The Sixers work on moving the ball and picking up the pace

WASHINGTON — The 76ers will tell you that they’re winning games but that they have a long way to go.

Right now, the major issues are consistency, being steady with the pace, and ball movement. The Sixers are at their best when the ball is up the floor, swung, and driven to the basket.

“That’s our pace,” coach Doc Rivers said. “It has nothing to do with speed. That’s just moving.

“When you see halfcourt, no movement, no ball, that’s not pace. I don’t know what that is. That’s not how we are going to win.”

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Unfortunately for the Sixers (3-4), they have experienced more of the latter. And no one on the team can deny that the lack of ball movement is a major problem, even though they’re riding a two-game winning streak.

The Sixers definitely need to sustain better ball movement. But at what cost?

Do they swing the ball to a lockdown defender in a shooting slump when the team is in desperate need of a basket? Or do they opt instead to keep the ball in an isolation play?

“Pace and ball movement is good,” James Harden said. “But at the end of the day, we’ve got to know what we are trying to accomplish here. We’ve got playmakers. We’ve got screeners. We’ve got shooters. We’ve got guys that have specific roles that they do and that’s why they’re in this league.

“So as good as we talk about pace and we talk about ball movement and all that, we’ve got to know what we’re trying to accomplish possession by possession. And I think we are trying to get there.”

Harden feels it is a matter of figuring out roles. Once the Sixers learn them game by game, he believes, the offense will improve.

But aside from Friday’s victory in Toronto, the Sixers have been crawling up the floor. They receive an outlet pass, pause for a second, and jog the ball up the court. That has given opponents ample time to get into defensive sets. It also takes away opportunities to attack mismatches in transition.

“I saw something that said we are like the slowest team in the last six seasons,” Tobias Harris said. “So we may have a few spurts here and there in the game, probably mainly when Tyrese [Maxey] has the ball because he’s one of the fastest players in the league.”

But Harris feels that improving the pace begins with getting defensive stops, then getting in transition and running. After that, the pace is determined by how quickly the Sixers get into good looks and good shots.

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“I don’t think we are at that level yet of understanding how necessary and important that is for us,” Harris said.

The Sixers ranked 25th in the league in scoring at 109.3 points per game entering Sunday. They also ranked last in shot attempts (81) but tied for eighth in field-goal percentage (.481). So the Sixers are making shots. They’re just not taking enough of them because of their slow pace.

The Sixers are implementing new things like getting the ball past midcourt before the 20-second mark on the shot clock to improve the pace. They’re also trying to pass the ball upcourt sooner.

“So we just have to keep embracing those types of things,” Harris said. “As I touched on, a lot of it starts on the defensive stops and getting out.

“When we’re forced to take the ball out of bounds every single time, that slows up our pace. So just a few tweaks that we have to make.”

The Sixers will look to show improvement Monday night against the Wizards in Washington. The two teams will also meet Wednesday night in Philadelphia.