Embiid: ‘We didn’t stick to game plan’
BOSTON » For years, Brett Brown had imagined it. For months, he had talked about it. For days, he has embraced it. By Tuesday, he was almost glad it all happened. Almost.
The son of a coach, and himself one of the best coaches in his sport, Brown has spent most of his life waiting for the brain-teaser that is a lengthy NBA playoff series. Often, he talks with joy about his days as an assistant in San Antonio, making off-day adjustments, then adjusting them back if necessary.
The give, the take, the ups, the downs. The playoffs.
So there Brown was Tuesday at Harvard University, preparing for a practice just hours after the Sixers’ 117-101, knowing that this can be the most difficult time of a year for a basketball coach to sleep.
“It is,” Brown said. “And we’ve lost twice since whenever. So we’ve been on a pretty good, unusual run. So it truly is like your greatest joy or your worst misery. And somewhere in the middle you are trying to find balance. So you think about stuff all night long, as we should, as I should. And it is just part of this time of the year, and part of the challenge, and part of the excitement in a sadistic type of way.”
The Sixers have won 20 of their last 22. And if they weren’t necessarily hurt Monday by having not played in six days, they certainly weren’t helped by the layoff. The Celtics, as Ben Simmons said, “smacked” them early, even if not in a literal, Miami Heat sense. The Sixers were nudged from their rhythm. They had decent shots, but were too inaccurate. The Celtics had decent shots and shot 47.2 percent from the arc.
Though the Sixers’ practices are closed, there is no secret that they need to re-imagine their defensive rotations, particularly against 6-foot-10 Al Horford, a stretch big man who hit two three-pointers.
“Defensively, we didn’t guard our own man,” was Joel Embiid’s review of the game film. “We didn’t stick to the game plan. And that was a lot of time we were over-helping, especially me. So there is a lot of stuff we can correct.
“They run a lot of people who can pickand-pop. And in that kind of situation, it is tough when you’ve got good point guards like Terry Rozier and Shane Larkin coming into the game. Because they are going to bait you. I have to make sure the ball stays in front of me before the guard comes back and squares up.”
With that, there will be modifications for Game 2, Thursday night at 8:30 in the TD Garden.
“I think one of the adjustments will be just switching everything instead of letting them create some separation,” Embiid said. “Because that’s basically all their guards try to do: Bait you into doing something. And that’s when Al Horford or Marcus Morris get open. So the next game, we have to alter the course and make sure that we don’t let them get any separations.”
If the Celtics enjoy such separation in Game 2, they might have enough separation in the best-of-seven to worsen Brown’s insomnia.
“If you go see a movie, to me the ones you remember are the ones that make you cry, get you afraid, have some deeper thought,” Brown said. “And this time of year brings you to your greatest height and your lowest low. And somewhere in the middle, you find balance.”
Though sleep-deprived, Brown was reasonably upbeat Tuesday, aware of the nature of the playoffs. He knows it is his turn to make moves, but he is reluctant to stray too far from what recently allowed his team to end the regular-season on a 16-game winning streak. There is not likely to be any playing-rotation changes, with Brown stressing that T.J. McConnell, not Markelle Fultz, will remain his backup swing-guard. Brown is reluctant to promise that Robert Covington and Dario Saric will both shoot better than 0-for-4 from three-point range again in the series or that J.J. Redick is unlikely to put up another 2-for-7 from distance. But he knows the Sixers have and can shoot better.
As much as the Sixers will make some minor changes, particularly defensively, they are confident that they simply have to execute better at the offensive end. They respect the Celtics. But they know they can play better themselves.
“A little bit of both, a little bit of both,” Brown said. “You’re always studying how they scored and what you might have done better. The greatest challenge is to select a vanilla game plan and walk it down. When you have to start pivoting out to massive decisions, that’s when you start chasing. And I find you don’t win series that way.
“By and large, I like our game plan. There are some small things that we have to get better at. And some small things that we have to change.”
The Sixers began that process Tuesday, and will practice again Wednesday at Harvard. All they know is that at some point, they must win at least a game at the Garden and that they already have missed one chance.
“We have to stop talking about it,” Simmons said. “We know what we did wrong offensively and defensively. We know what mistakes we made, now we have to go out and fix it. It’s not a ‘wakeup call.’ We know we’re in the playoffs.”
So does the coach who had been wishing for that for a long, long time.