September 16, 2024
Mark J. Rebilas/Imagn Images
Is there any scoring tactic that Paul George has not mastered? One comes to mind.
Happy Monday! We are officially 14 days away from Sixers Media Day — with the team's training camp to begin the following day in The Bahamas. Here is a small dose of what's on my mind as we near the start of the new basketball year.
Sixers player previews
Jared McCain | Adem Bona | Reggie Jackson | Guerschon Yabusele | KJ Martin | Ricky Council IV
When I did a deep-dive on George's film last month, the overarching takeaway was that the nine-time All-Star wing who decided to join the Sixers this summer is one of the most well-rounded scorers in the entire NBA. His shooting ability alone is multi-faceted; he has a combination of pull-up and spot-up shooting skills that are nearly unmatched across the league.
However, upon looking at more advanced data and tracking numbers on George recently, I did find one stat that was moderately surprising to me: according to Cleaning the Glass, only 20 percent of George's shot attempts came within four feet of the basket in 2023-24, putting him in the 17th percentile in rim frequency. Each of those figures were the lowest George has posted since the 2016-17 season.
When George shares the floor with co-stars Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey, he is going to have very little responsibility as far as going downhill and getting to the rim. But there will be times where George needs to be at the epicenter of the team's offense, and when those situations occur it would behoove him to create rim pressure more frequently.
George, of course, is still an outstanding scorer with plenty of top-tier skills. But as he ages and his burst declines, it will not get any easier for him to pressure the rim and put opposing defenses in rotation.
With the first day of training camp still more than two weeks away, it appears the vast majority of Sixers are working out with each other at the team's practice facility in Camden, NJ, and the team has started posting clips and photos on their social media channels.
squad reporting for duty. 🫡 pic.twitter.com/6OkkMOimy1
— Philadelphia 76ers (@sixers) September 12, 2024
Players reporting a few weeks early — perhaps for an unofficial training camp — is a fairly common practice in the NBA, but it is one that can be especially useful for a group featuring eight players who were not on the team last season and only six returning players.
From the handful of social media posts the team has made in recent days, it is hard to come up with a single player who is not already in town.
Speaking of aging, the Sixers are relying on two long-time veterans to give them quality backup guard minutes this season. Lowry will turn 39 years old near the end of the upcoming regular season; Gordon will be 36 years old on Christmas. Each one has more than enough ability to get by in spite of their advanced ages — neither one has ever succeeded based solely on athleticism or explosiveness — but they have both reached the stage of a player's career where anything can happen, including a serious injury or a steep athletic decline that deeply damages their chances of being high-caliber contributors.
There is no question that the Sixers are going to use "load management" with Embiid after a season in which he only logged 39 regular season appearances and was hobbled for the entire postseason. But for Lowry and Gordon, a similar strategy could be in play. Neither one will play nearly as many minutes per game as Embiid — nor will they have anything resembling a similar workload on both ends of the floor — but they are probably not 82-game players at this point.
It is worth considering whether the Sixers will try to schedule nights off for Lowry and Gordon throughout the season to keep them fresh while also creating opportunities for other players to see time on the floor.
When Lowry rests, Reggie Jackson is perfectly capable of stepping into the backup point guard role, with two-way point guard Jeff Dowtin Jr. also being a solid option in those situations.
If Gordon gets a night off, the Sixers could go in a number of directions to fill his minutes. They could slide Ricky Council IV into his minutes, paving the way for KJ Martin or Guerschon Yabusele to handle backup power forward minutes and enabling Caleb Martin to spend more time on the wing. But perhaps the simplest adjustment would be to call upon the services of rookie first-round pick Jared McCain, who hopes to embody a similar archetype of player as Gordon has for more than 15 years.
Speaking of McCain, the Duke product threw out the ceremonial first pitch at Citizens Bank Park before the Phillies' 2-1 walk-off win over the New York Mets on Sunday.
Jared McCain throws out the first pitch: pic.twitter.com/TChqdITXvG
— Adam Aaronson (@SixersAdam) September 15, 2024
McCain had some teammates join him at the ballpark. Fellow rookie Adem Bona was in attendance, as were Dowtin and Exhibit 10 signing Max Fiedler.
Last month, I wrote a story about seven former Sixers still available in free agency. It took over a month, but in the last two days, two of those players have signed contracts for the upcoming season — and they went to the same team.
The Knicks, with one roster spot available, signed Landry Shamet on Saturday and Marcus Morris Sr. on Sunday, both agreeing to non-guaranteed deals that effectively pit themselves against one another in a competition for New York's final roster spot.
Earlier this summer, the Knicks added veteran point guard Cam Payne, who starred in his role as an energetic spark plug with the Sixers in the final months of the 2023-24 season, and at the very beginning of the offseason, they traded a massive haul of future draft picks to acquire Mikal Bridges, who was a Sixer for about 20 minutes.
The Sixers and Morris appeared to flirt with one another about a reunion throughout the summer, with Morris publicly indicating he would be thrilled to rejoin his hometown team. But the team's agreement with Yabusele seemed to close the door on a reunion.
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