On The Latest Sixers Crisis, The Zone Defense

The zone defense, while purportedly for cowards, has puzzled the Sixers in consecutive games and has set off a lot of sirens. While the regular season is simultaneously important (for playoff positioning and home court advantage) and unimportant (effort levels wane for regular season games, postseason games see little effort edge), moments like this can become watershed moments if the team unravels in the next few weeks.

Anyway, here are some thoughts ahead of tonight’s game against the Washington Wizards, a team that has already shown some zone looks in two wins against the Sixers (once in preseason, once in the regular season):

• Shot quality has not been the primary issue. The Sixers, as broken down by many individuals who are smarter than I, most notably Derek Bodner at The Athletic, have executed their offense against the zone defense and created open shots.
• The most notable impact of the zone defense has been the impact that missing shots repeatedly has had on the team’s defensive intensity. They lost games against Miami and Dallas because they had a 117 defensive rating in each game. The Sixers should not get comfortable using offensive struggles as an excuse for energy-less defense, considering that even at their current best, the offense is clunky and likely only average.
• The biggest offensive issue is willingness to shoot. We know from Ben Simmons’s pre-game routines and *Clyde Frazier voice* taking and making of three point shots from the corners. I’ll get back to him shortly. Al Horford, Tobias Harris, and Josh Richardson have been at least average and at times much better three point shooters over a long period of time. None of the above, and of course especially Simmons, are conscienceless shooters. Good shot -> Great Shot is an amazing ethos when the shots are open, in rhythm, and actually being taken. The zone gives offenses a lot of good shots. It takes work to generate a great shot. Sometimes they get there. Other times, the clunkiness wins out, and the great shot never materializes.
• The team has too many players whose optimal 2–3 zone offensive positioning is the playmaker at the triple threat position. Embiid, Simmons, Harris, and Horford are all big, can all see over the defense, and do their best work from the foul line and down toward the basket. Embiid likely is the most dangerous player of this bunch, as he can bully defenders and draw help inside. But Simmons is nearly useless when not in that position, and Harris especially has been a disaster off-ball. Simmons’s lack of willingness to use his improved skills is killing the team in these scenarios.
• The rotation should be adjusted to have more willing shooters play. Changes that I’d like to see are a switch to Richardson being the backup point guard, given Neto’s struggles and slow-trigger, more Mike Scott minutes especially with Embiid, and filling Richardson’s spot in the second-unit lineup with more Furkan Korkmaz minutes. Korkmaz and Scott are the most willing shooters of not-wide-open opportunities, and I’ll trust that they’ll hit enough to compensate for the defensive issues playing those two big minutes can trigger.
• It’s good that this is happening now. Ok, hear me out. If the Sixers ran into the Miami Heat in the first round of the playoffs, and the Heat hadn’t made expansive use of their zone defense, we may not have realized how much of an issue countering the defense could be in a playoff series. By seeing this now, and not in April, it gives the Sixers time to gameplan, test stuff out, and make roster decisions to help shore up what appears to be at least a minor weakness. Similar to the press strategy that the Raptors used at the end of the end of the Sixers win on December 8th, we now at least have an idea of a weakness the team has. Pulling out all of the stops against the Sixers in the regular season is, to me, a short-sighted move by the coaches of those teams, even if as I mentioned above that regular season wins do matter for home court. In the case of both Toronto and Miami, I feel those teams aren’t talented enough to take on the Sixers; at the same time, they probably could have used those tricks more judiciously. A regular season game is one of 82; those teams are seemingly focusing on the battle and not the war.