No one's saying the Philadlephia 76ers had a bad offseason because they certainly didn't. If you asked any NBA team if they would grab at the chance to add Jaylen Brown and LeBron James if they had the chance, all of them would say yes. Not most of them. All of them.
Adding that kind of talent to a team that has Joel Embiid, Tyrese Maxey, and VJ Edgecombe would make anyone think, "What could go wrong?" Well, the Boston Celtics could make that question not so rhetorical because they were once in the same position back in 2018.
Everyone thought, "The Celtics just came within a game of the NBA Finals and are going to get Kyrie Irving and Gordon Hayward back? What could go wrong?" Well, in short, everything.
Getting their two projected best players back to a team that had Brown, Jayson Tatum, Al Horford, Marcus Smart, Terry Rozier, and Marcus Morris Sr. seemed like it was pretty much a foregone conclusion that this team had what it took to win Banner 18, but it was a complete disaster.
Boston wasn't bad, but it was worse than that. They simply were falling well short of their potential. It didn't take long for the honeymoon phase to end, and maing it worse was knowing they had the makings of a special team but simply had too many guys who needed touches, which meant they were forced to take smaller roles they certainly wouldn't thrive with.
Among those who got the shortest end of the stick? Jaylen Brown. It didn't take long for him to get benched, and he never got his starting spot back until Smart got hurt around the end of the regular season.
No one was wrong about Boston's surplus of impressive talent, but it was that talent that led to a painful collapse. Like a trainwreck that took its sweet time. And now, the Sixers are entering a similar stratosphere.
The talent isn't in question, but the fit is
Again, Brown's game suffered a lot because the Celtics wanted him to be a connective tissue player on that infamous team, which was a role he could not play. What are the Sixers asking him to do? Are they counting on him to take the majority of the shots? It would make sense, but then who plays the connector role? Embiid? Maxey? LeBron?
None of those four has ever played that role. They are all used to having the ball in their hands. That's how they all play at their best. Could they play off the ball? Sure, but they're more comfortable with the ball in their hands. Just look at their usage rates from last season alone.
Brown: 36.2
Embiid: 33.5
Maxey: 29.4
James: 27.2
That's a combined usage rate of 126.3 between the four of them. Remember that a team can only have a 100% usage rate. It goes deeper than that, as VJ Edgecombe's usage rate was 20.1%, and just for good measure, old friend Anfernee Simons' usage rate was 23.6%, making their combined usage rate of 170%.
Yeah, if you can't tell, basketball doesn't combine all of those. It all has to be within 100%, so you better believe some touches will be sacrificed. Are you now seeing how Philly is about to enter the same predicament Boston once did?
It's not that the Sixers' moves weren't smart. It's that they were high risk. Guys who are used to having the ball struggle when the ball doesn't come to them as often. Brown's not a 3&D guy, just like Embiid is not someone who pops out as a lob threat.
That's not the only conundrum ahead for them.
LeBron James' teams have a nasty habit of enduring growing pains
James may go down as perhaps the best player ever, but his teams tend to struggle when he first joins them. When Miami first formed the Heatles, they went 9-8. When LeBron returned to Cleveland, they started 19-20. LeBron's first year with the Lakers never quite got off the ground.
Even if adding LeBron is a pretty easy decision to make, whenever he joins a new team, they typically need a minute to integrate him. This is different from the others for sure, but James will now have to learn to compromise for Philly to succeed, something he hasn't really done before.
It's possible the Sixers will still win quite a few games, but James joined them believing that they had the talent to give him the best shot at a title. Sadly, he's always subscribed to the belief that talent wins, and has never thought about fit.
Miami won titles not just because of their talent, but because Chris Bosh adjusted to being that connective tissue. Cleveland won because Richard Jefferson gave them more versatility. What ruined the LeBron-Lakers tenure? Russell Westbrook was a terrible fit despite his talent.
This is a different beast in Philadelphia, but it's a similar beast that once doomed Boston.
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