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eight line. In Tennessee visit www one dot one eight hundred gambler dot net in West Virginia. All right, welcome to hoops tonight, presented by Fandel here at the volume. Happy Thursday, everybody. Help all of you guys had a great week so far. Almost to the weekend. This is our last show of the week. We're going over number five in our power rankings. Next week it will be number four, three, two and one during the Monday through Thursday stretch of the week and then we are headed
right into basketball. When we come back the following Monday we'll have a bunch of preseason games. I believe six total preseason games worth of footage to react to that following Monday. So I'm very, very excited for that. Real basketball is right around the corner. Guys. You guys know the drill. Before we get started, subscribe to the volumes Youtube Channel so you don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on twitter at underscore Jason Lt so you
guys don't miss any show announcements. The last but not least, if you can't finish one of these videos and you also can't get over to youtube to finish them, we do keep them in podcast form wherever you get your podcasts under hoops tonight. And on that note, let's talk some basketball. So number five, the Philadelphia Seventies sixers last year,
fifty one and thirty one. They lost in the second round to Miami in six games, although it's important to mention that Joel emb did miss the first two games of that series with an orbital bone fracture that clearly was bothering him at least a certain amount in terms of just his overall engagement in the physicality of the game.
They finished the regular season eleventh and offense and twelfth and defense, although those metrics, a lot of the metrics that we look at for the team are skewed by the fact that they added James Harden part way through the season and so the entire dynamic of the offense changed at that point. Silly things like how often Joel embiid was used as a Rollman, the types of offensive creation possessions from Tyrese Maxie and Tobias Harris, the defensive
matchups that those guys were pulling. You know, the best defensive player was gonna Guard a Tyrese Maxie on the perimeter in there before the trade, and then after the trade that guy's going on James Harden and Tyrese Max he's getting better matchups. So a lot of that data is skewed a certain amounts. So you'll see as we get to the offense portion, I'm gonna focus more on
the players than I do on the team. The Miami series was interesting because, again, even even factoring in that Joel Embiad was hurt and clearly bothered a little bit by the face injury. Overall, um it wasn't a great showing and particularly in the mental toughness areas of the game of basketball, they seemed to wilt away a little bit as the Miami Heat really pressed them. I think there's a big part of why they went after P
J Tucker and Daniel House. James Harden's temperament is not that of like a you know, he's got a foxhole type of guy that's gonna go down swinging. He's very like riding high when things are good and he can tend to just kind of like wither away a little bit when things start going bad. And Joel Embiad has
a little bit of that himself. Very very, very, very involved in in energetic when things are going well, but when things start to go poorly he can be a little bit more reserved, and so having an Alpha dog type of personality like P J Tucker who will help keep them more mentally engaged in those moments, I think will go a long way towards helping. And then Daniel House, in my opinion, is like a lesser version of a
P J Tucker's addressing some specific needs there. But we gotta give a bunch of credits to Miami because I frequently called them the Golden State Warriors of the Eastern Conference. I think they have the best coach in the Eastern Conference. They're the best at winning the chess matches of NBA playoffs series based on what can be controlled outside of talent. That's that played a huge role in that particular series. They held both Joel Embiid and James Harden under twenty
points per game. Embiad was percent outside of the restricted area in that series, although in fairness that's kind of a consistent theme in his career. He's a moderately efficient perimeter player in the regular season. He's a dreadfully inefficient perimeter player in the postseason. Pretty much anything that's not a layup or a dunk in the playoffs he's gonna make a third of them or less, and so that's
somewhat to be expected. The main strategy thing that swung that series this is, you know, during the regular season The Philadelphia The Philadelphia Seventy Sixers, ran more post ups than any team in the entire league and in that series Miami employed like a kind of a bracketing front approach where they would front Joel Embiad in the post and offer backside help to dissuade the over the top
lob and Phil. They had some counters where they swing the ball around and do reverse seals and and working around to have someone like, let's say Tobias Harris's man was helping on the backside. They'd have him flash to the high post and he gets some catches and scores there.
They had some counters, but the truth of the matter was is Miami's bracketing, fronting approach really took philly out of their offense and they held him to a hundred and five points per one hundred possessions in that series, which is a really good defensive number for Miami. And again I just want to make sure before we move on that we acknowledge the injury to do all embiid and then James Harden was dealing with hamstring stuff, although a lot of that is related to his own physical care.
