What will 2024-25 Sixers be able to depend on? originally appeared on NBC Sports Philadelphia
The 2024-25 Sixers will begin training camp on Oct. 1 in the Bahamas.
As that date approaches, we’ll dive into several significant topics for the team in Nick Nurse’s second season as head coach.
First up: What will the Sixers be able to depend on?
The Sixers are accustomed to volatile swings in fortune, Joel Embiid injury woes and serious roster shakeups. Through it all, they’ve been a very good regular-season team since the 2017-18 campaign at 347-208 overall (62.5 winning percentage).
It’s still felt at times like the Sixers can’t count on much, especially in the playoffs. For this year, our pre-camp read is that the following three areas should be relatively reliable.
Prolific scoring by the stars
Joel Embiid averaged more points than minutes per game last regular season. He scored 50 points on 13-for-19 shooting in the Sixers’ Game 3 playoff win over the Knicks. In Game 5, Tyrese Maxey dropped 46. Paul George is now part of a Sixers star trio.
Will the Sixers be capable of working around some subpar outside shooting performances from their top players? George hasn’t drawn heaps of foul shots in recent years and Maxey is still figuring out the nuances of when to actively seek out contact and when to focus solely on finishing inside. However, Embiid’s foul drawing often helps to mitigate slumps. He’s shot 11.7 free throws per game over the past three seasons and the Sixers ranked third in free throw rate last year as a team, per Cleaning the Glass.
On most nights, the Sixers should be comfortable leaning on their stars’ many offensive gifts.
Safe decision-making
While Nurse will encourage Maxey to play an even speedier, more aggressive style, the 23-year-old is a habitually low-turnover player. He committed over three turnovers in just six games last regular season and his 6.6 turnover percentage was lowest among NBA point guards.
The Sixers had the NBA’s best turnover percentage outside of garbage time in the 2023-24 season and none of their offseason pickups should hurt them badly in that department.
Nurse also won’t tolerate a ton of reckless, possession-squandering plays by non-star players. If Andre Drummond is throwing overly ambitious backdoor passes or Eric Gordon’s having a strangely sloppy night, there’s a decent chance Nurse will consider other options.
Role players with signature non-shooting skills
This one’s much less specific and quantifiable. Again, we’ll return to the cold shooting scenario. Even if no Sixer is having a great shooting game, it’s fair to assume Drummond will be an elite rebounder; Kyle Lowry will be exceptionally intelligent and competitive; Caleb Martin will be versatile defensively and find ways to chip in as a cutter, slasher and offensive rebounder.
The Sixers always need three-point shooting around their stars — Buddy Hield’s appeal last trade deadline was obvious — but the team’s current cast of role players seems dependable for plenty more than jumpers.
In a broad sense, that quality could be the difference between an adequate showing in Embiid-less playoff minutes and a disastrous blown lead. That’ll be the hope, anyway.