Inability to stay with Pacers indicative of Sixers’ place
PHILADELPHIA » An NBA playoff series doesn’t have to be won in a Game 7, with a late free throw, before a rowdy crowd in June. An NBA playoff series can be won in March, too, with the national TV cameras dark and the moment hidden. Brett Brown didn’t say that Tuesday while preparing his 76ers to play a lateseason, regular-season game, one of 82. But he hinted at it, strongly, in a moment that for him was out of character.
“I have to walk that line of being way too dramatic too early versus the reality,” Brown said before a 101-98 loss to the Indiana Pacers. “Like tonight.”
Short of a relapse of their habit to tank, the Sixers will be a playoff team in the spring. And at some point in the postseason, they will not need the inconvenience of a seventh game on the road. Their players, many relatively young, may not have realized that with 17 regular-season games to play. But Brown, who often discusses his “previous life” as a long-time assistant to Gregg Popovich in San Antonio, knows how tight any playoff series can be, how they can come down to one play, perhaps a play influenced by the urging of a friendly crowd. So it’s better to try to win one early than to regret about it late. That’s why he lumped some emphasis upon a game Tuesday that well might add definition to pro basketball’s bracketology.
“None of us can predict the next month, how all the subsequent games are going to play out,” Brown said. “But we’re going into this game thinking it’s an important game.
“I have said that to the team. Rarely do I go there. I went there.”
Brown left it there, acknowledging the importance of the game yet stopping short of arranging a bonfire pep rally. But recent circumstances did nudge him into reminding the players of the likely volatility of the Eastern Conference race. Among those were that the Sixers had lost four of their previous five against likely conference playoff teams. All of those losses were on the road, which was not as much an excuse as it was a reminder that playoff teams are at their best before supportive crowds.
As they warmed up Tuesday, the Sixers were 36-29, sixth in the Eastern Conference. The Pacers were 39-28, and in the three-spot. The two-game difference was slight; the seeding difference was immense. Were that form to hold and the Sixers and Pacers were in the threesix opening-round series, Game 7 would be in Indianapolis. “We have a special chance and a special opportunity to get one tonight, and then some games we need to get coming up,” Ben Simmons said. “It is a big game in terms of the rankings and where we need to be. But to me, it’s another game. You have to win.”
That’s how both teams played. They played rough, particularly off the ball. They hit each other late. They knocked each other down. The Pacers forced the Sixers into as much half-court basketball as possible, the way postseason games unfold. And they held the Sixers to 75 shots, forcing 21 turnovers. The Sixers had no excuses. They were home and healthy. They knew the situation, that it was the final game against Indiana this season, and the winner would own a 2-1 series edge and any tiebreaker. They defended well in spots, limiting Bojan Bogdanovic to 1-for-11 shooting and making Victor Oladipo shoot 4-for21. But they were not up to the playoff-like moment against a team with a legitimate matchup answer to Joel Embiid in Myles Turner, and with Simmons blatantly hesitant to shoot, playing 9:15 of the fourth quarter without attempting a shot.
“The difference in this game, maybe, was that they looked like they wanted it more than us,” Dario Saric said. “Maybe you can’t say something like that. I don’t know. It’s weird sometimes when you go like this. You don’t know where to start.
“I think we have to lock in. This was a very important game for us. And there is not time any more to lose like this. I hope we understand that the next game.”
If they didn’t understand it before that one, it was not because they weren’t reminded. But they were not ready for the moment, even if some of their continuing mistakes are because, as Brown said, “you can’t expedite people’s birth certificates.”
The Sixers will be in the playoffs. But the entire reason for all those years of losing was to avoid being just good enough to play one postseason round and lose.
“The thing we have to walk out of this game with is the recognition that we are close to being amongst a pretty elite group,” Brown said. “We’re just not there yet. And I think in the remaining games we have coming up, we can admit the truth and try to find a way to fix that and to try to move up as high as we can in the Eastern standings.”
Before it is too late. Brett Brown went there once. He needs to go there again.