December 16, 2016
The Los Angeles Lakers start a couple of “traditional” big men (which basically means they don’t shoot threes) in Julius Randle and Timofey Mozgov, which means that Brett Brown is willing to throw out his twin tower frontcourt of Joel Embiid and Jahlil Okafor playing alongside each other in the starting lineup.
“We’re going to do it again,” he told reporters at Sixers practice on Thursday. “I think that we can match up big-big, and I intend to that every time we can do that.”
That is, if Embiid is healthy:
Shootaround update:
— Philadelphia 76ers (@Sixers) December 16, 2016
•Embiid (left knee contusion) questionable tonight; didn't take part in shootaround
•Noel (left ankle sprain) probable
For the sake of discussion, let’s say JoJo will be ready to go after banging knees with Dario Saric at practice yesterday. With Embiid’s restricted number of games and playing time as well as the lack of teams playing two traditional bigs together in the frontcourt, we haven’t gotten to see much of the Embiid-Okafor pairing.
It has only been three games (Atlanta, Orlando, Toronto) and 32 minutes with Okafor and Embiid manning the court at the same time (SMALL SAMPLE ALERT!), but the numbers are pretty interesting.
Net rating: 0.4 (perfectly fine, especially for the Sixers)
Offensive rating: 111.4 (terrific, the equivalent of the third best offense in the league, and second out of 67 two-man combos that have logged at least 25 minutes for the Sixers)
Defensive rating: 111.0 (extremely poor, the equivalent of the worst defense in the league)
So, with these two on the floor, the Sixers offense has actually looked pretty good. They predictably play at a super slow pace, but their assist percentage is sky high (83 percent, which would easily be tops in the league). Just the other night, in a game where he admittedly struggled, “The Process” handed out five dimes.
As for the defense? Well, yeah, it’s bad.
Again, this is a super small sample. If the Sixers continue to play their two big men up front, those numbers could and probably will prove to be wildly different. But so far, it’s fair to say that the pairing hasn’t been a disaster.
One problem: Embiid, who mostly hangs around the perimeter when Okafor is on the floor, felt frustrated after Wednesday’s game. That's because it's him who has to play out of position, bumping over to the 4.
“Yesterday, I was kind of frustrated,” Embiid said. “I’m not a three-point shooter and I don’t want to take a lot of threes. I want to be dominant on the block, but last night was kind of frustrating because I wasn’t as much on the block.
“I just got to find my spots and get into the flow of the offense.”
We all know Embiid likes to shoot threes, but from here, it seems that more than anything, he likes the freedom to pop out for threes, set up shop on the block, or anything in between. That only happens when he is playing center.
Long-term, it doesn’t feel like an Embiid-Okafor pairing will work. I'm skeptical that it will work, primarily defensively. Heck, it sounds like Embiid doesn’t think it will work. But for now, it looks like the experimental Sixers are going to roll with it in the some situations.
Follow Rich on Twitter: @rich_hofmann
