The Philadelphia 76ers have been off to a horrendous start to their season starting 3-12. The win over the Brooklyn Nets finally makes the team not have the worse record in the league (Washington Wizards 2-12). For a team that had acquired an All-Star talent to add to their MVP, the fit has been nonexistent. The trio of Tyrese Maxey, Paul George, and Joel Embiid have only played one game together. In that game, Paul George re-aggravates his knee injury and only plays 17 minutes. Maxey, on a 20 minute restriction, didn't play in the clutch minutes of the game resulting in a six point loss. Maxey's minute restriction is lifted as Embiid and George don't play the Nets. Leaving leader in the ROTY race Jared McCain to have again full reign of the game and dropping his second 30 point game of the year, leading the team in scoring.
Jared McCain has been electric for this team adding elite shooting on top of just timely buckets for this damaged squad. Currently McCain has seven 20+ point games this season, so far his rookie class has ten combined. McCain has been averaging 16.5 PTS, 2.7 AST, 2.3 REB. According to NBA.Com, McCain production over the past week: 27.7 PPG, 50.8 FG%, 19.7 shots nightly, 10.7 of them from behind the arc (Steve Aschburner). This hot streak boosted McCains overall rating by ten, one of the biggest increases to a players overall in 2K history. These performances have not really contributed into wins yet for the 76ers. Why is this? I think it does speak volumes that they won a game finally with just their two scoring guards on the court. Even with Embiid finally having a 35 point and 11 rebound performance we are to expect from him, it still resulted in a loss. Other than George's 29 point and 10 rebound game against the Knicks, he hasn't looked anything like himself. George was looked at to be the perfect third string being able to pick up his play. Embiid is out but Georges ability to stay on the court has been a bigger problem than even Embiid's no back-to-back games.
Another contender team that had short comings was the Bucks, which I even wrote an article about before the season on how they might not be true contenders. The start did seem to back up my article as they also kicked off to a rocky 1-5, that has know bounced back to somewhat even record of 7-9. I am still not convinced this team is a contender as their team defense and overall offensive share load is still in shambles. Giannis Antetokounmpo has been on tear for the Bucks backpacking majority of their wins. I bring up the Milwaukee Bucks to show the duality of underperforming contending teams: The Bucks looking for more consistency in their role players and the 76ers having a ROTY candidate still not finding a rhythm with the top three players.
The next game for the 76ers are the Los Angeles Clippers, it is unlikely that George plays against his former team because of this injury. This leaves the team wondering how they're going to dig their way out of this hole. If Maxey and McCain are playing, I believe that gives 76ers enough scoring punch to win games while they wait for their other two stars. Unfortunately not every team will play the 76ers like the Nets, where both teams started an undersized big. Guerschon Yabusele has been playing very well in his role but I fear him playing center will cause immense problems against bigger bigs. It seems Nick Nurse has gone with bringing Andre Drummond off the bench as a spark plug big. Again Embiid's unavailability makes Drummond's value worse as he hasn't even been able to take the starting spot when Embiid's not playing.
The main objective for this team going forward is to still keep empowering the role players that have the opportunity to play with the stars being out. McCain needs to continue his elite rookie campaign when the starters comes back beacuse, unlike the Bucks, this team has a positive young talent that can play in big time games. Maxey needs to continue being the clear cut number two because the likelihood of George and Embiid both finding a rhythm when healthy is low. Every team with a new star talent needs some grace period for that player to settle in, this team has lost that luxury and needs to create a competent win streak to make them contenders again.
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