Inside Philadelphia 76ers’ scorching start

PHILADELPHIA – Throughout training camp, the preseason and even the first week of the regular season, Philadelphia 76ers players and coaches insisted to anyone who asked that the James Harden saga wasn’t weighing them down. 

“I don’t think anybody has been distracted about what has been going on,” reigning MVP Joel Embiid told reporters in October.

This wasn’t just PR speak. The Sixers were pushing the same message behind the scenes, stressing that Harden’s beef was with team president Daryl Morey and not the players or newly hired head coach Nick Nurse. Throughout the months-long standoff, the Sixers were even adamant that not only would they welcome Harden back should he change his mind but also that they hoped he would. 

Behind the scenes, though, Morey and Nurse were laying the groundwork for a post-Harden future. Not just by setting up the team’s cap sheet in a manner so that Morey could go big-game hunting next offseason, as he’s candidly discussed, but by coming up with methods to unleash their best players and, as part of that, tweaking the team’s schemes and approach. 

So it should come as no surprise that when the Sixers finally dealt Harden to the LA Clippers — in the middle of the night, three games into the season —  there was no big speech at practice the next morning. The players and coaches gathered at center court like always. Nurse went over the schedule for the day. 

“As you all know, there was a big trade last night,” he told the group. He shared the details of the deal, and that was that. Practice began. A symphony of squeaking sneakers, blown whistles and music cued up by the team’s DJ filled the gym. 

“It was just a normal day,” veteran forward Tobias Harris recalled. 

Just like that, the team had moved on. And thanks to some meticulous prep from Morey and Nurse, the Sixers — owners of a 12-6 record and the league’s second-best point differential — haven’t looked back since.

*** *** *** 

In the summer of 2011, Morey was searching for a new coach. Not for the Houston Rockets, the NBA team he was running at the time, but for the Rio Grande Vipers, the Rockets’ D-League squad. Morey had promoted the Vipers’ previous head coach, Chris Finch, to the Rockets coaching staff and now needed a replacement. 

For Morey, this was an important job. The Vipers were more than just a minor-league basketball team — they were a laboratory, one where he could test out various basketball philosophies before bringing them to the NBA. 

“It allows us to create a competitive advantage for the Rockets and the Vipers,” Morey told the Rio Grande Valley newspaper, The Monitor, in June 2009. “We can bring our latest thinking to the Vipers and at the same time work on new strategies and learn about players and learn about potential future staff.”

Nurse had spent the previous four years with another D-League team, the Iowa Energy, who had defeated the Vipers to win the previous season’s title. His teams did all the things Morey liked. They played with pace. They moved the ball. They launched a ton of 3s. He and Morey began chatting and hit it off. It didn’t take long for Morey to convince Nurse to leave his home state. 

“I was interested in going to work with Daryl once we started talking,” Nurse told reporters recently. “It was a lot of analytical things, innovative ideas, etc., and that kinda really triggered me. I thought it would be a chance for me to grow as a coach.”

Ten years later, fresh off being fired by the Toronto Raptors — after a five-year run that included a title but ended with him and the front office butting heads — Nurse was seeking a new job. Morey, it so happened, had recently fired Doc Rivers and was on the lookout for a new head coach. An interview was scheduled, during which Nurse “talked about his philosophy,” Morey told FOX Sports, “and it does match a lot with the kinds of things I think lead to winning basketball.”

The Sixers and Nurse had an agreement by late May. He spent the offseason flying all over the country meeting with players —  “Every single one,” he said, “including some who are no longer with us” — and targeting areas where he believed the team could improve. There was a bunch of low-hanging fruit there for the taking, especially once it became clear that Harden — and his methodical, probing, ball-dominant style, mixed with not-so-occasional lapses in off-ball and defensive effort — would likely be gone.  

“Most of [the areas identified for improvement are] based on just what we believe in,” Nurse said in an interview. “Maximizing possessions, shooting high true-shooting percentage shots — those kinds of things.”

A rebounding problem was the easiest to address, and an area where Nurse’s philosophy of chasing extra chances aligned with Morey’s. Nurse’s Raptors teams twice finished in the top-five in offensive rebounding rate. The Sixers, meanwhile, finished 29th last season. 

From the start of  training camp, Nurse made a point of emphasizing the need to crash the offensive glass. He showed the team film from last season illustrating different moments in which he thought players were too willing to concede possessions and retreat onto defense. 

“He wants us to always crash,” Harris said before a recent game. “It’s something that he’s been preaching.” Harris then smiled, as if he’d been caught breaking a rule. 

“He wants me to go a lot more,” he added. 

Nurse, he said, had recently spoken with him about grabbing offensive boards more frequently. “I told him I will,” Harris said, laughing again. “But also, it’s tough sometimes because I’ll be out there, like, a little gassed sometimes.”

“He just always wants you to do more,” guard De’Anthony Melton said. “And he does it while instilling confidence in you.”

