The Herd with Colin Cowherd - Hoops Tonight - NBA Power Rankings: Joel Embiid & James Harden power Philadelphia 76ers into Top 5

Episode Date: September 23, 2022

Jason Timpf breaks down the Philadelphia 76ers ahead of the 2022-2023 NBA season. Will Joel Embiid, James Harden, and Doc Rivers finally get Philly back to the NBA Finals? #Volume #herdSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter.

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Visit www.1-800 gambler.net in West Virginia. All right, welcome to Hoops tonight, presented by Fanduel here at the Volume. Happy Thursday, everybody. I hope all of you guys had a great week so far. 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. And last but at 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 76ers.

Last year, 51 and 31. They lost in the second round to Miami in six games, although it's important to mention that Joe L&B 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, 11th in offense and 12th in 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 Hardin partway through the season.

And so the entire dynamic of the offense changed at that point. Silly things like how often Joel Embed was used as a role man. The types of offensive creation possessions from Tyrese Maxey and Tobias Harris, the defensive matchups that those guys were pulling. You know, the best defensive player was going to guard a Tyrese maxi on the perimeter 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 amount.

So you'll see as we get to the offense portion, I'm going to focus more on the players than I do on the team. The Miami series was interesting because, again, even factoring in that Joel Embed was hurt and clearly bothered a little bit by the face injury, overall, 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 PJ Tucker and Daniel House. James Hardin's temperament is not that of like a, you know, he's not a foxhole type of guy that's going to go down swinging. He's very like riding high when things are good and he can tend to just kind of wither away a little bit when things start going bad. And Joel Embed has a little bit of that himself, very, very, very involved 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 PJ Tucker, who will help keep them

more mentally engaged in those moments, I think will go a long way towards helping. And the Daniel House, in my opinion, is like a lesser version of a PJ Tucker's addressing some specific needs there. But we got to give a bunch of credits of 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 playoff series based on what can be controlled outside of talent. That played a huge role in that particular series.

They held both Joe L. Embedd and James Hardin under 20 points per game. Mbid was 26% 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 going to 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 76ers 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 Joe L. and beat in the post and offer backside help to dissuade the over-the-top lob. And Philly had some counters where they'd swing the ball around and do reverse seals and work it around to have someone, like let's say, Tobias Harris' man was helping on the backside.

They'd have him flash to the high post and he'd get 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 105 points per 100 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 own Bid. And then James Hardin 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 playoff ceiling in my decision-making process. Like, the Lakers are not the 13th most talented team in this league. They're probably closer to the 20th, most talented team this league. After LeBron James and Anthony Davis, they are devoid of starter-level NBA talent. Even the two guys they pick 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 13 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 playoff ceiling. So they're lower than their talent would, then you would think their 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 Tyrese maxi. 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 Hardin is going to have a massive bounceback season. I think the two guys I'd keep an eye on for massive bounce back seasons this year are Anthony Davis and James Hardin. 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 70 plus games. If he does, I think he'll be in the conversation for the top six or seven players in the league. Same goes for James Harden. 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 30s, your metabolism is not the same.

You can't keep living the way you were living. Like, I joke about this all the time with my family and friends, but like I used to be that I could eat like absolute crap and I could even take three, 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 20s, I noticed like when I would get away from the game of basketball, I'd put on weight, but then I'd quickly lose it in the three or four days after I got back. And just in the last couple of years here at my early 30s, 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 17 pounds on a two-week vacation to Alaska with my wife, getting up to 237 pounds. And I've only worked it down in the month since to about 227, 226. 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 Hardin 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 a valuable 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 pictures that I've seen of him. He looks leaner. He looks more fit. He looks like he's playing a lot more. I think James Harden is going to be not quite back to what he was in 2018, 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 Hardin, and I believe at the end of this season, we will be unanimously considering him a top 10 player in this league. That is a huge part of where my optimism for the Philadelphia 76ers go. I think that they have two of the top eight or nine players in the league when James Hardin 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 Hardin 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 Hardin and Chris Paul. This is not James Hardin by himself. This is James Hardin with Joelle Ambide. 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 for DeAnthony Melton. He's a really good spot-up player that played for the Memphis Grizzlies last year. He showed some flashes of on-ball creation too, but he's not actually efficient in that department yet. But he's a good young spot-up player off the bench who's guard. He's got 41% on catch-and-shoe jumpers last year.

