September 16, 2024
Mark J. Rebilas/Imagn Images
How much should Sixers head coach Nick Nurse trust Eric Gordon when the 2024-25 season begins?
Welcome to our Sixers player preview series! Between now and Sixers Media Day on Sep. 30, we will preview each one of the 14 players on the team's standard roster, posing two critical questions that will help determine their fate in 2024-25 before making a prediction about the player's season to come.
In the first six installments of this series, we have focused on players looking to earn spots in Sixers head coach Nick Nurse's rotation. But now, we can discuss the eight players who, barring injuries, are widely-expected to be on the floor when the Sixers open their season against the Milwaukee Bucks in October.
Feeling they were in need of an excellent three-point shooter, Sixers President of Basketball Operations Daryl Morey signed one he knows very well: veteran Eric Gordon, who enters his 17th NBA season still in pursuit of his first championship.
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Perhaps the most well-remembered stretch of Gordon's career came when Morey signed him to play for the Houston Rockets, with Gordon being one of the first players to truly reach an unconscious level of three-point volume. Perhaps more than any player at the time, Gordon and the Rockets embraced the role of the ultimate three-point sniper, willing to fire away time and time again from well beyond the arc.
What people do not recall as much from Gordon's run in Houston is the consistency with which he would handle tremendously difficult defensive assignments. Without outlier athleticism or a particularly impressive frame, Gordon used decent length, excellent hands and outstanding lower body strength to defend much larger wings frequently.
Gordon will spent most of the season, though, as a 36-year-old with an enormous amount of mileage and laundry list of prior injuries. In today's 5 Sixers thoughts, I pondered whether or not Gordon should be on some sort of load management plan to make sure he can get through the season healthy and enter the playoffs with (relatively) fresh legs.
For those same reasons, I wonder how much responsibility Gordon is capable of handling on the defensive end of the floor at this point. His athleticism has clearly diminished -- in part due to aging and partly thanks to all of the injuries he has sustained.
A ball-handler with superior athleticism and length blows by Eric Gordon en route to the rim and draws a foul on Gordon. pic.twitter.com/ztxJgm9zjw
— Adam Aaronson's clips (@SixersAdamClips) July 26, 2024
At this point, Gordon no longer profiles as someone who can handle critical assignments. Will he be a neutral-impact defender against reasonable matchups, or will he be a player who has to hide on the opponent's weakest offensive link when the chips are down?
Gordon has never been a true point guard, but he has moonlighted as one on occasion throughout his career. He oftentimes served as a de-facto backup point guard in Houston, occasionally leveraging the threat of his lethal shot to get by defenders and create shots for others.
The 2024-25 Sixers roster is loaded across many facets of the game, but one thing they lack is high-caliber passing. Joel Embiid and Kyle Lowry might be the only players on the team who would be considered above-average passers for their position, so anybody else who can chip in with the occasional smart read on the ball doing so would be a godsend.
If Gordon can just make plays like this on a consistent basis without forcing the issue or trying to do too much as a passer, the Sixers would be thrilled.
Eric Gordon uses the threat of his jumper to send a defender flying, attacking the closeout and finding an open teammate for a three. pic.twitter.com/N9PaMOFaBd
— Adam Aaronson's clips (@SixersAdamClips) July 26, 2024
Gordon is never going to operate as a primary ball-handler for the Sixers (or any other team) within a game at this stage of his career, but if he can just make wise connective passes, it will help this offense quite a bit.
Other than games missed due to injuries or rest, Gordon will be in the Sixers' rotation for the entire season.
As you can see here, I have high hopes for Gordon as a Sixer -- and that stems not just from what he is capable of doing, but what he is capable of enabling other people to do.
The fact that Gordon can take plenty of threes and make a lot of difficult ones is excellent. But more specifically, opposing defenses having to account for that and bake it into their defensive coverages against a team that also has Embiid, Tyrese Maxey and Paul George on its roster is a boon for Nurse.
Gordon's yearly three-point percentages are typically above-average, but do not tell even close to the full story of how good of a shooter he is and how much fear the threat of him spotting up from 30 feet away can put into another team. His arrival in Philadelphia allows Nurse to surround his trio of All-Stars with near-maximum floor spacing.
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