So far, it’s worked. The Sixers have rebounded nearly 30% of their own misses, a nearly 6% uptick from last season and the sixth-best mark in the league. They’re also attacking the rim more than they have in years and sprinting down the floor off opponent misses. “Last year, we had to find a guard off a rebound,” Harris said. “This year it’s ‘go-go-go.'” They’ve managed to do all this while boasting a top-10 turnover rate. 

They’ve completely embraced and embodied Nurse’s personality and preferred style. They’re aggressive. They’re intense. They’re relentless. 

And yet Nurse, Morey and the rest of the organization knows that it would all be for naught if not for the reigning MVP embracing a new style of play.

*** *** *** 

It wasn’t long after accepting the Sixers job that Nurse was in Embiid’s Philadelphia condo, laying out for the superstar big man how he thought the Sixers could finally advance out of the second round of the playoffs, a hurdle Embiid has yet to clear. 

He told him what he saw in the Eastern Conference semifinals last season, when Embiid shot just 42% in a seven-game series loss to the Boston Celtics. He told him what he’d seen from him in the two playoff series where his Raptors and Embiid had faced off. He told him what he’d like to do differently. 

“Just having more variety and less predictability,” Nurse told me. “Not having the same rhythm to every game, not doing the same thing over and over, just making things a little bit more unpredictable. That way [opponents] don’t know what’s coming as much and you’re hard to prepare for.”

It was a tough ask of a player who won MVP the previous season mostly by dominating from a single spot on the floor. And yet, by all accounts, the challenge excited Embiid. The elbows would still be his primary office. But with Harden no longer in town, there would be more variety to how he got to his spots and what he did once there. Watch the Sixers play and you’ll see an array of guards and wings cutting toward the hoop from the corners and whirling around Embiid like a planet orbiting the sun. 

“We practiced it a lot early on,” Harris said. “A lot of drill work.” Rules were put in place. Like, “whenever someone goes to double, you should just follow,” Embiid told reporters recently.  

The surprising part, though, is not only how easily Embiid adapted to this new style but how quickly he’s been able to thrive. Passing in traffic and reading help defenders had long been his lone offensive weakness. That’s no longer the case.  

“I think Nick has gotten Joel to be a better passer,” former Sixers coach Doc Rivers said in a recent appearance on The Bill Simmons Podcast. 

Not only is Embiid averaging 9.3 assists per 100 possessions, three more than his previous career high (along with a league-high 32 points per game and 11.3 rebounds), but he’s doing so while keeping his turnover rate steady. The variety that he and Nurse were looking to build is already there. 

One play, the dish will be to Nicolas Batum streaking down the baseline. Another, it will be to a posting Harris looking to roast a smaller defender under the rim. Another, it will be a dribble-handoff to Tyrese Maxey. It’s allowed the Sixers, despite losing Harden, to up their efficiency by three points per 100 possessions, giving them the league’s second-most potent offense. 

“Just trying to make the right play,” Embiid told reporters recently. “Whoever is open. Just playing with each other in a bunch of different ways. With the system we have and with the way teams are guarding us, I always gotta find a way to make the right play.”

*** *** *** 

Embiid wasn’t the only one whom Nurse was asking to change. 

Three years ago, Morey and his brain trust were following the NBA Draft on the TV in the team’s practice facility. They owned the 21st pick but Morey, who had only been hired by the Sixers a few weeks earlier and hadn’t drafted in the first round in his previous four drafts with the Rockets, was wondering if the Sixers would be better off trading down and turning that one pick into multiple.

Then Tyrese Maxey started falling. He was one of those players liked by both Morey and the scouts and executives he had inherited in Philadelphia. A top recruit coming out of high school, Maxey had struggled during his lone season at Kentucky, especially with his jump shot, hitting just 29.2% of his 3s. 

But the Sixers loved his talent and potential and believed his performance at Kentucky was a consequence of his environment. They knew guards often struggled in Kentucky’s system and that Maxey’s coaches loved him. They knew he worked hard and that he was as fast as any guard in the draft. When Maxey was available with the 21st pick, Morey — with his staff urging him to do so — pounced. 

By the end of Maxey’s second NBA season, Morey believed he had a future star on his hands. “He doesn’t even realize how good he is yet,” he told FOX Sports in April 2022. A little over a year later, helping Maxey get there became one of Nurse’s chief missions. 

In their first meeting, in Maxey’s hometown of Dallas, Nurse outlined his expectations. The two talked for over two hours. “He told me he wanted me to be aggressive and take 12 3s a game,” Maxey said in an interview. For some players, a directive to start jacking jumpers would be music to their ears. For Maxey, it required an adjustment. His father, a former point guard at Washington State and high school coach, had trained Maxey to play a different style. 

“He’s always been taught to play the right way,” said Tyrone Maxey, who recently had a stint as director of recruiting for SMU basketball. “Not necessarily hunt shots.”