That's obviously a natural fit. only 32% on pull-up jumpers. A lot of his metrics in like a pick and roll ball handler, isolation, you know, dribble handoffs, things like that. He didn't put up great efficiency metrics last year, but again, he's young. And 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 PJ Tucker kind of slides into that Danny Green role with the starting lineup, and now you've given yourself a useful player in depth. Like I mentioned, they sign PJ Tucker and Daniel House.

These are two really tough forwards who consistently play hard in physical basketball. It fits a personality need for this roster. They need guys that can help inject toughness and fight into this group, which is a specific weakness of Joelle Ambide and James Harden, so I liked those moves a lot. I think Darrell Moore knows James Hardin 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 Hardin, De Anthony Milton, Tyrese Maxie and Shake Milton on the wing. And again, as we get to these top teams in the league, they're always so deep on the wing. Tobias Harris, PJ Tucker, Ferkon Korkmaz, Matisse Thibul, Daniel House, and George's Neing. And then Biggs, Joel Embed, and Paul Reed, and we might see a little bit of Charles Bassi this year,

depending on how things go with health for Embed. offense, kind of similar to some of the other brute force teams in the league like Brooklyn and Dallas. They don't run as much in the way of sets compared to the rest of the league. They do run most of their organization is based on four out one in with Embed at the top of the key, or they run some horn stuff with Tobias Harris and Joel Embed at the High Post. Everything is some sort of interchange that flows into some sort of screening action with Embed. So sometimes they'll just have like James Harden run down and screened for Tyrese

who Tyrese Maxie will then come up off of the dribble handoff with Joel Embed. Sometimes James Hardin will go do a dribble handoff with Tobias Harris, who will then immediately flow into an Embedite pick and roll, who will then hand off to Tyrese coming out of the corner, and then he'll come off of a ball screen with Joel Embed. It's complications of like different ways to enter into different screening actions. And we're going to talk about a lot of different dribble handoffs

and pick and roll 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 offball sense. So you, 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. They also will run some stuff with like Tobias Harris and Beed and horns.

and then they'll just have Tobias Harris cross-screen for Joel Embed so that he might be able to get a better match-up, 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. The last one that I wanted to mention that I saw on tape a lot is Tyrese-Mexie. They run him off of those horn sets over Harris and Embed 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 roll man efficiency as a team. Again, those numbers are somewhat skewed by the fact that Hardin didn't join until later in the season.

They have three different ball handlers that they can run pick and roll with. James Hardin had a down year. He was at 0.82 points per possession. I expect him to be much better this year. Both Tyrese Maxie and Tobias Harris were outstanding pick and roll ball handlers last year in the 85th percentile or better. I wanted to spend some time talking about Embed rolling to the rim because it's a huge part of why I'm so excited about this particular team, especially with James Hardin. James Hardin is pretty relentless hitting the roll man. 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 Embed is so good, particularly in the short role, that the Sixers are smart to use them as much as the guys. they do. And Bid is not a rim runner. He's not a vertical spacer. He's not a guy that you're going to throw lobs to, at least not often. But when he catches the ball, barreling down the lane in that 10-foot

area, he's just damn near impossible to stop. First of all, in the regular season, he was 40% 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. And most importantly, when he barrels down the lane, he's just impossible to stop without fouling. He got fouled on 23% of role possession. So almost one out of every time, almost one out of every four times someone hit and beat in the short roll, he got foul. That was the second most among centers who had 200 roll reps. Only Gobert had more, but again, Gobert is a bad free throw shooter.

So in many cases, teams are just grabbing him with the intention of sending him to the line rather than letting him get a shot off. Embedd overall was the second most frequently used role man in the entire league, and I believe that would be even more this season with James Hardin in the fold. He averaged 1.24 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 Hardin got around. It's one of Tobias Harris' favorite actions to run. And like I said earlier, it's just another way to run pick and roll.

