Best shot for Sixers ... start defending the three
BOSTON » Brett Brown said what he wanted to say, when he wanted to say it, how and where. He also knew the immediate stakes.
“Now,” he said, “I will have to back up my words.”
What the 76ers’ coach said Monday, among other things after a 117-101 loss to Boston in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference semifinals was that, “that’s not who we are.”
The Sixers are down to six games, of which they must win four, to prove their coach right. Their next chance will be Thursday night at 8:30 in the TD Garden.
After six days of contemplating the rest-vs.-rust issue, the Sixers may have found their answer on a night when they shot 5-for26 from three-point range and allowed the Celtics to shoot 17-for-36 behind the arc.
If Brown’s position is that the Sixers were victims of random basketball luck, the 19.2-percent three-point shooting was anything but reflective of how his team had won 20 of its previous 21. But the Celtics had the NBA’s second-best threepoint percentage in the regular season at 37.7, behind only Golden State. So high on the priority list Tuesday for Brown will be a way to better defend the long shot.
“For sure, we missed a lot of coverages,” Ben Simmons said. “We didn’t execute the way we wanted to every time down the floor. But that’s on us.”
The Sixers did not move the ball as they had been doing. They didn’t defend with their recent passion. They shot poorly. And they were tormented by rookie Jayson Tatum, whose 28 points often came at the expense of J.J. Redick. That was one curious Sixers matchup choice Brown has promised to revisit. There were plenty. “It was one of our poorer defensive games that we’ve played in a while,” Brown said. “With the three-point shot, I think some of it was missed assignments. Some of it I give them credit for. But it sure was a big part of the difference tonight.”
So was the way the Celtics played, just two days after surviving a seven-game series against Milwaukee.
“We had won 20 out of 21 games,” Brown said. “And we give the Celtics credit. We were never in the game. I never felt like it was a game. We had a little, tiny run at the end of the third period. But I give the Celtics credit. I don’t know if the time off hurt us. It sure felt like we were playing a good team tonight.”
Brown’s message, though, was that the Sixers are a good team, too.
“I give the Celtics credit for getting to our shooters,” Brown said. “When we all go away, we will look at the three-point line from their perspective and from our perspective. Therein lays a lot of the story. I give the Celtics credit getting to our shooters. We did have an off night shooting. But a lot of that you can attribute to their good defense and getting to our shooters.”
The Celtics defended well. And the Sixers did not respond.
“They came ready to play and we were rusty,” Simmons said. “And we got smacked multiple times.”
With that, there came exasperation … and a game that rolled out of the Sixers’ reach.
“It was frustrating because we knew what we needed to do,” Simmons said. “We talked about it, but we didn’t do it.”