The 76ers offensive rating is the highest it's been in over a decade at 121.5. Their Assist to turnover ratio is 1.98 which is also the highest it's been for over a decade.
Could this be a Nick Nurse effect? Unlikely considering the Raptors offensive rating during Nick Nurse's tenure and departure remained similar so he doesnt necessarily have the effect of the legendary coaching trio Mike Dan Tony on a team's offense.
This does not take away from the fact that he is a very good coach but clearly the removal of James Harden has opened the Sixers offense into a less stagnant and more motion oriented offense.
Now for a look at James Harden's Clippers:
The Clippers offensive rating as of now is the second lowest it's been in 5 years at 112.9. The only year their offensive rating was lower was 2021-22 where PG only played 31 games and Kawhi missed the whole year due to ACL tear. We can conclude that adding James harden to the clippers SO FAR has been detrimental to their offense
Why is the offense worse?
Obviously as you can see, they run a very iso heavy offense with 3 streaky iso-players. On any given night 2/3 of the iso-heavy players are inefficient. Last night as we saw both Harden and PG were the inefficient iso players which led to them losing to the Jokic-less Nuggets.
James Harden in particular looks to be losing steam as the season goes a long. In his last 5 games, he's been averaging 15 5 and 8 on 33/34/72 splits. If this production continues, obviously this Clippers team will have had the worst offense they've had in over 5 years.
What have you observed about the James Harden effect?
Yeah it might be crazy to think about and 95% not likely, but I think if and when Harden realizes he isn't getting close to a max next year, if he wants to sniff a contending team, we are the only contending team with cap space and we need a 6th man ball handler. Even though I don't trust Harden any more as a guy to run a contending starting lineup, I think he would still ball out running the bench on 20mpg for the right price. Could be a 6MOTY contender for sure.
Damn, imagining the Sixers with Harden coming in mostly when Maxey sits to play primarily with Embiid to enact their deadly PnR would be an amazing option to have. Tired out from chasing those pesky DHOs? Here's a dose of the most efficient play of 2022.
I totally believe he still has the skillset and ability to play the role, but pride and ego are a helluva thing. Plus, he's probably gone too far with Morey to go back now. Even CM Punk took a decade (and feuding with another promotion) to come back to WWE.
Yeah I don't see it happening with the Morey situation, but it would be hilarious, and would fix our minutes when Maxey is out. He would only have to play 20 minutes a night, and could probably win 6MOTY with I'm guessing but something like 14/4/6 stats off the bench.