Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Noel, Holmes display the depth that Brown covets
PHILADELPHIA >> As Brett Brown watched Ben Simmons play a little one-on-one basketball Sunday, he treated himself to a vision.
There in a quiet training gym in Camden, there with some Delaware 87ers lingering around, there in his mind Brown could see the No. 1 overall pick in the last draft running the point for the Sixers, feeding Joel Embiid for dunks, rewarding a city and a franchise for patience.
“I can’t wait,” the Sixers’ coach was saying Tuesday, “to coach him.”
And that will be Brown’s challenge. On most nights, he must be patient, all while trying to find a way to win games. And Tuesday, he would he be made to face the Los Angeles Clippers not without just one center, but
two.
In the past, even earlier this season, that would have provided slapstick results. But something has happened to the Sixers in the past few weeks, and it showed in a 121-110 victory Tuesday in which they scored 62 of the final 94 points.
Embiid did not play because someone in the medical department thought he should not play. Jahlil Okafor did not play because his surgically repaired knee keeps giving him trouble. That left Brown with Nerlens Noel and Richaun Holmes as his centers. Noel would score 19 points, block three shots and affect plenty of others. Holmes would provide 18 points in just over 18 minutes.
That was a vision of Brown’s, too.
“I walk out of the gym more believing that the pieces we have in place in this system are solid, to help produce development,” Brown said. “It will produce wins. It will keep a locker room together. Things like this help you feel a little bit better. But I feel very strongly where we are in a position where we can absorb high draft picks, high-profile free-agents, whatever it is.
“I think the system underneath what we see here is what I am most proud of.”
The Sixers have allowed themselves to be smeared with a patience that could have grown messy. That’s because too few in that organization care what player Brown is anxious to coach, or when, where, how or why. When last the Sixers were in the Wells Fargo Center, Embiid injured his knee. Nothing serious. In fact, he said, it was something he’d done in his one year at the University of Kansas, too. And if that had
ever been reported before, it wasn’t at a high volume.
Embiid would miss the game the next night in Atlanta. Then came Monday, and a curious outline of his coming workload. First, the Sixers said he would likely miss the Clippers game. Yet he would also not play in a Wednesday game at Milwaukee for this pip of an excuse: He wasn’t scheduled to play in it anyway, as it was part of one of those ever-perilous backto-backs. Pressed on the fact that by taking off Tuesday, a Wednesday shift would not constitute work on consecutive days, no one really had an answer. How could they? But no one in the basketball side of the operation makes those unreasonable decisions. And that one was unreasonable because not only did Embiid say he was “fine”, but he did not limp, did not sport an ice bag and was not on crutches. Then, as if to trivialize the situation, he proceeded Monday to walk onto the court after a practice that he did not participate in and, in some sort of casual suede loafers, took shot after shot, including some of the all-important kind from close to midcourt.
Yet instead of dwelling on that odd situation, the Sixers adapted. No Embiid? Well, there’s Noel. No Okafor? Try Holmes.
“We just play to our strengths and our weaknesses,” Noel said. “The guys were busting their butts, and it paid off in the second half. It was a different opportunity for me, starting the game and being able to play 30 minutes. But I just wanted to go out there and show my ability and help this team win every way possible.”
The Sixers are being ruled by a posse of actuaries whose job performance will be graded one way. If Embiid and Simmons survive the season without catastrophic injuries, they will be praised for their bedside manner. Embiid is expected to play Friday, when the Sixers return to entertain the Houston Rockets. The starting time of that game was flexed from 7 to 8 o’clock to accommodate national TV. That would be the third instance this season of the organization seeming more interested in promoting its brand than in anything else. The first was when Embiid played the second of a back-toback on the road in Minnesota, in a nationally televised game, rather than at home, where the fans have crowded the souvenir shops to buy his replica jersey. The other was when they organized a get-out-the-vote campaign to have Embiid play in the All-Star Game, a novelty act that any physically troubled player easily could skip.
It’s what they are going to do.
So Brown and his players will do what they do. They will defend. They will share the ball, as they did Tuesday, making 35 assists on 45 field goals. They will accept roles.
“It’s part of the job,” Holmes said. “You just always have to be ready.”
Brett Brown is ready for the day when he can have Simmons and Embiid and surround them with unselfish teammates who defend. Until then, he is showing that he can find new rotations… and new ways to win.
To contact Jack McCaffery, email him at jmccaffery@21stcenturymedia.com; follow him on Twitter @ JackMcCaffery