Everything that they do offensively is just variations and complications to try to get Joel and Bede in a screening action with one of their perimeter players and then rolling down the lane. In isolation situations, James Hardin was still 1.07 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 28% of his ISOs. Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only low. but encouraged. It's the enhanced games.

Some call it grotesque. Others say it's unleashing human potential. Either way, the podcast's Superhuman documented it all, embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year. Within probably 10 days, I'd put on 10 pounds. I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth. Listen to Superhuman on the IHard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

A win is a win. A win. Yep, that's me, Cliver Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits, the reactions, my journey from basketball to college football, or my career in sports media. Well, somewhere along the way, this platform became bigger than I ever imagined. And now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Clifford Show. This is a place for raw, unfiltered conversations with some of your favorite athletes,

creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated. One week, I'll take you behind the scenes of the biggest moments in sports and And the next we'll talk about life, mental health, purpose, and even music. The Clifford Show isn't just a podcast. It's a space for honest conversations, stories that don't always get told, and for people who are chasing something bigger. So if you've ever supported me or you're just chasing down a dream, this is right where you need to be.

Listen to the Clifford show on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford and at TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok. Do you remember when Diana Ross double-tapped Little Kim's boobs at the VMAs? Or when Kanye said that George Bush didn't like black people. I know what you're thinking. What the hell does George Bush got to do with Little Kim? Well, you can find out on the Look Back at it podcast.

I'm Sam J. And I'm Alex English. Each episode, we pick a here, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it. Including a recent episode with Mark Lamont Hill, waxing all about crack in the 80s. To be clear, 84 is big to me, not just because, of crack.

I'm down to talk about crack on day, but just so y'all know. I mean, at this point, Mark, this is the second episode where we've discussed crack. So I'm starting to see that there's a through line. We also have AIDS on the table right now. Thank you finishing that sentence. Yes. I don't think there's a more important year for black people. Really?

Yeah. For me, it's one of the most important years for black people in American history. Listen to look back at it on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your So again, James Hardin was one of the best ISO players in the league last year at 1.07 points per possession, despite only shooting 37% from the field in those situations, because he gets fouled on almost a third of his possessions. The Harden foul grifting thing is alive and well and stronger than it's ever been, and the dip in his athleticism has had no effect there. Joel Embed has also been solid in isolations

this past season, 0.95 points per possession slightly above average. Moving on to post-ups. So no team in the NBA runs more post-ups than the Sixers. They were fifth in efficiency. Both Joelle M. B. and Tobias Harris are about the 75th percentile for post-efficiency. There are two things that I wanted to talk about there. First of all, Tobias Harris and getting favorable matchups. Again, most teams are running one big four perimeter players these days.

They might have a bigger or 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 defender on Joel Embed. And you're offering help wherever Joel Embed is on the floor. So all the time, 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 close out on him,

or against certain teams, just in the natural match. of the game, he's got a favorable matchup, and he's got a good back to the basket game, and he'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 drive my optimism about this Sixers team offensively. It's not just the James Harden and Joel Embed 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 going to be really dissatisfied with 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 going to draw favorable matchups. And that right there, that's why, like, it always drives me nuts. I saw someone on Twitter the other day say something like, oh, is Stefan Clay the best duo in NBA history because they won four titles? Or I'll see some, I'll see things like, oh, or Steph and KD, the best duo? And I want to be like, those aren't 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 Steph and Katie at the top, you know, Clay Thompson's getting very favorable matchups. And the same thing goes for this Philadelphia 76ers thing. This is not a duo. Tyree

