Brown wants to keep sweep talk in history books

CAMDEN, N.J. » Brett Brown was working in Melbourne, Australia when the 76ers suffered their most personal sweep defeat on their home floor.

That was 29 years ago, a young Sixers team with Charles Barkley as its leader and not much else getting swept in three games of a best-of-five opening round series by a rising New York Knicks team.

What made it so personal was how the Knicks celebrated — by literally breaking out brooms and having a team sweeping session across the Spectrum hardwood while fans were filing out.

No one would expect a classy bunch of Boston Celtics to do such a thing at Wells Fargo Center Monday night, should they find a way to finish off another young Sixers squad in four games in their Eastern Conference semifinal series.

There are lost series and then there are nightmarish series shutouts to never forget. The Sixers were swept one other time since that nightmarish three-straight loss to the Knicks in 1989, but the impact of that four-game loss to the Indiana Pacers 10 years later was nowhere near as infuriating.

You wonder what the impact would be via a fourth straight loss to a Celtics team that might not be brandishing brooms, but seems capable of dealing a hefty blow to the psyche of a Sixers team that thought it was on its way to the NBA Finals.

“It’s really not for anything else but competitive pride,” Brown said Sunday when faced with the prospect of needing to avoid a sweep. “We’ve jumped into this thing in a quicker way than any of us would have guessed at the start of the year. We were all kind of hoping to make the playoffs, then we got real greedy and wanted to win 50 games. Then we wanted to get the home court, and then we wanted to beat Milwaukee and finish third. We’ve done all that and then we have a great series against Miami and win 4-1. So the table of expectations is set. You can’t re-dial that. But to link it to where it’s connected to we don’t want to get swept, they’re mutually exclusive to me.

“We don’t want to get swept because we don’t want to get swept. I’ve said and I stand by this: We do have more to give. We’ve stumbled on an incredibly hard matchup for us, there is no doubt about that. But it is borne out of competitiveness, not sort of the history to date that we’ve had this season with this team.”

Actually, from the first moment it was confirmed that the Celtics would be the Sixers’ opponent in this series, the hype has been all about the history between the teams. Enough to fill a basketball encyclopedia dating back a half-century.

No one on these teams has any connection to Wilt-V-Russell or Dr. J slugging it out with Bird, though, so it’s nothing to be taken seriously. But sweeps are serious business, and perhaps can leave a hangover into the next season.

But not always. The Sixers were last swept in 1999, a 4-0 domination by the Pacers. The Sixers still made it back to that second playoff round the next year ... and at least they won twice in that series loss to the Pacers.

But dating to that other aforementioned playoff sweep in May of 1989, the result was a show of determination by the Sixers to come back ever stronger afterward. That and the acquisition of Rick Mahorn helped the team grow.

So you might wonder how a team with such a young core as these Sixers could react to a similar, sweeping fate, even with all brooms securely closeted.

Brown prefers to think he already knows the answer. And he extends it to that stat that says teams with a 3-0 lead in NBA playoffs were 129-0 in the outcome of those series.

“We all get the numbers of how nobody really has done it (before),” Brown said, switching sweep talk to winning speculation. “In an inverted way that’s a tremendous challenge for us. We’re here at home. We want to try and just take care of business tomorrow night.

“The spirit of the group is great. The spirit of the group has been great for the entire year. You remind them about what we have done this year. We remind them of how close Game 2 was, and how if we could have pulled Marco (Belinelli) back six inches (Saturday) we’d have a walk-off 3, and everybody is seeing the world a little bit differently today.”

*** Brown has no apparent plans to add Justin Anderson, who theoretically could bring a necessary element of physicality on the defensive end, to the Game 4 rotation. Why?

“We’re just trying to get our best shooters on the floor, trying to sort of go that way as much as we can,” Brown said. “At times you’re seeking buckets. You’re trying to find scoring options as much as anything.”

*** Joel Embiid was convincing in his assertion that wearing the variety of Krypton (or whatever they’re made of) facial guards hasn’t made a huge difference in his game this series.

Then there’s Brett Brown’s take...

“There is no doubt that it has some level of impact,” Brown said. “On his three-point shot as much as anything. I’m sure you could connect some dots with post play or jump hooks or turn and face — how can it not? But I think he’s done a great job of playing through it. You can see the abundance of masks we have. They come in like frisbees when one gets crushed or one gets sort of lost.

“I’m proud of him, the way he’s tried to come in and help our team. Even with having to play with an obvious level of restriction.”