UNEXPECTED ANNOUNCEMENT: THE SIXERS’S COACH IS ON LEAVE BECAUSE OF…

PHILADELPHIA — Throughout training camp, the preseason and even the first week of the regular season, Philadelphia 76ers players and coaches insisted to anyone who asked that the James Harden saga wasn’t weighing them down.

“I don’t think anybody has been distracted about what has been going on,” reigning MVP Joel Embiid told reporters in October.

This wasn’t just PR speak. The Sixers were pushing the same message behind the scenes, stressing that Harden’s beef was with team president Daryl Morey and not the players or newly hired head coach Nick Nurse. Throughout the months-long standoff, the Sixers were even adamant that not only would they welcome Harden back should he change his mind but they also hoped he would.

Behind the scenes, though, Morey and Nurse were laying the groundwork for a post-Harden future. Not just by setting up the team’s cap sheet in a manner so Morey could go big-game hunting next offseason, as he has candidly discussed, but by coming up with methods to unleash their best players and, as part of that, tweaking the team’s schemes and approach.

So, it should come as no surprise that when the Sixers finally dealt Harden to the LA Clippers — in the middle of the night, three games into the season —  there was no big speech at practice the next morning. The players and coaches gathered at center court like always. Nurse went over the schedule for the day.

“As you all know, there was a big trade last night,” he told the group. He shared the details of the deal, and that was that. Practice began. A symphony of squeaking sneakers, blown whistles and music cued up by the team’s DJ filled the gym.

“It was just a normal day,” veteran forward Tobias Harris recalled.

Just like that, the team had moved on. And thanks to some meticulous prep from Morey and Nurse, the Sixers — owners of a 12-6 record and the league’s second-best point differential — haven’t looked back since.

In the summer of 2011, Morey was searching for a new coach. Not for the Houston Rockets, the NBA team he was running at the time, but for the Rio Grande Vipers, the Rockets’ D-League squad. Morey had promoted the Vipers’ previous head coach, Chris Finch, to the Rockets coaching staff and now needed a replacement.

For Morey, this was an important job. The Vipers were more than just a minor-league basketball team — they were a laboratory, one where he could test out various basketball philosophies before bringing them to the NBA.

“It allows us to create a competitive advantage for the Rockets and the Vipers,” Morey told the Rio Grande Valley newspaper, The Monitor, in June 2009. “We can bring our latest thinking to the Vipers and at the same time work on new strategies and learn about players and learn about potential future staff.”

Nurse had spent the previous four years with another D-League team, the Iowa Energy, who had defeated the Vipers to win the previous season’s title. His teams did all the things Morey liked. They played with pace. They moved the ball. They launched a ton of 3s. He and Morey began chatting and hit it off. It didn’t take long for Morey to convince Nurse to leave his home state.

“I was interested in going to work with Daryl once we started talking,” Nurse told reporters recently. “It was a lot of analytical things, innovative ideas, etc., and that kinda really triggered me. I thought it would be a chance for me to grow as a coach.”

Ten years later, fresh off being fired by the Toronto Raptors — after a five-year run that included an NBA title but ended with him and the front office butting heads — Nurse was seeking a new job. Morey, it so happened, had recently fired Doc Rivers and was on the lookout for a new head coach. An interview was scheduled, during which Nurse “talked about his philosophy,” Morey told FOX Sports, “and it does match a lot with the kinds of things I think lead to winning basketball.”

The Sixers and Nurse had an agreement by late May. He spent the offseason flying all over the country meeting with players —  “Every single one,” he said, “including some who are no longer with us” — and targeting areas where he believed the team could improve. There was a bunch of low-hanging fruit there for the taking, especially once it became clear Harden — and his methodical, probing, ball-dominant style, mixed with not-so-occasional lapses in off-ball and defensive effort — would likely be gone.

“Most of [the areas identified for improvement are] based on just what we believe in,” Nurse told FOX Sports. “Maximizing possessions, shooting high true-shooting percentage shots — those kinds of things.”

A rebounding problem was the easiest to address, and an area where Nurse’s philosophy of chasing extra chances aligned with Morey’s. Nurse’s Raptors teams twice finished in the top-five in offensive rebounding rate. The Sixers, meanwhile, finished 29th last season.

From the start of training camp, Nurse made a point of emphasizing the need to crash the offensive glass. He showed the team film from last season illustrating different moments in which he thought players were too willing to concede possessions and retreat onto defense.

“He wants us to always crash,” Harris said before a recent game. “It’s something that he’s been preaching.” Harris then smiled, as if he’d been caught breaking a rule.

“He wants me to go a lot more,” he added.

Nurse, he said, had recently spoken with him about grabbing offensive boards more frequently. “I told him I will,” Harris said, laughing again. “But also, it’s tough sometimes because I’ll be out there, like, a little gassed sometimes.”

“He just always wants you to do more,” guard De’Anthony Melton said. “And he does it while instilling confidence in you.”

So far, it has worked. The Sixers have rebounded nearly 30% of their own misses, a nearly 6% uptick from last season and the sixth-best mark in the league. They’re also attacking the rim more than they have in years and sprinting down the floor off opponent misses.

“Last year, we had to find a guard off a rebound,” Harris said. “This year it’s ‘go-go-go.'” They’ve managed to do all this while boasting a top-10 turnover rate.

They’ve completely embraced and embodied Nurse’s personality and preferred style. They’re aggressive. They’re intense. They’re relentless.

And yet Nurse, Morey and the rest of the organization know that it all would have been for naught if not for the reigning MVP embracing a new style of play.