The 76ers have young stars, but they also have the veteran depth a top team needs

The Philadelphia 76ers have found that magical mix: young stars leading the way, developing role players surrounding them, and just enough veterans to win games like Game 4. Philadelphia’s 106-102 win against the Miami Heat on Saturday couldn’t have happened without a perfectly constructed roster and some timely veteran moments up and down the roster.

It’s hard to do that. Young teams often wallow without enough veterans surrounding them, or they have the wrong type of veterans that bring down the team’s potential — think Jamal Crawford and Derrick Rose in Minnesota (at least for most of the season). If it’s all young players, then your team is prone to inconsistency and unsteadiness when it matters most. (The Bucks, kind of.) And then there are teams like Miami, who has more old players than young and an uncertain future.

And then there’s Philly. Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons are these team’s two stars, while Dario Saric and Robert Covington are perfect role players to put around them. But Philadelphia has carefully added the right type of veterans to this roster over the past few months.

It started with J.J. Redick — who led the team in scoring with 24 and hit a crucial two-pointer late — last summer. By all accounts, Redick is a perfect culture warrior to generate good habits from younger players. Amir Johnson was another offseason addition, and he has gracefully accepted a limited role off the bench. On Saturday, he played 11 minutes, shot 3-of-4 from the field, and was plus-seven. Those are the small-but-important minutes that every team needs to fill.

The team still wasn’t complete until February, when Philadelphia added Marco Bellinelli and Ersan Ilyasova, two buyout candidates from Atlanta. Ilyasova was a game-best plus-16 during the frame, grabbing three offensive rebounds and scoring 10 points in a scrappy effort that consistently showed up in a timely manner. Bellinelli has lit up Miami all series, and even though he was quieter than he had been on Saturday, he still pitched in 10 more points on eight shooting possessions.

The more you look at Philadelphia’s box score, the more you wonder how they possible won Game 4 to take the 3-1 series lead. Here are a few outliers:

But the 76ers did win. They leaned on suffocating half-court defense, which works especially well against a Miami team that only has a few true shot creators and no elite ones. From 3:09 left in the third quarter to 5:40 in the fourth, the Heat only scored four points. That defensive effort was led by the 24-year-old Embiid, who swatted five shots and was a massive presence at the rim.

Still, the 15 combined turnovers by Embiid and Ben Simmons might have sunk Philadelphia without support. It takes an army, and Philadelphia has that.

Philadelphia’s success is buoyed by coaching, star power, and the right kind of mix of young stars and veteran depth. It wouldn’t be happening without some combination of all three.