Right pieces are in place for ‘fun’ finish to season
PHILADELPHIA » Erik Spoelstra was in a familiar spot, too familiar a spot, too soon. He was outside the Miami Heat locker room at the Wells Fargo Center Wednesday, talking basketball, just as he was 12 days earlier.
“That time, we were in a position to play for fourth place,” the Heat’s coach said. “Two weeks before that, third. Now, we’re in eighth, and behind Philly.”
For a league with a season that never seems to end, things do happen quickly in the NBA. And so it has been with the Sixers, who by Wednesday had reached the No. 7 spot in the Eastern Conference standings, climbing out of insignificance and into the playoff bracketology, all in a matter of weeks.
“And in a blink,” Brett Brown said, “April 14 will be here.”
By then, the regular season will be over, and the Sixers will know their first-round playoff opponent. At least that’s what they have come to believe. Even better, that’s what their play in the second third of the season allowed them to believe.
That’s what Brown does. He breaks the season into “thirds,” one loosely ending at Christmas, then at the All-Star break, then in April. And including their telling, Dec. 25 showcase victory in Madison Square Garden, hie team had won 15 times and lost seven, prior to playing the Heat in their last game before the All-Star break.
They have become, and they are, a very good basketball team.
“At times,” Ben Simmons allowed before the Sixers’ 104-102 victory Wednesday. “But we can play a lot better.”
They have to play a lot better to contend for a championship, and they have to seriously contend for championships for the next five to seven years, at least, to justify the unholy, unprofessional way they chose to become so competent. And while that doesn’t necessarily have to begin this April, or even next, it’s OK to consider taking care of some of that business early.
By the time the Sixers eased past the Knicks by 16 points the other night, running a winning streak to four, they were as whole and as dangerous as they have been in the Brown era. And they were showing every sign that in any playoff round they would be a matchup horror for any opponent.
Brown saw that coming, and he saw it early.
“How can you not?” he said. And he said that after the Sixers had lost four of their last five. His point was that Joel Embiid was healthy, and with that, would not out of place in any MVP discussion. He was seeing that Simmons was something different, a point guard able to generate offense from 60 feet away from the basket with his unique chest-passing and three-moves-ahead vision. Dario Saric was coming off a Rookie of the Year nearmiss. The Sixers had bought J.J. Redick for $23 million, but just as significantly, he had bought into them.
Yet even when Brown was projecting excellence, there was the haunting burden to show it on the basketball floor. That, the Sixers have done. At least they had through that unofficial first two-thirds of the season. Embiid, usually available, proved impossible to stop around the basket, while still being able to threaten from deep. Saric, who vowed to become a better shooter, learned to tuck his right elbow in and became a more consistent three-point sniper. Redick has been the best outside shooter the franchise has ever employed. Though Simmons still doesn’t shoot with presentable form or results, he does everything else right. Everything. T.J. McConnell has not been just a useful point guard, but a winning guard.
They’re different. That’s what the Sixers are. And that’s why they will be a handful in any particular playoff series.
“Against them, you have to step up to the challenge,” Spoelstra said. “They are very skilled, players.”
The Sixers will play 27 games after the All-Star break, two against Cleveland, none against Golden State, 12 at home. They likely will be favored more often than not. If they remain healthy, they should be in the playoffs. Of course, with Embiid, who point talented was scratched Wednesday with a right ankle injury, that’s never a given. But if they play at their best, they defend well enough to push into a possible No. 4 seeding and home-court advantage in the first round.
In a motivational trick he learned in his many years as an assistant with the Spurs, Brown instituted a locker-room countdown board for the fivegame homestand that would precede the AllStar break. In San Antonio, it would begin at 16 at the end of the regular season. There, the plan was for it to tick down to zero, one postseason victory at a time. The Sixers started theirs at five, and it was down to one Wednesday.
“The guys have bought in,” Brown said. “It’s a very minor hurdle. But it’s a hurdle. It motivates the guys even more to come back and know, ‘Now, the fun really begins.’”
The playoff positioning has begun. The Sixers are bracing for the turbulence. As Spoelstra knows, that’s not always fun.