After an offseason full of major personnel changes for the Sixers, head coach Nick Nurse has some big-picture points of emphasis this preseason.
As he mentioned following the Sixers’ preseason-opening win Monday night, he wants the team to accelerate the tempo offensively.
To do that, it would certainly help if the Sixers improved upon a serious weakness from last season.
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“Just being a really good defensive rebounding team,” Eric Gordon said after the Sixers’ practice Tuesday. “And once you get it, you’ve just got to go. You’ve got to have an unselfish mentality as you’re coming down — always trying to hit the open man, getting the ball down the floor.
“We can be a scary team as long as we continue to move and try to make the right plays all the time.”
Defensive rebounding was a much-dissected issue after a first-round playoff series loss in which the Knicks crushed the Sixers on the boards.
According to Cleaning the Glass, the Sixers ranked 12th in offensive rebounding rate and 26th in defensive rebounding rate last regular season.
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Day after day, Nurse is emphasizing that pace-pushing progress and defensive rebounding go hand in hand.
“That’s exactly what we’re doing,” he said Tuesday. “We’re just really focusing on it. In training camp, it was at least three drills a day on rebounding. And almost everything we do is ending with a rebound and then a throw-ahead pass. Even if it’s a 3-on-zero rebounding thing, they get the rebound and then that doesn’t end it. They’ve got to take it across half court before the drill starts again.”
Nurse joked that “sounds like rocket science.”
“We worked on it a lot last week,” he said, “and you want to see it show up, and I think it did show up (in the preseason opener). I thought we ran down some long rebounds. I thought we threw it ahead quite a bit. We got some corner attacks early. So it’s good. We’ll just keep working on it. Hopefully, it’ll keep getting better.”
While the Sixers’ defensive rebounding bar is not high, they did well statistically last year in terms of transition offense.
The team led the NBA in points added per 100 possessions through transition play (3.8), per Cleaning the Glass. The Sixers ranked first in transition efficiency and 11th in transition frequency.
However, Nurse is confident there’s room to grow. That’s partly because he knows wings and forwards like Kelly Oubre Jr., Caleb Martin and Ricky Council IV enjoy sprinting forward before the defense is set and have the tools to prosper in transition.
“We want to be better than last year,” Nurse said. “I also think the personnel dictates us to be faster this year. I think we’ve got more wings that can get out. You saw a little bit of it last night — just throw-aheads to guys who are in the open floor that can attack and at least hit the paint, if not create some offense.
“Just in general, I’d like Tyrese (Maxey) to play faster in the open floor. Obviously, we see his speed, and I’d like to utilize some of that a little bit more.”
Regular-season results will be most telling, but Nurse’s players seem like they understand his preseason vision.
“I just feel like, once we rebound and go, the sky’s the limit for us,” Council said.