But the NBA is a different game, and Maxey, after shooting 43.4% from deep last season and thriving as a third option, had outgrown that approach. Especially with Harden now gone. 

He spent the offseason working alongside Embiid with skills trainer Drew Hanlen, preparing to take over for Harden as the Sixers’ primary ball-handler. Maxey and Embiid worked on their pick-and-roll game. Maxey pored over film from the Boston series and studied the ways the Celtics had tried forcing him left and taking away his deep looks. He and Hanlen concocted counters. Even before the season started, Maxey could feel a change in his game. 

“He called me one day,” Tyrone recalled, “to say, ‘Dad, you did a good job with me but when I was kid, we didn’t work enough on dribble moves.'” 

Like with Embiid, the new approach was obvious right away — and has transformed Maxey from potential All-Star to All-NBA candidate. He’s averaging 27 points per game and leading the league in minutes. He’s dishing 8.5 assists per 100 possessions — easily a career-best mark — while somehow turning the ball over less frequently despite it being in his hands more often and being asked to create more. And though he’s not quite hoisting 12 3s per game, he is attempting 8.3, two more than he did last season, while still drilling a smooth 39.6% (Stephen Curry and Tyrese Haliburton are the only two players this season who have shot a better percentage on that many 3-point attempts). His willingness to let it fly has left defenders looking like they’re on skates. 

“Trying to contain Maxey is like trying to contain a Lamborghini,” Lakers head coach Darvin Ham said Tuesday after watching Maxey torch his team in a 44-point Sixers romp. “He’s running around, off the ball, pick and roll, transition. He makes you guard every level within your defense. Every different situation you have to be on point with your energy and your vision as well.”

Maxey had finished the game with 31 points and eight assists, even attempting 12 3s (and making five). “He had mentioned that he was just going to come out and be way more aggressive at the start tonight,”  Nurse told reporters after the game. “I said, ‘Well, s—, , I only tell you that every day.'”

Maxey’s newfound aggression has stunned opponents, too. After misfiring in the fourth quarter on a quick catch-and-shoot from the corner in front of the L.A. bench, Maxey heard Lakers reserve big man Christian Wood say, “Man, you just do anything you want out here.” 

He responded by turning to Wood and pointing to the scoreboard. 

*** *** *** 

When the terms of the Harden deal were announced, most of the public’s attention was focused on the draft assets Morey had pried away. And for good reason. 

Morey has been candid about his desire to use whatever he recouped in a Harden deal in a separate trade for a different star. But not only did it turn out that he already had a valid sidekick for Embiid in the 23-year-old Maxey, but it also became clear that in acquiring Nicolas Batum and Robert Covington from the Clippers, he’d bolstered his current roster. 

The two veteran swingmen have fit perfectly in Nurse’s system. Alongside a rejuvenated Tobias Harris, clearly enjoying no longer being cuffed to the perimeter while Harden danced with the ball, they have given the Sixers more talent and versatility on the wings than they’ve had in years.

Harris is averaging 18.2 points per game while shooting a career-best 52.5% from the field, mostly thanks to nearly 10% more of his shots coming at the rim compared to last season. Covington is a savvy cutter and wreaks havoc on defense with his Go-Go-Gadget arms. And Batum is the best passer and connector Embiid has played with since Ben Simmons; the Sixers’ already explosive offense is 19.1 points per 100 possessions better with Batum on the court, according to Cleaning the Glass.

“He’s special,” Embiid told reporters recently when asked about the 34-year-old Batum. “With the way we play, he just fits everything we need. Great shooter, great defender, great passer, great basketball IQ. He just fits everything we need.”

Everyone within the Sixers knows that despite the team’s odds to win the 2024 championship jumping from +2000 before the season to +1300 now — numbers which Morey follows and uses to inform strategies and decisions — there’s still a ton of work to do. 

The team is in desperate need of another ball-handler to allow Maxey more rest and help carry the load when he sits. Nurse’s intensity and constant yearning for more is great during winning times, but it wore on certain Raptors during losing stretches. Maxey is going to spend the rest of the season facing opponents intent on taking away his looks and making him work. Embiid has to stay healthy. Morey will face all sorts of difficult decisions before the trade deadline. 

For now, though, with the Harden drama behind them and wins stacking up, you can’t help but sense the optimism flowing through the locker room. Embiid looks happier than he has in years. So does Harris. Laughs frequently fill the locker room after games, with the always-smiling Maxey often leading the way. 

“This group is really interested and engaged in trying to figure out what we’re trying to do and where we can go,” Nurse said. “It’s been a ton of fun.”

Yaron Weitzman is an NBA writer for FOX Sports and the author of Tanking to the Top: The Philadelphia 76ers and the Most Audacious Process in the History of Professional Sports. Follow him on Twitter @YaronWeitzman.

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