Calmly, Brown preparing Sixers for next playoff round
CAMDEN, N.J. » Had the Celtics won Game 6 of their playoff series against the Bucks, the Sixers would have been in the TD Bank Garden Saturday night, sweating through the first game of the Eastern Conference semifinals.
Instead, their coach will in a much more comfortable spot, where he will be watching and dissecting and explaining every play as Milwaukee and Boston sweat through a win-or-perish Game 7. That would be his living room. “I love being able to go through this with my son (Sam),” Brett Brown was saying Friday, during a quiet-before-the-fight moment at the Sixers’ training complex. “To sit on a couch and have the opportunity with a 13-year-old gym rat, who grew up in the game and under a roof as the son of a coach, as I did as a kid, to be able to share this experience, my job, with him, is something you cannot quantify. It is one of my great thrills.”
Not that Brown or the Sixers have been relaxing since eliminating the Miami Heat Wednesday, for the head coach still shows up for work before daybreak, prepared to break down anything the Bucks or Celtics are likely to attempt in the next round. But a chance to decompress, even relatively so, while others in the conference are trying to figure out how to survive was as well-earned as it was welcome.
Though the Sixers needed only five games to eliminate the Heat, they were hit by a Miami game plan that apparently called for shirt-grabbing, head-bashing and equipment damaging. And with Joel Embiid still recovering from a surgically repaired orbital bone, any additional recovery time can be therapeutic.
Then again, any team that has won 20 of its last 21 might not need what would be a four-day break before a possible Game 1 Monday, either in Boston or at home against the Bucks.
“It’s a little bit of rhythm-vs.-rest confliction,” Brown acknowledged. “You can stay in a rhythm. Or does that mean the players losing rest? I do know this: There for sure is a physical side that may take its toll. There is for sure a side where you are continuing to play basketball. So I don’t know how to judge it. Every team reacts differently.”
The Sixers will have a full practice Saturday before they know their Round 2 opponent. They will do something Sunday, once they do. The mask that Embiid has said he will wear throughout the playoffs notwithstanding, they are in relatively fine health. With that, they have no choice but to wait to find out what is next.
Should the next opponent be the Bucks, the Sixers would have the home-court advantage that they used in a 130-95 victory over Milwaukee in the final game of the regular season, on a night they led by 41. The teams split the four-game regular-season series, neither losing at home. A second-round series against the Celtics would begin in Boston. The Celts this season took three of four from the Sixers, winning one of two games in the Garden, one in the Wells Fargo Center and one in London.
Predictably, Brown was careful not to issue a preference.
“The two teams are elite defensively,” he said. “You can see how they guard each other and how hard it is to score. It’s going to be a very defensive-oriented series, no matter who we play.”
The Sixers’ edge, if there is one, is that they will have been resting while their next opponents have been fighting to survive. And, yes, Brown was roaming around the practice center Friday in what he called his “coaching slippers.” Quiet times. Quiet times that won’t last. “I’m OK with time,” Brown said. “We had a good practice (Thursday). Today was more of a recovery day and the coaching staff can continue with the preparation. Saturday and Sunday are good times for more work. Today, we gave some of our players who are banged up some more recovery time. I’m OK with time. It’s what you do with the time that ends up as the challenge.
“And I think we have managed the time and have a plan to manage the time well.”