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Murphy: Sixers still need time, and patience

GALLOWAY TOWNSHIP, N.J. - Within a span of 10 minutes Tuesday morning, two different 76ers identified Will Smith as their childhood idol, their voices fading with awe as they recounted an appearance by the actor and part-owner at a team dinner atop One Liberty Place the previous night. While Nerlens Noel used the word "starstruck" to describe the appearance, Jahlil Okafor advocated for a critical reconsideration of Smith's performance in 2007's I Am Legend.

GALLOWAY TOWNSHIP, N.J. - Within a span of 10 minutes Tuesday morning, two different 76ers identified Will Smith as their childhood idol, their voices fading with awe as they recounted an appearance by the actor and part-owner at a team dinner atop One Liberty Place the previous night. While Nerlens Noel used the word "starstruck" to describe the appearance, Jahlil Okafor advocated for a critical reconsideration of Smith's performance in 2007's I Am Legend.

"He made it one hell of a movie," the second-year center said.

The big takeaway from all of this is that it's a damn good thing there is no Arts and Culture component to an NBA season.

But also: These guys are young. Real young. Okafor was born the same year Bad Boys came out, Noel a year after Six Degrees of Separation. When you mention the classics, they think of Big Willie Style. These are people who have never lived in a world where "jiggy" wasn't in the mainstream lexicon.

For a 34-year-old fogey such as myself, that's pretty remarkable. It's also a bit sobering. For the first time in at least three seasons, the Sixers will open a season attempting to live up to expectations that might actually exceed their grasp. In a vacuum, that's a good thing. But the Sixers don't play in a vacuum. They play in Philadelphia, where the civic focus since the NBA draft has rested almost entirely on 1. minicamp, 2. training camp, 3. the NFL preseason, and 4. Weeks 1, 2 and 3. And if this town turns on the television on Opening Night thinking that the tank is over just because the guys in charge say it is, the Sixers could find themselves longing for the days when people expected them to lose. Forget everything you've heard the last three years about Sam Hinkie and The Process. Nothing in this city gets uglier faster than a letdown.

So I guess this is a reminder. If I'm the only one who needs it, then good on everyone else. Regardless, here it is: The Sixers probably will need more than one offseason to look like a viable NBA team. By viable, I don't mean "able to compete for a playoff berth." I mean, "able to look as if the front office is actually trying."

No doubt, you can envision a scenario in which they surprise people. It starts with something Brett Brown mentioned about 126 times in a 15-minute question-and-answer session Tuesday.

"We need to have a defensive identity," the fourth-year head coach said after the first of a six-session training camp that runs through Thursday at Stockton University.

The two biggest parts of that identity will have to be Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid, both of whom feature a range of potential outcomes so diverse as to render prognostication moot. The upper limit of those ranges are immediately clear to anybody who spends a few minutes watching either player among his peers. Toward the end of the 20 minutes or so when media members were allowed in the gymnasium to watch practice Tuesday, there was a sequence in which Simmons was practicing three-pointers in the left corner with a couple of teammates and then Embiid was working on his post moves on the low block, alternating drop steps with fadeaways against an invisible defender. If Simmons can hit that shot consistently, and Embiid can set up down low consistently, that's a hell of a two-man game. Problem is, Simmons couldn't hit that shot consistently, and Embiid had just finished his first-ever NBA practice (he was limited to about 25 minutes of work as the Sixers continue to ease his twice surgically repaired foot back into action).

The Sixers don't need Simmons to be a long-range ace, and they don't need Embiid to play 35 minutes a night. But they need both to come much closer to those benchmarks than the current benefit of the doubt allows us to project for them. Simmons spent the final part of practice working with new shooting coach John Townsend, and Brown made it clear that fixing - they might prefer the word "refining" - the No. 1 overall pick's shot will be a top priority for the assistant. (Simmons' hand placement on the ball is jarring when viewed up close; his angled grip makes the ball susceptible to spinning sideways out of his hand, though the Sixers seem to be coaching him toward a more mechanically sound setup.)

"His mission is going to be to spend a lot of time with Ben in shooting," Brown said of Townsend. "And sometimes it will go to the free throws, sometimes it will go to corner threes, sometimes it's going to go to that midrange game where you know they're going to back off and bait him to shoot. And so it's holistic. It will go in those areas over the course of really the first third (of the season) to start with and then I think we're going to zoom into some other areas after that."

As it stands now, the Sixers will have to work to keep defenses from packing it in on them. Last season, they were one of only four teams that did not have a player shoot better than .380 from downtown (minimum: 82 attempts). Free-agent signee Jerryd Bayless shot a career-high .437 from three-point range last season, averaging 1.9 makes and 4.4 attempts per game for the Bucks, while Dario Saric shot .403 from three-point range in the most recent Euroleague season, averaging 1.2 makes and 3.0 attempts.

First, though, the front office needs to figure out the big-man situation. As Noel has noted over the past few days, there aren't many lineup combinations that make sense for the team as currently constructed. Clearly, the brass understands that. But it takes two to tango, and it makes no sense to give Noel away if they think time could yield a better offer. Maybe that means an unorthodox approach to the early part of the season, but, again, anybody who takes an honest look at this team understands that it is still in developmental mode. They might not call it tanking, but whatever it is, it will take time. So give them that.

@ByDavidMurphy