But I have them all the way up at five and you know, we talked a lot about you know in this list how I value playoffs ceiling in my decision making process. Like the Lakers are not the thirteenth most talented team in this league. They're probably closer to the twenty most talented team this league. After Lebron, James Anthony Davis. They are devoid of starter level NBA talent. Even the two guys they picked up this offseason are very small guards, which can be exploited in playoff settings
in a lot of ways. The reason why they're up at Thir team is because I believe in their top end talent right, we're always going to factor in playoff success. The Brooklyn Nets have so many question marks, but if any of those things go right, they can beat anybody. That's why they're as high as they are. There are teams that I really like that are super talented, teams like Memphis, teams like Cleveland that I have concerns about
their ability to reach their ultimate playoffs ceiling. So they're lower than their talent would then you would think they're talent would put you on this list. I think Philly is one of the most talented teams in the league. I think they're starting five might be the most talented team in the entire league. I am super, super high on tyres maxie. I think if Tobias Harris is your fourth best player, that's a really good spot to be in. And, most importantly, I think James Harden is going to have
a massive bound back season. I think the two guys I keep an eye on for massive bounce back seasons this year Anthony Davis and James Harden, although with Anthony Davis, I think health will ultimately get in the way for him. It just consistently does. I think you're foolish if you bet on him to stay healthy for seventy plus games. If he does, I think he'll be in the conversation for the top six or seven players in the league.
The same goes for James Harden. I I think he learned a lesson over the last couple of years, a lesson that I'm learning in a more amateur sense right now, which is you're in your early thirties, your metabolism is
not the same. You can't keep living the way you were living like I. I joke about this all the time with my with my family and friends, but like I used to be that I could eat like absolute crap and I could even take three or four days away from the game of basketball if I needed to, if we were going on a trip out of town
or something, and I'd be fine. And then in my late twenties I noticed like when I would get away from the game of basketball, I put on weight, but then I quickly lose it in the three or four days after I got back. And just in the last couple of years here, in my early Thirties, I've noticed like I put on the weight quickly when I get away from the game and then I have to work incredibly hard and be very attentive to my diet in
order to drop the weight. I put on about seventeen pounds on a two week vacation to Alaska with my wife, getting up to two and thirty seven pounds, and I've only worked it down in the months since to about two seven to twenty six. So like it's taken me forever to get back down where I like to be, and I think it's just the realities of aging. And you know, I think James Harden lives a difficult life
on his body. I mean in terms of the way that he likes to Party and have fun, which I have literally no problem with, but it will impact you physically with your health and I think he learned to value a lesson over the last couple of years that he's no longer capable of living that lifestyle if he wants to be at the top of his game as an NBA player. I think that we've seen some moderate evidence of it this summer and some of the footage
and and uh pictures that I've seen of him. He looks leaner, he looks more fit, he looks he's playing a lot more. I think James Harden is going to be not quite back to what he was in two thousand eighteen, but I think James Harden will get very close to that level this year. I think this is his bounce back season. I think this is the year that he cares for his body in a way that that will get him back to that level of athleticism.
I expect a massive year from James Harden and I believe at the end of this season we will be unanimously considering him a top ten player in this league. That is a huge part of where my optimism for the Philadelphia seventies six years ago. I think that they have two of the top eight or nine players in the league. When James Harden is healthy, that automatically puts you very close to the top of any list. We have to factor that in when we're looking at potential
playoff outcomes here. I've never been the biggest James Harden Fan. I've never been the biggest fan of the way he plays the game or the way his game translates to the playoffs. But you've got two players in that ilk. This is not James Harden and Chris Paul. This is not James didn't by himself. This is James Harden with Joel embiid and that's where my optimism comes from. There's also a really natural basketball fit there between the two of them, which we'll get into here in a minute.
So this offseason they traded Danny Green and a first round pick Ford Anthony Melton. He's a really good spot up player that played for the Memphis Grizzlies last year. Showed some flashes of on ball creation too, but it's he's not actually efficient in that department yet, but he's a good young spot up player off the bench who's guard. I shot forty one percent on catching two jumpers last year.
