‘Best-of-five’ series now is all ready to Heat up
CAMDEN, N.J. » After all the detailed film-breakdown and white-board scribbles Tuesday morning at the practice center, assistant coach Jim O’Brien turned to Brett Brown and reduced the first-round Sixers-Heat playoff series to plain talk.
“I think it was smart,” Brown said. “He said, ‘The playoffs don’t really start until both teams get punched in the mouth.’ And so far, we’ve each been punched in the mouth. “So … here we go.” While O’Brien wasn’t being literal, his delivered image had added weight following the Sixers’ 113-103 Game 2 loss. In that game, the Sixers were punched and grabbed and held and hacked and shoved and pushed and flattened. Such was the Heat’s response to the free-passing, speedy style that led to the Sixers’ 27-point Game 1 triumph.
And since it worked … will be tried again.
“They were very physical,” Markelle Fultz said. “I don’t think that was something we were shocked by. We knew they were going to come out more physical. That was one of the points of emphasis they had coming in. They just came out more aggressive and it likely more physical.” Punch . ... Counter-punch? “That’s what the NBA is,” Fultz said. “They are doing their best to get us off our game plan.”
J.J. Redick, who has been in the playoffs every year since 2007, insisted that the Heat was no more rugged than the usual NBA postseason team. But it was because Miami was more rugged than the Sixers that it strolled out of the Wells Fargo Center with the home-court advantage in the first-to-four series.
“They probably feel they have a blueprint to beat us, so we can expect a similar approach,” Redick said. “I think it wasn’t just about the physicality. A byproduct of that, and probably part of their strategy, was if you’re physical, you’re going to foul. The game becomes choppy. And the game is played at their pace. We have to find a way to play the game at our pace.”
*** NOTES » The Sixers won Game 1 by 27. For that, the public demand for a starting-lineup change was less than overwhelming. Just the same, for Game 2, Brett Brown turned to Ersan Ilyasova as his starting center, replacing Amir Johnson. That resulted in a night of lineup ripple effects. “Some of the lineups, because we started Ersan, were reshuffled a little bit,” Brown said, “but not to the point where I had buyer’s remorse at all. We won the first period, 29-22. I liked how we started the game. That second period was the meltdown.” ... Game 3 will be Thursday, in Miami, at 7. Brown is not committing to any depth-chart changes. Among the possibilities are the return of Joel Embiid from orbital surgery, T.J. McConnell rising above Fultz in the backcourt flow, and Johnson returning to the starting lineup. “Everything is on the table right now,” Brown said. “We are trying to figure out where Joel fits. Is it T.J. or Markelle? Might T.J. still grab a few minutes at the two? It’s all that.” ... The Sixers will play Dallas next Oct. 5 in a regular-season game in China.