A really strong team, the pace is not necessarily very fast, but the fast-paced team must be very strong, it must be more difficult. The team with the rhythm is the undisputed strong team, it is easy to speed up, and it is easy to slow down. There is only one team that is definitely not a strong team, and that is a team with a very slow pace.
Typical is the Lakers.
In a lot of offense and defense, the Lakers are very slow-paced teams because they don't have a young body, and secondly, they don't have finishing efficiency. Carefully examine the "slowness" of the Lakers, since the above two reasons have been mentioned, the current situation of the team is still excusable. However, the Philadelphia team has recently had a feeling of catching up with the Lakers.
Philadelphia is a really fast team.
Obviously, this was caused by two people.
First Harden, then Embiid.
Embiid and Harden are in the league's top five on the free throw table, and when there are two of them on the team, Philadelphia has a hard time playing fast because all the rhythm is disrupted by these free throws. Although the free throws are scored, the deliberate and multi-frequency penalties are very detrimental to the overall vitality of the team.
You can praise Harden and Embiid for their intelligence, but you certainly won't like him for a long time, you will not like the drama of slowly swallowing and always beating people to foul, you will get tired of watching, because there is really no beauty to speak of.
As a teammate of these two people, if you always hear the referee's whistle in the running position, you will no longer run the position over time. Running positions are generally useless, just wait for the superstar's penalty moment, what is the sense of participation?
The two people who found the penalty code, out of too little thinking about the team as a whole, continued to cause each other's penalties, and played the ball that could have been shot by their teammates into a free throw, but in fact, it was a small loss. When the teammates receive the pass again, they are basically used as tool people, so the increase in the proportion of free throws weakens the participation of teammates to a certain extent, and also cuts the complexity and proficiency of teammates.
Making free throws is also an obstacle to the breadth of one's own skills. Harden is a good example.
In the years that Harden emphasized the free throw, his technique has gradually simplified, and he has lost the feeling of attacking the kaleidoscope. In recent times, Harden's state has been ups and downs, and the level of goals in sports battles can no longer be compared with the peak. You're going to say he's injured, right? Harden has played more time than the Nets. You want to say that he is not injured, his movement rate and frequency have decreased too much.
Harden currently averages the number of turnovers per game, the first in the league, and the second in the league, after Westbrook and Doncic. That's a pretty staggering number. The number of turnovers at the heart of the ball is inevitable, but Harden's high average of turnovers per game is likely to be amplified in the playoffs, which is considered to have a lot to do with his technical simplification.
Philadelphia's offensive habits have created a severe process.
Their scores in the last five games are not much different from those of their opponents, which means that their offensive style is too single and inefficient, and there is no way to open the score in the last minute. In the process, Harden's performance is also unsatisfactory: in the last 7 games, Harden has played 38.8 minutes, averaged 19.9 points, 6.7 rebounds and 9.6 assists per game, shot only 35.0%, shot only 26.7% from three-point range, and averaged 3.7 turnovers per game.
After Harden joined Philadelphia, he played one minute more than he did at the Nets, and Rivers was also eager to use Harden. Nash and Old Lee's philosophy is basically the same. Thus a contradiction arises between the theoretical logic of an application and the practical effect, and this contradiction is difficult to reconcile.
Youngster Maxi dared to speak out, and the team was difficult to play fast because of Embiid and Harden. Back on the field, we see that when Maxi advances with the ball, he often can't find his teammates in front of him, and that's the problem. Embiid came over from the back and waited to shoot a three-point shot at the top of the arc, and this area was also Harden's previous favorite position.
Now this problem has been pointed out by Maxi, and it is clear that it must be solved, and if it is not solved well, it will affect harmony. The problem of "slow" had to be solved.