That's obviously a natural fit. Only on pull up jumpers a lot of his metrics and like pick and roll, ball handler, isolation, the Uh you know, dribble handoffs, things like that. He didn't put up great efficiency metrics last year, but again he's young and uh Um. At the very least you're trading Danny Green, a player who will be unavailable either all of this year or most of this year, for a useful rotation player and I think P J Tucker kind of slides into that Danny Green Roll with
the starting lineup. And now you've given yourself a useful player in depth, like I mentioned, they signed P J Tucker and Daniel House. These are two really tough forwards who consistently play hard and physical basketball. It fits a personality need for this roster. They need guys that can help uh inject toughness and fight into this group, which is a specific weakness of Joel and beat and James Harden.
So I liked those moves a lot. I think Darryl Moore knows James Harden really well and I think he knows what kind of roster he needs to build around him. Looking at their depth chart right now, at the guard position, they have James Harden, the Anthony Melton, Tyrese maxie and
shake Milton on the wing. And again and again, as we get to these top teams in the League, they're always so deep on the wing, Tobias Harris, P J Tucker fork on Cork, Maz Matisse, Thybul, Daniel House and George's kneeing, and then biggs, Joel and beat and Paul Reid and we might see a little bit of Charles Bassi this year, depending on how things go with health for em beat Um. On offense, kind of similar to some of the other brute force teams in the League
like Brooklyn and and Dallas. They don't run as money as much in the form in the way of sets compared to the rest of the League. They do run most of their UH, most of their organization is based on four out, one in with them beat at the top of the key, or they run some horn stuff with Tobias Harris and Joel Embiad at the High Post. They everything is some sort of interchange that flows into
some sort of screening action with them beats. So sometimes they'll just have like James Harden run down and screen for tyres Maxie, who tyris Maxie will then come up off of the dribble handoff with Joe El Embat sometimes James Harden will, you know, go do a dribble handoff with Tobias Harris, who will then immediately flow into an Mbat pick and roll, who will then hand off to, you know, uh Tyrius maxie coming out of the corner, and then he will come off of a ball screen
with Joel embiad. It's it's complications of like different ways to enter into different screening actions and we're gonna talk about a lot of different dribble handoffs and pick and roll uh metrics and ideas today. Again, remember, dribble handoffs are just another way to run a pick and roll. It's a way that allows you to get into it in an off ball sends to you as a as
the ball handler, the guard. You can work your defender to a spot on the floor and then take off from him and get initial separation, whereas if you have a live dribble, they could be applying ball pressure. It's
just different ways to get into those actions. Um, they also will run some stuff uh with like Tobias Harris and and bead in horns, and then they'll just have Tobias Harris like cross screen for Joel Em beat so that he might be able to get a better matchup, and then usually they'll just flow out of that into a post up. Like I said earlier, there were the most frequent post up team in the entire league. Um. The last one that I mentioned, that that I that I wanted to mention, that I saw on tape a
lot is tyris maxie. They run him off of those horn sets like over Harris and him beat a lot to get him to curl around because he's so gifted at just catching and exploding off of one foot and finishing at the rim. In pick and roll they were fourth in ball handler efficiency and eighth in Rollman efficiency as a team. Again, those numbers are somewhat skewed as by the fact that harden didn't join until later in the season. They have three different ball handlers that they
can run pick and roll with. James Harden had a down year. He was at zero point eight, two points per possession. I expect him to be much better this year. Both tyres maxie and Bias Harris were outstanding pick and roll ball ball handlers last year in the percentile or better. I wanted to spend some time talking about in bead rolling to the rim, because it's a huge part of why I'm so excited about this particular team, especially with
James Harden. James Harden is pretty relentless hitting the role man. He's he'll make the right read every time, especially because he runs so many pick and rolls and, like we talked about earlier, a lot of teams don't use their role man very frequently. Guards are really quick to look for their shot and pick and roll and and bead is so good, particularly in the short role, that the sixers are smart to use them as much as they do.
And beat is not a rim runner, he's not a vertical space or he's not a guy that you're gonna throw libs to, at least not often, but when he catches the ball barreling down the lane in that ten foot area, he's just damn near impossible to stop. First of all, in the regular season he was on shot attempts in the paint outside the restricted area. Obviously his efficiency there dips in the playoffs, but he's got little floaters and push shots and he can make that short
jump shot in the lane. Most importantly, when he barrels down the lane. He's just impossible to stop without fouling. He got fouled on twenty three of role possessions, so almost one out of every time, at almost one out of every four times someone hit and beat in the short roll he got fouled. That was the second most among centators who had two role Reps. only Gilbert had more.
