By Sean Kennedy (@PhillyFastBreak)
Basketball fans just finished watching one of the more exciting finishes to an NBA Finals in recent memory, with “The Block” undoubtedly serving as the lasting memory from the final moments of Game 7. Still, the broader picture saw both the Cavaliers and Warriors play stifling defense during a closing stretch where both teams went scoreless for the majority of the final 5 minutes of the game. One of the major reasons each side was able to play such effective defense was their ability to have five guys on the floor capable of guarding any of the five opponents on the other side.
https://twitter.com/haralabob/status/744958750910353408
Even those players not generally considered defensive stalwarts were in lock-down mode down the stretch in Game 7 (think Kevin Love playing outstanding defense at the three-point line against Steph Curry, or Curry holding his own and forcing a couple late LeBron misses). One of the non-LeBron-is-a-demigod reasons Cleveland was able to prevail was that Golden State’s offense was predicated either upon finding open space when switches weren’t occurring or exploiting mismatches when a switch created such an advantage against an overmatched defender. When the opposition could both switch everything and have anyone capable of guarding anybody else, the Warriors didn’t have the personnel to break people down off the dribble in those throwback, one-on-one, iso-ball situations (plays better served by the Cavs having LeBron and Kyrie Irving).
If that 1-5 interchangeability is in fact the next frontier for NBA defense, it’s actually something the Sixers had experience with not too long ago.
Before the MCW trade, Sixers were playing D this way & it was large part of their success defensively. https://t.co/A5AgSkPQMs
— Will Negron (@HomeoftheThrill) June 20, 2016
Much was made last season about the Sixers having the 13th-best defensive rating in the league, a mark that doesn’t sound too impressive in a vacuum, but was noteworthy considering how bad the team was overall and the extreme youth on the roster. During the first four-plus months of the season, Philadelphia had Michael Carter-Williams at the point, with the size to not be destroyed if switched onto a big man, and Nerlens Noel at center, with the lateral footspeed to do a serviceable job against guards on the perimeter. The result was the same type of switching, amoeba-like defense that became the hallmark of the two recent championship combatants.
The good news is that Sixers fans could see something similar from the team moving forward. With presumptive first overall pick Ben Simmons on board, Philadelphia will have a 6’10” freak of nature capable of guarding anybody on the opposing team. If the team’s love affair with Kris Dunn results with trading into the third overall pick, he has the size at 6’3″ to passably switch onto bigger opponents for short stretches, much as MCW did. As for the big men, Nerlens Noel will (unless traded) still be around to fill that same role at the 5, with the if-healthy Joel Embiid also offering the same sort of versatility to hold his own on the perimeter in a pinch.
The one fly in the ointment is Jahlil Okafor. While Jah could certainly improve defensively, he’s never going to be the type of guy who you feel comfortable switching onto the point guard at the top of the key. However, with the former Duke star at the center of the rumors for the Sixers to trade back into the top-5 of the draft, it might not be something the Sixers brass has to consider for much longer. One side of the argument holds that even if such a trade was a loss for Philadelphia strictly from a talent perspective, it might be worth it to allow them to morph into the type of roster indicative of where the league appears to be trending. We’ll see soon enough how much weight to put in such rumors, and the shape of the team’s defensive identity for the immediate future.
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