Joel Embiid and the 3-seed Sixers will face off against the 6-seed Nets in the first round.
We’ve been anticipating a Nets-Sixers playoff series since James Harden forced his way out of Brooklyn and was traded for Ben Simmons 14 months ago. But this series will not include Simmons (out with a back issue), nor will it include Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving, who, like Harden, asked for trades out of Brooklyn. So Joel Embiid will be the clear best player in the series, and Harden will be facing a Nets team led by a bunch of guys that weren’t there when he left.
This new Nets group did enough (going 13-15 after the trade deadline) to hold onto the No. 6 seed in the Eastern Conference. Their top six players are all competent and switchable defenders, and Mikal Bridges averaged 27.4 points over his first 23 games with Brooklyn (before he played just four seconds on Sunday). But the Sixers are on another level, one of three teams that ranked in the top 10 on both ends of the floor this season. They have one of the best players in the league coming off the best year of his career, and he’s got the league’s No. 1 3-point shooting team around him.
Regular Season Results
Nov. 22: Sixers 115, Nets 106
Jan. 25: Sixers 137, Nets 133
Feb. 11: Sixers 101, Nets 98
April 9: Sixers 134, Nets 105
NBA TV previews the Nets-76ers first-round matchup.
3 Things To Watch
1. How the Nets guard Embiid. Nic Claxton has the length to bother Embiid to a certain degree, but this is obviously a tough matchup for the Nets. They switched a lot of Harden/Embiid screens in their one post-deadline matchup in which Embiid played, putting smaller defenders on the Kia MVP candidate, who finished with 37 points on 12-for-18 shooting and 12-for-13 from the line. But it wasn’t the Sixers’ most efficient game overall, and the Nets led by nine points in the fourth quarter before scoring just once on their final 12 offensive possessions.
2. Can the Nets find a weakness? Bridges has hit a new level offensively with the Nets. But 84% of his buckets have been assisted and he’s not necessarily an isolation player (he’s averaged 2.1 iso possessions with Brooklyn) who’s going to attack the weaker defenders in Philly’s rotation. The Sixers will give up some points in transition, but the Nets (who ranked 23rd offensively after the trade deadline) will need to find ways to score in the half-court. So Spencer Dinwiddie, an iso player who can run hot or cold, could really determine if the Nets have a chance to compete in this series.
3. Embiid off the floor. The Sixers never found a back-up center they can consistently rely on, and they’ve been outscored by 0.6 points per 100 possessions in 652 total minutes with Harden on the floor without Embiid. They should be able to survive Embiid’s minutes off the floor against the Nets (who had a bottom-10 bench after the trade deadline), but should they advance, their ability to stay afloat when their star rests will be under further scrutiny. We should learn early on how deep coach Doc Rivers wants to go with his rotation and who he’s counting on to do keep them afloat.
X-Factor
Mikal Bridges and the Nets have been elite from 3-point since the trade deadline.
Brooklyn’s 3-point shooting. The Nets saw a jump in 3-point rate after trading Irving and Durant, from 37.6% (16th highest) prior to the trade deadline to 43.7% (fifth highest) after it. Assuming that the Nets are going to lose the battle inside the arc and at the free throw line, it wouldn’t be a surprise if that rate was at or above 50% in this series, or if they use lineups with no centers and five shooters. It’s a make-or-miss league and the Nets will have a chance if they can make a bunch of 3-pointers. After the deadline, they went 9-1 when they made 15 or more 3s and 4-14 when they didn’t.
Number To Know
10.0 — Joel Embiid is just the seventh player in NBA history to average at least 10 made free throws per game, totaling 661 in his 66 games this season. His free throw rate (58.1 attempts per 100 shots from the field) was down from last season (60.2), but still ranked fourth among 180 players with at least 500 field goal attempts. And his 85.7% shooting from the line was the best mark of his career.
Embiid’s effective field goal percentage (57.3%) and true shooting percentage (65.5%) were also the best marks of his career, largely because he was more effective in the paint. He took 59% of his shots in the paint, up from just 51% over the last three seasons. And his field goal percentage in the paint (63.2%) was a career-high mark by a healthy margin.
Some credit goes to James Harden, who assisted on 174 of Embiid’s 491 field goals in the paint, 41 more than all other Sixers combined (133). Overall, Harden’s 244 total assists to Embiid were 89 more than any other player (in the league) had to a single teammate.
The Pick
The Nets have a lot of good players and they won’t be an easy out, but 30 of their 45 wins came with Durant and/or Irving in uniform, and they were just 15-18 otherwise. So they’re certainly not the strongest 6 seed, while the Sixers are just the third 3 seed in the last 20 years to rank in the top eight on both ends of the floor. And while Claxton is an All-Defense candidate, Brooklyn just doesn’t have a good answer for Embiid. Sixers in five.
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John Schuhmann is a senior stats analyst for NBA.com. You can e-mail him here, find his archive here and follow him on Twitter.
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