotate on defense. There’s no “scrambling” on defense moment because everyone knows where to rotate. And whats worse is with all of these action, time is on the defense side and not on Sixers side.
And this is one of the biggest reason why Biid has a hard time on playoffs than reg season. In the reg season, defense is vanilla. Bad teams with not enough familiarity. In the playoffs, mostly good teams and teams eventually has a better read on Sixers and Embiid, and when that moment comes Sixers are in a handicap on offense despite whatever edge we have on talent.
This is where Nurse's effect on what we do offensively is going to be critical, because as a coach who has schemed against Embiid in multiple playoff series, he knows these things as well as anyone.
We ran as unimaginative a scheme, with little adjustment, as could be imagined, as Rivers was content to keep Embiid as the focal point come hell or high water. As you alluded to it was easy to defend once good defenses locked in on Embiid's tendencies.
I would hope that part of Nurse's message to Harden would be that he would be playing much more of a Jamal Murray role in the offense as primarily a scorer as well as distributor. The second part of the equation would be selling Embiid on more of a Joker-esque role but utilizing his own strengths as a finisher against mismatches created by P&R and ball movement. It's still going to come down to improving his decision making, and I can't help but think Nurse will be heavily addressing that.
It was the same problem with Brett back then. I think Biid is just poor and slow at reading and analyzing situations and poor at handling the ball. So he needs space and he needs time to read the situation slower than geniuses like Jokic or LeBron. The guys also couldn’t move because Biid wont be able to locate them so they just stand still
So if you run a Jojo centric offense. The offense has to be very simplified and vanilla plus the pace should be slow. If you do that then its an environment where defense is empowered.
Then for sure you can take risk and experiment, but its quite a boom or bust. But sample size say its likely going to bust for we’ve seen how Biid plays and we have a large sample size that says coaches also feels that they need to simplify the offense and slow the pace for Biid. Then again, im not saying in definite, maybe Nurse can turn it around.
Iso heavy offenses still require proper motion to function properly. There's, generic action around the iso, which we saw last season, that won't really be a part of the offense and there's systematic action that you're describing with Joker. Their offense is essentially him pulling the center away from the basket, and intentional cutting or ducking in with a mismatch with a guy like Gordon.
I think a proper offense for this team would be more action off the ball with your stars or off of a Harden ISO, because you know he's not working off the ball. Different ways to duck Joel into the post off of a screener, or pulling up off screens mid range, with Maxey being active on the opposite end of the floor
But the Bulls and Lakers utilized heavy iso offense with deliberate motion built in. Spurs were always deliberate with it, Celtics with Rivers had Ray Allen doing his thing. Heat inserted a motion offense with the big 3 and their version helped Jimmy Butler take a leap. Warriors of course under Kerr.
