In short, the Philadelphia 76ers added another loss to their record on Wednesday night, falling short at home against the visiting Toronto Raptors to the tune of a 121-112 beatdown. Once again, some of the coaching staff’s decisions continued to confuse many, and one of them stood out as the most shocking yet.
Without prejudice to the reprimand they deserve for losing by a in the third quarter lot (and by a lot, we mean an 18-point deficit in that period alone), the spotlight should also be on Nick Nurse and his eyebrow-raising choice not to give Jared McCain more of an opportunity and, more importantly, an ideal role. The second-year guard remains an off-ball operator with VJ Edgecombe as the nominal point guard, and the results have been downright bad.
Edgecombe’s counting stats are good, but his efficiency remains disappointing. While this is part of his natural learning curve as a rookie, he would also need to be put in better positions to get out of his ongoing funk, and challenging him in a taxing point guard role is simply poor talent optimization on the part of the coaching staff.
Nick Nurse’s questionable backcourt pick is seriously backfiring for the 76ers
Again, the best way to speed up the process for McCain to get his groove back after a nearly year-long layoff from NBA basketball is to actually give him the reps to reacclimate himself to the role he had early last season before going down with an injury. That means putting him in the ball more and giving him the freedom to operate without the ball, since he’s talented enough to do those things anyway.
Instead, Nurse seems content with this 76ers offense that relied largely on individual shot-making, rather than participatory design. Their scoring offense is basically Tyrese Maxey or bust, and the money he takes resting almost turns into a luck-based machine.
Edgecombe and McCain are so similar, yet so different from each other. Both are also in different, if less than ideal, situations, so it will be up to Nick Nurse and his coaching staff to deploy them in better circumstances to prevent their ongoing slumps from continuing.
Hopefully this loss will be the impetus the 76ers need to finally make some real, hard adjustments in the backcourt. After all, their embarrassment of riches at the guard positions will be wasted if nothing good comes out of the coaching staff.
#76ers #fooled #Nick #Nurse #stunning #decision #costs #wins