Didn't see a thread on this but Shake Milton will now be the starter at PG and Horford will be the 6th man, Ben gets to go back to his natural position that he was at LSU, starting at PF next to Embiid We been wanting this to happen for a minute with Simmons playing more off ball as a screener and cutter and now we have a PG that will shoot Should have been Fultz tho if everything woulda worked out
This is dumb. You give away the mismatch that forces the other team to shuffle their lineup to guard yours. Now you're paying Horford 100m's to come off the bench. He's STILL A NON-SHOOTER which means the spacing doesn't change at all, and Joel is still going to have to jack up 3's to give himself room to work. And Ben is a phenomenal perimeter defender, who now has to guard 4's. It's hilarious how carefully planned out Philly's tanking was, and how many awful, short term decisions they've made since they fired Hinkie
Ehh not really, we didn't even use that advantage when we had it because we never posted Simmons up enough. We still have a big lineup where everyone is 6'5 and up and will have the size advantage on most nights. Ben will also be a used as a small ball center occasionally to cause matchup problems for the other team. Yeah it's not ideal but if something isn't working you gotta try something different and the numbers show that offensively the fit between horford, simmons and embiid isn't really working enough to have them all start at the same time. They still fit tremendously on defense and can be a situational lineup, Horford can be moved possibly in the future Which is the whole point of the move, and yes the spacing does change. We're one of the worst teams in the league when it comes to running pick and roll because Simmons isn't a threat to shoot it as the ball handler but with Shake at the point and Ben as the roll man that changes. Ben can pop, roll or drive to set up inside looks to Embiid with ease. He still will be guarding the best perimeter player on the floor and we will just cross match the opposing 4. We also have Thybulle and Richardson who are two of the better perimeter defenders in the league who will see increased time due to Simmons moving to the frontcourt.
I meant mismatch more in terms of personnel than function, as a LOT of times teams had to put together some kind of funky/unusual lineup out there against y'all or risk having a 6'1" PG in no man's land defensively. Against a team like Boston for example it can force Kemba off the floor for Smart (which is a net positive for Philly imo) I get what you're saying and I agree. I'm just saying that BEFORE you pay someone 100m's maybe try Ben at the 4...they've had multiple seasons and playoff runs to try this lineup out and never have, which honestly is probably on Brett. I'm not sure how he still has his job. The spacing is bad for 3 reasons: Ben can't shoot and won't try, Y'all don't have a fluid or defined offensive system, and overall the team is low on foot speed. Theoretically, Embiid and Horford should be killer PnR options for Ben, and all the wings need to do is be able to dive cut since both big can shoot (dragging the other two bigs out of the paint). But for whatever reason you guys are hell bent on Embiid getting 30 iso's a game which wrecks the pace and spacing (since Ben just stands on the block doing nothing), and also bails out the defense because they don't have to defend Ben's creativity as a passer. Ben at the 4 solves none of that, removes Horford as a shooting threat, and Brett is STILL gonna call 30 iso's for Embiid while Ben stands directly in his way. So you're gonna have a wing (Richardson??) guarding 4's...as a permanent solution? You'd be better off just throwing Thybulle on the #1 and having Ben as a help defender. It's a waste of his talent still but it's better than Richardson getting posted up by Siakam 11 times in a row. For what its worth I picked Philly to win it all this year If they had an actual offensive system and weren't worried about Ben having the ball more than Joel, they'd PnR the whole league into oblivion and strangle them on defense. But it's obviously more important that Joel is the team MVP
He's a natural 1 doe Dude is a killer passer, he understands angles and spacing, and can even guard other point guards at 6'10" If he could shoot the 3 at 28-30ish % he'd literally be a hall of famer He's a 6'10" Tony Parker (admittedly with a worse jumper) who is also an All-NBA defender He just happens to have another transcendent talent on his team. I think on his own team he's an MVP candidate
It's been a whooooole lot of point guards that won a whooooole lot of games and couldn't shoot worth a damn. He's a 6'10" Rajon Rondo/Tony Parker hybrid who's a phenomenal defender If you as a coach/GM/Front office can't turn that player into a PnR nightmare by surrounding him with shooters and dive cutters then it's not his fault. Tell Embiid to shut the fukk up, set the screen, and look for the dump off pass, while we run the other team to death because they can't score on us...boom, Championship. But instead they run a slow motion ass 1996 ass offense so Embiid can post up 30 times (with 10 of them ending in either a turnover or him jacking up a 3 anyway)
He's still going to be the PG. Shake isn't going to be running the offense And it isn't going to change much given he's still a non-shooter.