But again, Gobert is a bad free throw shooter. So many cases teams are just grabbing him with the intention of sending him to the line rather than letting him get a shot off. Um and beat overall was the secon most frequently used Rollman in the entire league, and I believe that would be even more this season with James Harden in the fold. He averaged one point to four points per role possession, which is absolutely outstanding. As a team, they were also the second most efficient dribble
handoff team in basketball. A big part of that is they ran a ton of dribble handoffs before James Harden got around. It's one of Tobias Harris's favorite actions to run um even like I said earlier, it's just another way to run pick and roll. Everything that they do offensively it's just variations and complications to try to get Joel embiid into screening action with one of their perimeter
players and then rolling down the lane. Um in isolation situations, James Harden was still one point zero seven points per possession last year, which is really good. Isolation numbers are typically a lot lower, and the reason why is he still gets fouled on twenty eight percent of his ISOS.
So again, James Harden was one of the best is a players in the league last year at one point zero seven points per possession, despite only shooting thirty seven percent from the field in those situations, because he gets fouled on more almost a third of his possessions. The the hardened foul drifting thing is alive and well and stronger than it's ever been in the dip in his athleticism has had no effect there. Joe Embiad has also been solid in isolations this past season. Zero point nine
five points per possession, slightly above average Um. Moving on to post ups. So No team in the NBA runs more post ups than the sixers. They were fifth inefficiency. Both Joel embiid and Tobias Harris are about the seventy five percentile for post efficiency. There are two things that I wanted to talk about their first of all, Tobias Harris and getting favorable matchups. Again, like your most teams
are running one big four perimeter players. These days, they might have a bigger, more athletic forward at the four position to guard bigger players, but for the most part you're putting your best perimeter defenders on Tyrese Maxi and James Harden and you're putting your best post offender on Joel embiid and you're offering help wherever Joel embiat is
on the floor. So all the time, Tobaris, Tobias Harris, is gaining favorable matchups, whether that's running the floor in transition to get a cross match or as the defense gets in rotation, as people calls out on him, or against certain teams just in the natural matchups of the game, he's got a favorable matchup and he's got a good back to the basket game and they'll just throw the ball down to Tyrese Maxie and he's scoring down there at a very efficient rate. Matchups are the number one
thing that that drive my optimism about this sixers team. offensively. It's not just the James Harden and Joel embat thing, it's Tyrese Maxie and Tobias Harris. Again, if Tobias Harris is your best player or your second best player, yeah, he's woefully underqualified for that role and you're gonna be really dissatisfied with the results. That goes without saying. But when he's your fourth best player, he gets to be more picky with his shot selection and take shots that
he's more comfortable with. He doesn't have to force the action as often and he's gonna draw favorable matchups. And and that right there, that that's why, like it always drives me nuts. I saw someone on twitter the other day say something like, Oh, is Stephen Clay the best duo in NBA history because they won four titles? or I'll see something, I'll see things like oh, or Stephen Katie the best duo, and I want to be like those are Duos, those are that's four all star level players.
