stormi wrote:Ferry Avenue wrote: -
I'm glad you responded because I was listening to this today and wanted to share it. Trae weirdly iterated the same point I was trying to earlier, like verbatim.
43:12 -> 43:42
Surrounding pieces making plays are so crucial for dictating the type of coverages your star players see. You have to have adequate floor spacing and guys that can threaten a defense from alternative angles. It just cyclically opens up the floor for the game to be brought home by your best talents.
The fact that Harden has to be doubled essentially a quarter of all of his possessions is already superstar level irreplaceable impact, but it's for naught if the players around him can't capitalize upon it.
Sure, but the cornerstone of your point -- that the Sixers had inadequate shooting in the playoffs -- doesn't exist.
Your point is certainly theoretically sound and applies to basketball in general, but it doesn't apply to the Sixers specifically unless you can show they shot the ball significantly more poorly than other teams in the playoffs, especially the remaining ones.
Again the relevant data are here:
https://www.nba.com/stats/teams/traditional/?PerMode=Totals&sort=FG3_PCT&dir=-1&Season=2021-22&SeasonType=Playoffs
And again that suggests some other important factor was at play in their second-round exit, and I posit that was the unreliable contributions of Harden and Maxey.
The only significant predictors of the Sixers' point differential post-Harden acquisition (in games both Harden and Embiid played, including the playoffs) was the scoring of Maxey and Harden, in that order. If the team didn't get scoring contributions from them, it was far less likely to win. And that's certainly a problem when the scoring of those players is unreliable and up and down.
Look no further than the inconsistency of Harden and Maxey for the cause of this team's demise in 2022.