The Sixers’ training camp in Colorado comes to a close on Friday, with the Sixers headed to Boston for their preseason opener in a couple of days. To the surprise of no one, the whole team is raving about how productive and competitive the week has been because we are in the part of the NBA calendar where optimism is essentially unlimited.
Snark aside, it has been an interesting week near the mountains. Here are some nuggets from throughout the week here.
The duality of James Harden
Harden’s arrival in Colorado was the biggest story of training camp by far and there wasn’t really a close second. With the Damian Lillard trade done and dusted, Harden’s outstanding trade request is arguably the biggest story in the NBA until games start being played.
Relief for Philadelphia came in the form of a subdued arrival for Harden, who jumped right into the mix at practice with just a few limitations on the drills and scrimmages he is involved in. Having gone through the Ben Simmons standoff a couple of years ago, Joel Embiid explained the stark contrast between the situations at practice on Thursday.
“I think this group is a little different than a couple years ago when we had this situation [with Ben Simmons],” Embiid told reporters. “With a new coaching staff, and everything that’s going on, I think it’s been easy, and I don’t think anybody has been distracted about what has been going on.”
The Sixers and Harden are striking a delicate balance right now, in part because Harden’s anger is isolated. Bonds with his teammates still run deep, and sources on both sides said the veteran guard had a lengthy and productive meeting with Nick Nurse during the offseason. But there’s still the overarching problem to deal with, which is the fractured relationship between Harden and Daryl Morey.
Conversations in Colorado this week have consistently indicated the same thing: this will not be an easy patch job if it’s able to be fixed at all. The gulf is centered around the two sides having very different views of what took place leading up to free agency. Because of their shared history together, the lack of communication between Morey and Harden prior to free agency was received as a slap in the face, while the Sixers have maintained their stance that they were trying to avoid more tampering charges after last offseason’s fiasco.
The truth of what happened or a declaration of who’s “right” almost doesn’t matter at this point because it won’t undo the trust break that brought us here. For a decade, Harden and Morey were closer to partners than two men in a boss/employee relationship, and Harden never earnestly had to think about things like leverage and negotiating power. Being subject to Morey’s data-driven approach instead of the beneficiary of it was a shock to the system. So now we’re left to wonder how long he can set his anger at Morey aside and help out the group.
Hope may come in the form of escalating trade talks between the Clippers and Sixers. Over at The Athletic, Shams Charania and Sam Amick reported on Thursday that L.A. is making a push to pick up extra draft equity:
But beyond the money matters, league sources say Harden also is taking part because he remains hopeful that a trade to the Clippers is still in the works and believes, for now, that it would be wise to not be a distraction. And the Clippers, league sources say, are going to great lengths to make it happen.
League sources say the Clippers have been talking to several teams about ways to move pick swaps for additional draft capital with the intention of bolstering their offer and getting a deal done.
The Clippers offered the Sixers an unprotected first-round pick, a pick swap and salaries for Harden in July, league sources say, but Philadelphia has set a much higher threshold. The Sixers have valued fifth-year forward Terance Mann and multiple first-round picks in a potential trade with the Clippers, sources added. Mann, who averaged 8.8 points and 3.4 rebounds a season ago, has become a prospect of interest for teams over the past couple years.
Shams Charania and Sam Amick, The Athletic
With the Clippers hesitant to put Mann in any sort of package over the summer, a deal that nets Philadelphia multiple first-round picks and Mann sounds like it could be a painstaking process. But the Clippers’ activity suggests there’s at least a little bit of movement right now, which is a step up from what had been reported prior to this week.
You’ll have to trust me when I say this is informed — this is the definition of a one-day-at-a-time situation. Cooler heads have prevailed so far. But when a decade-long relationship fractures, it’s hard to predict where things will go next, and the people closest to the story have given up staring into their crystal balls.
The new car coach smell
Nobody has had a tougher training camp than former head coach Doc Rivers, who is getting absolutely buried by the guys who are holdovers from last season. Joel Embiid, Tobias Harris, and Danuel House Jr. have all come out and said in one way or another that fans were in for a major shift in philosophy, with House specifically saying that Rivers’ setup was focused only on two guys.
There is a PR element to this, as there always is with a new coach. House has a fresh chance to lay claim to a rotation spot, Harris spies an opportunity for a bigger piece of the pie, and Embiid can paint himself as the all-knowing and reluctant leading scorer of the previous offense. And Raptors fans would look at these claims and laugh, having gone through a fairly rough offensive stretch in Toronto over the last few years.
On the other hand, Nick Nurse’s general approach to training camp indicates the Sixers are building things from a fundamental level, not so much adding plays as they are revisiting core philosophies. Nurse said as much while discussing the defense on Thursday, telling reporters that they hadn’t installed a whole lot in the first few days of practice.
“I do have some ideas of some things I’m going to try, haven’t really put any of that stuff in yet. That’s always a process,” Nurse told reporters in Colorado. “I remember Danny Green and Kawhi [Leonard] getting really mad at me the first time around because they were wondering, when are we going to do something? I’m just taking my time trying to build like, let’s get back, let’s pressure the ball, high hands, we’re just building a lot of the foundational stuff right now.”
There are signs around training camp that Nurse’s arrival means more freedom for a few select players. Paul Reed is perhaps the best example. Reed in double-big lineups is being spoken about as a certainty, rather than a curiosity we might see if everything else fails.
The backup big has been getting up a ton of post-practice threes every day and is routinely in competition groups with guards and wings. There is at least some method to that madness if you scan the gym and look at other groups, like the guard combo of Jaden Springer and Terquavion Smith that would seem to be competing for the same minutes.
How many of the changes stick, and how long does the buy-in last? Hard to know before we see them play a single game, but it’ll be interesting to see if Nurse can coax guys like Embiid (or even Harden) to buy into a new vision of how things run.
High marks for Maxey
If playing with speed is a point of emphasis coming into the year, nobody is better equipped to hit the ground running than No. 0. Unsurprisingly, the young guard is getting excellent reviews from everyone at camp whenever his name comes up.
The focus up to this point has been on his playmaking, one of the weaker areas of his game on offense, and the swing skill that could take him from exciting young player to All-Star. The backup bigs have been ecstatic to receive lobs and drop-offs from Maxey in practice, and his work on pick-and-roll reads during the summer sounds like it may be paying off.
Embiid and Maxey have long had a big brother/little brother relationship, with the former constantly coaxing Maxey to shoot more and own his role as a central figure of the team. And just like Harden explicitly wanted to help Embiid get over the MVP hump, the big man can see an opportunity to push Maxey’s star higher.
“He’s making some nice passes. Behind the back, pocket passes,” Embiid said after practice on Thursday. “I told him right before the summer started, I just told him if you learn how to make those pocket passes, you’re gonna be an All-Star. I’m gonna make sure you’re an All-Star. So I think he’s been working on his game all summer and he’s done a great job. He’s got a long way to go, there’s gonna be a lot of challenges along the way. It’s all about staying positive, especially because when you play different teams and different schemes and you have to figure it out on the fly, that’s hard. But we’re here to help him.”
The day may come in the near future when it’s Maxey helping everyone else rather than everybody else. In the small glimpses we’ve seen of him at practice, he is flying around screens and toward the rim, with Philadelphia’s additional off-ball activity creating assist opportunities galore.
But nothing can replace game reps against hostile competition. The preseason opener on Sunday against Boston should provide ample opportunity to see where Maxey is at, with Jrue Holiday one of the most suffocating guard defenders in the league. We’ll see for ourselves how much time and how many reps Maxey needs to make the next leap.
