Nick Nurse is looking at this Sixers group and seeing more than just offensive firepower. He’s seeing options - the kind that could let him get creative on defense in ways he hasn’t been able to recently.
After Day 2 of training camp on Wednesday, Nurse said the added depth, size and athleticism should open the door for a wider defensive menu.
“Recently, I don't feel like I've been able to get into my bag of defensive stuff nearly as much as I would like to,” Nurse said. “I think now we've got a little bit more depth, size, athleticism. And it may take us a minute, but I think I'm most excited about that.
“I think we just have the capabilities to understand it, execute it, change on the fly, do multiple things, even if it's once or twice, and get back to normal. I think that would be the biggest (change).”
That starts with the obvious upgrades on the roster. Jaylen Brown, listed at 6-foot-6 and 223 pounds, and LeBron James, listed at 6-9 and 250, give the Sixers more size and strength to work with on the perimeter and at the forward spots. Brown, in particular, is expected to take on the nastiest defensive matchups.
“He's a special talent,” Tyrese Maxey said Monday at media day. “I feel like he's been talking about being a defensive monster this year, how he wants to really, really compete defensively. I know he'll do that.
“He takes a lot of challenges. I've seen him guard me, I’ve seen him guard Joel, I’ve seen him guard wings. We're definitely going to need him on that end.”
There’s more size coming off the bench, too. Dean Wade and Dominick Barlow are both 6-9 forwards who sound eager to do the unglamorous stuff.
“I think we can do a lot of different things between Bron, myself, Dean,” Barlow said Monday. “We have a lot of big forwards that can switch and do a lot of stuff defensively. I think that’s going to be exciting.”
Maxey has already noticed one thing about Wade: he’s bigger than he expected.
“I didn’t know he was this tall,” Maxey said Wednesday while praising Wade’s 3-and-D ability. “You play against a guy two or three times a year, but you don’t really realize until you see a guy every day. He’s really tall.”
For now, though, the Sixers are still in the early stages of building the defense Nurse wants. Maxey said they haven’t moved beyond “doing the basics” yet, with everyone still learning the core principles and terminology before the staff can really expand the playbook.
That patience makes sense given Nurse’s track record. He’s long favored pressure defense, turnover hunting and quick strikes in transition, and during his Raptors days he earned a reputation for strange, tailored answers to specific stars - everything from box-and-one looks to unusual matchups to full-on blitzes.
The Sixers were only middle-of-the-pack defensively last season, but they did finish in the NBA’s top 10 in defensive turnover percentage for a third straight year. They were eighth at 15.3 percent, according to Cleaning the Glass.
That number matters because live-ball turnovers can fuel the fast break, and this Sixers team has the kind of pieces that can make those possessions hurt.
“If we get stops, then we have a lot of dangerous pieces in transition,” Maxey said. “We’ve just got to share the ball, continue to make plays for each other.
That’s the beauty of it. I think in years past, it was hard to pitch ahead sometimes.
I dribbled a little bit more than I probably will this year. … We’ve got a lot of ball handlers on this team who can bring the ball up, who can pitch it ahead.
“I think Nurse has done a good job of emphasizing, ‘Pitch the ball ahead, pitch the ball ahead.’ And at the end of the day, we also have No.
21 (Embiid) trailing. That’s a pretty good option, too.”
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