Road troubles part of a familiar score
NEW YORK >> Sometimes, basketball is simple.
So then, is the explanation for the Sixers’ 6-5 start, their 0-5 road record and, in particular, the 122-97 loss they had against the Nets Sunday night.
Scorers. They don’t have enough.
“I think that we do a good job of sharing the ball,” Brett Brown said. “I don’t like, right now, our shot-making. Joel Embiid by and large is carrying us a lot. And J.J. Redick is a very close second. We need more from others.
“And everybody is aware of it.”
Embiid is having an MVP season. Redick has kept the Sixers in games with consistent shooting, even when off-balance. But after that, Dario Saric has looked, according to Brown, “heavylegged.” Ben Simmons scores, but rarely from more than 10 feet from the basket. Markelle Fultz starts but struggles to shoot. Robert Covington occasionally turns hot, but is far from the “star” that the Sixers went offseason hunting for at the three spot.
Sunday, the Sixers turned the ball over 28 times, often enough that Embiid was only able to manage eight shots. The Sixers’ 4-for-20 three-point shooting and resulting long rebounds, along with the turnovers, allowed the Nets to roll into a comfortable offense and take 105 shots to the Sixers’ 65.
“We have been playing soft, and bull-(bleeping),” Simmons said. “I don’t know what it is, but we have to step it up.”
Simmons had 20 points and 12 rebounds, but made five turnovers.
“I think I am over-thinking,” Simmons said.
Brown coached the Sixers through enough years of systematic failure to know when losing is understandable … and when it is like it was Sunday.
“That’s not who we are,” he said. “That’s not who we are. I give credit to Brooklyn. But that is an unacceptable performance.”
The Nets took a staggering 40 more shots than the Sixers.
“You can dust off things like ‘82 games,’ and ‘Games like this happen,’” Brown said. “There is truth to that. This isn’t one of them to me.
“It is what it is,” he added. “I have been with these guys long enough to speak truths. And they agree. There is no witch-hunt. There is just the admittance of this is what just happened. We will move on. We will stay together. But the truth is the truth.”
The Sixers continue to struggle in the third quarter. Sunday, they were outscored, 41-28.
“I think it’s a disposition,” said Brown after a similar early-second-half letdown Saturday. “That’s what I really think. It’s easy for me. And it’s true that this is a trend at times in the NBA. People come out and my phasing is they ‘brother-inlaw’ each other. And they don’t get into a little bit of a fight until deeper.”
•••
The Sixers are 0-5 on the road, and offered no excuses Sunday. But three losses were in Boston, Toronto and Milwaukee, suggesting a rough early-season schedule.
“I don’t even get too caught up in the reality of that,” Brown said. “That is daunting to start a year. And this league swallows you up in regards to the pace of it. When you look at the schedule from the start of the year, I am kind of numb to it. After 18 years, I am truly numb to it. I think it all plays out as it should. It might have something to do with our stats after 10 games. You have played the heavyweights and royalty in the East right out of the gate. But it all balances out, I think.”
••• Embiid’s MVP campaign moved into New York, where already Nets coach Kenny Atkinson was bracing for it.
“He seems like he keeps improving, keeps getting better,” Atkinson said. “He can do it inside and outside. In the few games I’ve watched, it seems he is punishing people on the block and really going at guys down low. It is a great test to stop that. He is one of the top players in the league.”
Can anything be done to slow him down?
“We have to be careful not to put him on the line,” Atkinson said. “We have to make him make tough shots. We have to gang rebound against him.”
The Nets did a good job, limiting Embiid to eight field-goal attempts and 10 foul shots.
“The games that we won, I felt like I was dominant,” Embiid said. “Today, I wasn’t. I only took eight shots. I wonder why. But I need to be more aggressive to be able to help the team better.”
After dropping 39 on Detroit Saturday, most of them on his personal nemesis Andre Drummond, Embiid went to social media and hash-tagged the word “bum”, apparently in Drummond’s direction.
Like that was going to sneak through the New York media swarm without questioning …
“I said that,” Embiid said. “But at the end of the day I think everyone knows that I love having fun. Nothing is personal to me. I just love having fun. It’s the past. It’s yesterday. I’ve moved on. To me, it’s never been anything serious. I just love having fun. And I hope he didn’t get his feelings hurt.”
••• After being cleared to play for the first time in the regular-season Saturday, Wilson Chandler was scratched Sunday.
Chandler was on a
10-minute limit Saturday. The Sixers said nothing about not playing him in back-to-back games. But the
31-year-old forward said he would not play both games of either of the Sixers’ first back-to-back situations. The next one will be Nov. 16 and
17, at home against Utah, then at Charlotte.