Like the part of the success of that team is that when you've got Stephen Katie at the top, you know Clay Thompson's getting very favorable matchups. And the same thing goes for this Philadelphia Seventies sixers thing. This is not a duo. Tyrese Maxie is a like. He's not an all star, but he's in the tier right below all star, and so is to bias Harris. These are players that on any given night can give you thirty points, that can create their own shot, that are incredibly confident
and have great strengths. To Bias Harris, mainly as a post player and attacking closeouts. Tyrese Maxie as a ridiculous transition threat which will get two in a minute, and he's shooting the ball pretty well this year. I think shot about pull up jump shots last year. That's really damn good. So this is a damn good core four players here and they're gonna be very difficult to match up with any given night, and that's a huge part of why I'm optimistic there. The second part of that
is spot up possessions. Defending the harden and bad pick and roll is just a royal pain in the ASS. Harden is really good at pinning the defender on his backside so he can work down the lane. That dictates that the big man screen defender has to corral James Harden. That opens up the short role for Joel embid where he's gonna kill you, so you almost always have to tag him out of the week side corner. That opens up that left handed skip pass for James Harden going
across the floor, and that's a borderline. I'll start level level player that's catching that skip pass. It's gonna be Tyres Maxie or Tobias Harris that's capitalizing on all that defensive attention. That's where the talent shows up, in those spot up possessions and in the matchups that those guys dictate. Tyrs maxie transition. So tyres at ridges a ridiculous one, point, three, five points per possession and transition, and he does it
about three times per game. You see him just absolutely hit the jets and dust everybody down the floor and make a layup or dunk. He has a ridiculous combination of straight line speed with the explosiveness to take off when you get there. I do this drill a lot with my younger players and I do it all the time because it's one of my favorite ways that I
play the game. But I'll start on the opposite end of the floor and I'll throw the ball up off the glass and I'll catch it as high as I can and then I'll just take off at a full sprint and dunk the basketball on the other end and I'll just do that time and time again. I'll like walk back down the floor do it again, and walk back down the floor and do it again, and the main reason why is, like going from a full sprint into an upward jump at the rim is incredibly difficult.
It takes an enormous amount of like strength and it's the kind of thing that when you see Tyrese can make it look easy, but it's very difficult and it's it's his rare bit of athleticism that all outs him to succeed so much in transition. I wanted to get it take a minute to to shout out tyres Maxi there. So again my optimism for this team offensively is harden's revenge tour, the idea of him getting back to where
he was. Uh, the natural synergy that exists between James Harden and Joel embiide, who, when they're both top ten players, will be incredibly difficult to deal with. Tyree's Maxi and Tobias Harris, attacking matchups and attacking closeouts. It's an incredibly talented roster and so I think that they're gonna be a top five offense this year. I think they're gonna be. I think they're gonna be a really difficult closing five and starting five to deal with. That's where my optimism
comes there. On the defensive end of the floor, they were let's look at some metrics, because it doesn't paint doc rivers in a very favorable light. Nineteen and defensive rebounding, so they don't box out and crash very well, eighteenth in defending the paint, so they don't take away layups and dunks and things like that. They were twenty nine and fast breakpoints allowed per one h possessions, according to cleaning cleaning the glass, were the twenty seven ranked transition
defense overall. That speaks to what you heard from Uh Kevin Nurayant after the Brooklyn Nets beat the crap out of him in that one nationally televised game. He's like, they're not, they're not a good transition team. So we ran on him. He was absolutely right. They were not a good transition defense last year. That means they're not sprinting back, they're not communicating their complaining for fouls too much on the other end of the floor. That leads
to bad transition defense and beats. Foot speed plays a little bit of a role there, but we'll talk about that in a second. Where the strength of their defense, because again this team finished twelfth in defense. The strength of their defense was they defended the three point line really well. They were fourth and three pointers made allowed per get per one possessions and they were ninth and steel.
So by defending the three point line, which is the second most efficient shot in basketball, and by forcing turnovers, they took a undisciplined defensive team and turned it into the twelfth ranked defense in the League. They did make massive improvements on the wing, defensively, in my opinion, by bringing in Daniel House and P J Tuck. P J Tucker just does a ton of stuff to help you
win games. He's a great offensive rebounder, he crashes the glass relentlessly, he's a good cutter, he can knock down corner threes, although that can be hit or miss and streaky from time to time, and he can match up with the bigger, bruising wings around the League, taking, you know, the difficult defensive assignments that other guys on the roster do not want to take. So I think that will obviously improve things for them defensively. The big my one
big concern for them defensively is embeat in his slow footedness. Again, like sixers fans swear by him beat on the defensive end of the floor. I think he's good. I think he's good when you can keep him around the rim, but he does have some weaknesses. One in transition. He's a huge part of why they're bad transition defense there.
This is a very athletic team that gets beat down the floor a lot, in large part because he's slow footed and he complains for fouls a lot on the other end of the floor, and then when you put him in space he struggles to contain ball handlers. There was a stretch, I did a video on this during that first round series. There was a stretch in one of the Games that I want to say it was.
