Basketball season will be here before you know it. After a busy offseason, let’s take a look at how the Sixers’ big rotation could shake out.
OK, so maybe it’s not way too early. Believe it or not, the Sixers will be back on the court for regular season basketball in just two months.
So, with another offseason of heavy roster turnover, the local basketball team will look a lot different in how they line up next season.
By maximizing the star potential on this roster by adding Paul George, the Sixers were limited in how they were able to fill out the rest of the roster, thanks in large part to new salary cap restrictions (everyone must be tired of hearing about aprons by this point.)
With the team signing Olympic standout Guerschon Yabusele, the roster they’ll start training camp with appears to be set. So, let’s breakdown the different ways the Sixers will try to maximize their big three of George, Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey.
The Bigs
This one is a little more straight forward. This is the first time the Sixers appear to have a good plan to break up the center minutes since, well, Andre Drummond was last on the team. He’s already shown himself to be a productive backup for Embiid in the regular season, on top of being able to scale up to starter-level production in games Embiid does not play at all.
Being able to slide into the starting lineup was something their last backup, Paul Reed, might have struggled with the most. This should put the team under significantly less pressure to have Embiid out there for as many regular season games as possible, especially with 15 back-to-backs on this year’s schedule. With how Embiid’s injury history has gone at the end of seasons, getting him to that point as healthy as possible needs to be at the top of the priority list.
Not only do the Sixers not have to worry about their backup five, but they hope they’ve found a feasible third center, a possession that does matter with Embiid missing a chunk of games every season. The best case scenario is having about 10-15 of these games this season, which would give second-round draft pick Adem Bona just enough big league minutes while still getting the bulk of his run dedicated to his development in Delaware.
Bona showed plenty of flashes indicating he can be a productive NBA player in his first summer league, but at just 21 years old, he is still very raw with plenty of rough edges of his game to smooth out.
In a perfect world, he’s given the time this season to develop while Drummond eats up the lion’s share of minutes Embiid does not play, but then again, when do things ever go perfectly for the Philadelphia 76ers?