Do Sixers have right in-house answers for eternal backup center question? originally appeared on NBC Sports Philadelphia
As long as Joel Embiid is a Sixer, the question won’t disappear.
Can the team hold its own when the All-Star big man is off the floor?
The three main figures in the team’s current backup center picture are Paul Reed, P.J. Tucker and Charles Bassey. The video above reviews their games, and we’ve got more to consider with that trio below:
Tucker isn’t all effort
Following the Sixers’ Game 1 loss to the Heat last postseason, James Harden was asked about the effective defense Tucker played on him.
“P.J. is P.J.,” Harden said of his former teammate. “He plays hard. But that’s not something I’m worried about.”
Of course, Harden knows dogged effort isn’t Tucker’s only useful trait. In Sixers president of basketball operations Daryl Morey’s final season with the Rockets, Tucker headlined Houston’s “Microball” philosophy following a February trade that sent Clint Capela to Atlanta. There might not be a 6-foot-5 player who’s better equipped to defend big men than Tucker.
“Since you were a little kid, you played against grown men,” Tucker said in 2020, per NBA.com’s Shaun Powell. “Just something you do. It’s basketball, man. It’s being smart, using your size as an advantage. I can get into people. I can get into your stomach, so you can’t back me down. I can stay in front of you, I can move my feet, I can be aggressive. People don’t understand that it can be a disadvantage being tall, too.”
Though Tucker has been highly durable — he played 80.7 games per season between the 2012-13 and ’18-19 campaigns — the Sixers won’t demand any iron man streaks from a 37-year-old they’ve signed to a three-year contract. Tucker shouldn’t play every game, receive every backup center minute, or be required to do anything that could jeopardize his playoff availability.
The gist of Tucker’s approach since he last shared the floor with Harden is the same. He’s still very comfortable firing three-pointers from the corners. While Tucker’s volume has decreased since the Harden-aided three-season stretch where he led the league in made corner threes, 172 of his 193 long-distance tries with Miami were corner attempts. Overall, he made a career-best 41.5 percent of his threes. Savviness, strength, versatility and pervasive toughness all remain intact for Tucker defensively.
It’s not a…