Smaxy is a free, like he's not an All-Star, but he's in the tier right below All-Star. And so is Tobias Harris. These are players that on any given night can give you 30 points that can create their own shot that are incredibly confident and have great strengths. Tobias Harris, mainly as a post-player in attacking closeouts. Tyrese Maxie as a ridiculous transition threat, which we'll get to in a minute, and he's shooting the ball pretty well this year. I think he shot about 40% on pull-up jump shots last year. That's really damn good. So this is a damn good core four players here, and they're going to 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 Hardin and Bede pick and

roll is just a royal pain in the ass. Hardin's 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 Hardin. That opens up the short role for Joelle and Bede where he's going to kill you. So you almost always have to tag him out of the weak side corner. That opens up that left-handed skip pass for James Hardin going across the floor. And that's a borderline all-star. level player that's catching that skip pass. It's going to be Tyrese 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. Tyrus Maxine transition. So Tyrese averages a ridiculous 1.35 points per possession and transition, and he does it about three times per game. You'll see him just absolutely hit the jets and dust everybody down the floor and make a layup or a 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 walk back down the floor, do it again. I'll walk back down the floor and do it again. And the main reason why is, like, going from a full sprint into a, an upward jump at the rim is incredibly difficult. It takes an enormous amount of leg 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 his rare bit of athleticism that allows him to succeed so much in transition. I wanted to

take a minute to shout out Tyrese there. So again, my optimism for this team offensively is Hardin's Revenge Tour, the idea of him getting back to where he was. the natural synergy that exists between James Hardin and Joel and Bede, who win their both top 10 players will be incredibly difficult to deal with. Tyree Maxi and Tobias Harris attacking matchups and attacking closeouts. It's an incredibly talented roster. And so I think that they're going to be a top five offense this year. I think they're going to 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, Let's look at some metrics because it doesn't paint Doc Rivers in a very favorable light. 19th in defensive rebounding, so they don't box out and crash very well. 18th in defending the paint, so they don't take away layups and dunks and things like that. They were 29th in fast break points allowed per 100 possessions. According to cleaning the glass, they were the 27th ranked transition defense overall. That speaks to what you heard from Kevin Durant after the Brooklyn Nets beat the crap out of him in that one nationally televised game.

He's like, 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. They're complaining for fouls too much on the other end of the floor. That leads to bad transition defense. And B's 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 12 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 100 possessions, and they were ninth in steel. 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 12th ranked defense in the league. They did make massive improvements on the wing defensively, in my opinion, by bringing in Daniel House and PJ Tucker. PJ 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 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. My one big concern for them defensively is Embed and his slow-footedness.

Again, like Sixers fans swear by Embed 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 a bad transition defense. 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. I want to say it was, I want to say it was game five, if I remember correctly. But in game five or late in that series, there was a game in the second half

where Toronto on six consecutive possessions targeted Joel Embed 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 can keep him in drop coverage. You can 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 struggles there. So I think there's somewhat of a ceiling on this team defensively, but if they can get around the top 10, if they can get in that 9-10 range while being a top-five offense, that's where you get the dangerous version of this 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 PJ Tucker to slide into that Danny Green spot. I expect Hardin to have one of the best seasons of his career and to bounce back from the rough couple of years. I expect Embed to have some better health luck. He's been, you know, it's really unfortunate it when you're finally going to kind of getting into a good spot and then someone

elbows you in the face and kind of makes you dizzy for a couple of weeks. Tyrese is blossoming. He's just about to turn 22 and he's one of the most talented young guards in this league. The natural difficulty of guarding the hardened and bead pick and roll in the bind that it puts you in as a defense. And then they address their toughness need by bringing in PJ 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, without having to deal with getting hardened 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 going to be, 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 Embed and Hardin. It needs to be Embed breaking down and shrinking a little bit when things get tough and it needs to be James Hardin 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 Hardin'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 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 Hardin was in his absolute prime, he was so damn 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 something crazy, like 38% on like 10 step back to his 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 stepback. 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 going to be what puts this team in serious title contention. That's why he is the X-Factor of this team. If Embedes the eighth best player in the league and Hardens the 15th best player in the league, they're not beating anybody at the top. But if Embedes 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 really, it seems kind of backwards, right, because I'm not a huge Sixers fan. I don't like Embed and Hardin and the foul grifting. I'm not especially, I don't really 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 them 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.

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