Embiid, Simmons believe in brighter future
BOSTON » Another 76ers season ended Wednesday, and Brett Brown knew the first reverberation was only hours away.
“I will wake up during the night,” he said, “and just say, ‘Noooooo.’”
That’s how quickly it all changes, how an otherwise satisfying, compelling season can turn into a nightmare. The Sixers lost Game 5 of their Eastern Conference playoff series to the Boston Celtics Wednesday, 114-112. And while they rallied from a 12-point deficit to take a four-point fourthquarter lead, the reality was that they still have not had the long, long postseason run that their rebuilding process was designed to produce.
For that, more than one kind of bad dream continues. And it could continue for a while. For while the Sixers were eliminated by a team with a better regularseason record, they realized that they were catching the Celtics down.
When Gordon Hayward broke his leg in the first game of the season, and when Kyrie Irving ripped his knee in March, the Celts were far less than what they should be going forward. If anything keeps Brown up for nights to come, it will be the realization of that gap.
“Anything we do of anything of significance, we are always going to have to go through the Boston Celtics,” he said. “And I respect very much this organization. I think (general manager) Danny (Ainge) and (coach) Brad (Stevens) are fantastic. You are always looking over your shoulder watching how they’ve decided to grow their program.”
The Sixers were staggered early, falling into an 0-3 crater in the best-of-seven. But they won Game 4 and had a 107-103 lead with 2:01 left in Game 5. As souvenirs go, taking pride in that is unlikely.
“This was a hard-fought series,” Brown said. “It ends up the way it always ends up. There are possessions you would like to have back. But that’s life. The game changes and life changes with those types of fragile subtleties. That was my message to the players.”
The Sixers won 52 regular-season games and five more in the playoffs, winning popularity and some program momentum. Ben Simmons, the presumptive Rookie of the Year, had a difficult series. But he recovered Wednesday to provide 18 points and six assists.
“It’s hard to play here,” he said. “But we have to get better and look ahead now.”
Throughout the season and the playoffs, Brown tried repeatedly to avoid characterizing the Sixers as a young team, even though their two stars, Simmons and Joel Embiid, have combined to play in a total of three seasons. One reason that option was muffled was because the Sixers did add enough veterans this season to provide a balance. To a point, it worked. But as the season ended, so did the commitments to JJ Redick, Amir Johnson, Ersan Ilyasova and Marco Belinelli.
With that, the Sixers were backed into hoping that their young players will have benefitted from the postseason experience.
“I’m just learning,” Simmons said. “This is just a start for me. I have a long way to go. I learned a lot and it made me a better player. I am thankful for the opportunity.”
Embiid, who was recovering from a cracked orbital bone throughout the playoffs, scored 27 points Wednesday, as did second-year NBA pro Dario Saric.
“We’ve got to learn from this,” said Embiid, who shed his protective mask late in the fourth quarter, despite, he admitted, the recommendation of doctors. “And we have to come back next year and do better.”
He believes that is possible … and likely.
“I feel we have a lot more,” he said. “We have a lot of talented guys. But we didn’t play our best.”