I want to say it was game five, Um, if I remember correctly, but uh, in game five or late in that series, there was a game in the second half where Toronto on six consecutive possessions, targeted Joel embiide in isolation with a live dribble and just dusted right around him for layups. It's just it's his one key weakness defensively is his foot speed. If you can keep him around the rim, that's great. That's why he puts
up great metrics during the regular season. You keep him in drop coverage, you keep him around the rim, he does okay. But in a playoff setting when you can attack him in transition and attack him in space, he has some some struggles there. So I think there's somewhat of a ceiling on this team defensively. But if they can get around the top ten, if they can get in that nine ten range while being a top five offense,
that's where you get the dangerous version of the SIXERS team. So, looking at their best case scenario, this is one of the most talented starting fives in the league. Like we talked about, I expect P J Tucker to slide into that Danny Green spot. I expect hardened to have one of the best season of his career and to bounce back from the rough couple of years. I expect him
be to have some better health luck he's been. You know, it's really unfortunate when you're finally gonna kind of getting into a good spot and then someone elbows you in the face and kind of makes you dizzy for a whole for a couple of weeks. Tyres maxie's blossoming. He's just about to turn twenty two and he's one of
the most talented young guards in this league. The natural difficulty of guarding the hardened and Beid pick and roll in the bind that it puts you in as a defense, and then they address their toughness need by bringing in
P J Tucker and Daniel House. If all of those things manifest the way that I expect them to, especially when you factor in the continuity of not having to deal with a hardened uh without having to deal with getting harden involved in your team in the middle of a season, I think that this team's best case scenario is absolutely winning the title. They will be able to match up with everybody. They're gonna be, uh like I said, one of the most talented starting five and closing fives
in basketball. I absolutely view them as a title threat. That's why I have them up here at number five. The worst case scenario is that they have a very good regular season, like they usually do and that they lose in the first or second round again, just like you saw last year. In order for that to happen, though, it needs to be more of the same from embid
and hardened. It needs to be embid breaking down and shrinking a little bit when things get tough, and it needs to be James Harden still being a little bit out of shape, you know, struggling with health throughout the season and not being explosive enough to get to the rim. That explosiveness is everything, and that's why my x factor
for this team is James Harden. I think the okay. So, when James Harden's body started to fail him, it caused this cascading effect that limited him offensively, when he can't beat people off the dribble as much as he used to. There's a balance that changes there. When you're a defender, you're either on your toes or you're on your heels as a defensive player, and that's more less in terms of the physiology of it and technique of it. It's
more of like a mental thing. You either feel confident getting up into an offensive player, knowing that you can contain him, or you're terrified of the drive and you give space. That's kind of what I'm getting at here. And when James Harden went was in his absolute prime.
He was so damned quick with his first step going left and his left to right crossover was so hard to guard that he could get to his step back jump shot whenever he wanted because the defender was on their heels, the defender was giving ground and as a result he was just killing teams, shooting like something crazy, liket on, like ten step back to easy game right. But as his athleticism left him, suddenly it became that guys felt more comfortable pressing up on him. Now he's
not getting as much separation on that step back. Now that step back is turning into a lower percentage shot, now that threat of the drive isn't there. So him getting into shape, him regaining some of that explosiveness will put everything back in order for him, where defenders have to give him a little bit more space, where in pick and roll teams have to account for him exploding
to the rim more frequently. When that comes back, I think everything will open up for this Philadelphia Team and James Harden getting back to that level, getting back to that you know seventh or eighth best player in the League. That's gonna be what puts this team in serious title contention. That's why he is the x factor of this team.
If and beads the eighth best player in the League and hardens the Fifteenth Best Player in the League, they're not beating anybody at the top, but if and beads the eighth best player in the League and hardens the seventh or Ninth Best Player in the League, they can beat anybody. He's the x factor. He's the guy to watch. Again, I'm I'm I'm really it seems kind of backwards right because I'm not a huge sixers fan. I don't like him,
bed and harden and the foul grift ing. I'm not especially I I don't really uh think much of their personalities as basketball players. They're not my favorite types of guys. But this is an incredibly talented team and if anything goes right for them this season, they're going to be in the mix of things at the end of the year. That's why I have him as high as I do. All right, guys, I hope you all have a great weekend. We will be back on Monday with number four, as always.
I sincerely appreciate your support and I'll see you after the weekend. The Volume