Sixers plod their way to 1-4 start
The Philadelphia 76ers are off to a slow start. In every way.
The Sixers, who lost to Toronto Wednesday night to fall to 1-4, are one of the league's most disappointing teams so far. And they're one of the slowest. In Pace Factor, an estimate of how many possessions a team gets in a 48-minute game, the Sixers have a 94.6, the lowest in the league.
That's in part because their two top scorers are some of the most isolation-heavy players in the league. James Harden goes iso on 34.3 percent of his possessions, easily the highest percentage in the league, and Joel Embiid's 14.1 percent puts him among the NBA's 20 most isolated offensive players.
While Harden is still efficient when he isolates, the 76ers offense gets stagnant with so much time spent watching Embiid or Harden dribble in one spot. Philadelphia is 25th in fast break points with 11.4 per game, down from last year's 12.6, which was 13th in the NBA.
But it's also in transition defense that Philly's speed is lacking.
Part of that is their age. The Sixers start three players who are 30 or older, including 37-year-old P.J. Tucker. Embiid wasn't speedy before, but a summer spent dealing with plantar fasciitis has made him even slower. The Sixers gave up the third-most points per possession in transition last year, 119 per 100, and this year the team got older over the summer.
With an offense centered around Harden and Embiid, there's only so much the Sixers can speed things up when they have the ball. But if they don't start getting back on defense, their title chances are going to rapidly slip away.
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