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When the Philadelphia 76ers traded and re-signed Tobias Harris for a 5-year, $ 180 million deal in 2019, they expected to bring in a guy who could do a variety of things and do it efficiently.
Harris has scored in different ways, but he hasn’t done so effectively as his numbers have plummeted across the board. After shooting 34.4% deep with the Los Angeles Clippers, his 3-point percentage dropped to 32.6% to end the 2018-19 season and he then shot 36.7% deep in the 2019 season. -20.
Now that Doc Rivers is here in Philadelphia, he’s looking to fix Harris and bring him back to the top scorer he was in Los Angeles.
“Tobias and I have talked a lot since I took the job,” Rivers said. “The first thing we have to do is get him back to being a quick decision player. I told him I saw him dribble too much and Tobias was so good at going down left and right and we need him to start enjoying it again.
In Harris’ defense, the team did not have the proper spacing in the 2019-20 season to function. This put a lot of pressure on Harris to step in and be the one to space the floor and create for others and that’s why he overthought some things on the floor.
“I agree with him,” Harris said of Rivers. “Faster decisions to catch the ball, shoot, drive, pass, be faster, they call that a faster twitch type player on the pitch. So I totally agree with that. Last year we didn’t have the best spacing so I kind of got into those positions to try and find something to create. I think it’s a collective unit of the five guys working together and looking to make things easier for each other. “
Rivers was able to make it work with Harris in Los Angeles, so the hope now is that he can work his magic in Philadelphia again. His CV says he’ll be able to make it work and Harris has seen it in person before.
“Doc, he’s really a mastermind for putting the talent on the pitch in the right positions,” Harris said with a smile. “It’s not necessarily fair to say to me, but other guys on the court put them in the right positions to be successful in the all-five.”
Training camp will be very different in 2020 as the team doesn’t have too much time to set everything up, but that will be the challenge for this coming season. They just have to make it work under the direction of Rivers.
“Obviously we have new guys on this squad and that’s why this training camp is important for us to really come together and understand how each guy fits in and how we can make it work,” said Harris concluded. “It will be up to us to really assess that as a group on a pitch, but as part of the journey that I think we are all on, that we are looking forward to and looking forward to.
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