Sixers know putting Heat away won’t be easy
CAMDEN, N.J. » J.J. Redick has been in the NBA for 12 seasons, not one of which ever ended early.
Twelve seasons. Twelve postseasons. Twelve years of understanding the difficulty of what the Sixers will attempt to do Tuesday night at 8 against the visiting Miami Heat: Advance.
“At the start of the series, you are throwing jabs,” Redick was saying Monday at the training complex. “And why are boxing analogies so perfect in every other sport? But, no, you are throwing jabs. You are feeling each other out. And then later on in the series, you have to be able to throw a crushing blow. You have to be ready to finish them.”
Redick has been in 16 playoff series, only four beyond the first round. He knows how the rules change after the regular season, and how they change even more once a team is facing extinction. That’s what the Sixers could encounter Tuesday, with the Heat down, 3-1, in the first-to-four.
“A team like Miami, with their culture, their organization, their group of guys, they have fighters, they have warriors on their team,” Redick said. “Every game in this series has been tough. And there is no expectation that Game 5 is going to be different. “It is going to be a tough game.” If the first four games suggested anything, it was that Game 5, and any possible game beyond that with the Heat, is going to be rugged, full of grabbing, pushing, near-fighting, scratched faces and stepped-upon goggles.
But the Sixers won Game 1 by 27 points and Game 3 by 20, a hint that the series has not been as balanced as Redick has warned. Then again, the Sixers did need to win the fourth quarter, 27-19, to wiggle out of Game 4 with a 106-102 triumph that left them a victory from Round 2. And they were beaten the last time they were in the Wells Fargo Center, 113-103.
“Think about Miami’s last memory
Sixers coach Brett Brown says he’s been studying math and history, NBA style, all weekend. His conclusion: the Sixers have to defend their territory Tuesday at Wells Fargo Center.
here,” Brett Brown said. “And it was winning. And they did it with a certain style. And they continued to try to do it in Games 3 and 4. We get it. Once again, you don’t have to be a wise man to understand what is about to happen, what style they are going to try to play, especially when they are going to go home if they are not able to find a win.
“We understand that. That is the same messaging around every locker room in the NBA in the playoffs. And I’m no different.”
Joel Embiid did not play in Games 1 and 2, but played in the next two in Miami and is prepared for Game 5. He will continue to wear a mask to protect his recently repaired fractured left orbital bone. Erik Spoelstra will encourage his Heat to duplicate what it did in Game 2, beating the Sixers up, challenging three-point shooters and so exhausting them that, at the defensive end, they can be vulnerable to another late-career outburst from Dwyane Wade.
The Sixers, who have not won a playoff series since 2012, will attempt to parlay a rambunctious home crowd into an early lead, increasing Miami’s already difficult burden of climbing out of that muddy 1-3 hole.
“There are always points in these types of games, and I have been in a lot of them, where you hope you make it just too hard,” said Brown, many years a vital assistant in San Antonio. “Everybody is trying to break somebody’s spirit. It’s always the same thing. And it happens on the other side of it.
“I know Spo, who is a great coach. He will be in his locker room saying, ‘All we have to do is win a game and come home.’ They are going to live in a very isolated, zoomed-in world of, ‘Let’s just win a game. We won a game last time we were here.’”
With that, the Sixers were prepared to accept the general principle that winning a close-out game is more complicated than winning earlier in a series.
“When you study 3-1 series, and I have all weekend, you see different things that you are mindful of,” Brown said. “And I think the defensive side of things is always No. 1 for me. And then just the discipline of team basketball is a close second.” Particulars? “Stuff that I would prefer to keep to ourselves,” Brown said. “I look at it, I study it, I see it. And my intention is not to speak anything into existence. It’s all about trying to help the team win. We’re going to go into that game and we’re going to get better.
“I believe that if we think like that, play like that and coach like that, then that attitude, I hope, will equal that we are going to win.”