Clock ticking on elusive ‘playoff disposition’
PHILADELPHIA >> As the 76ers reach the end of the regular season, they are confronted nightly with a message projected upon a large screen in their locker room. Each night it changes. The next time they are in for a home game, which will be Friday, it simply will read, “14.” That’s how many remaining chances they will have to get it all right.
That’s how many games they will have before the tasks grow a whole lot more meaningful, difficult and tense.
That’s it. And it’s not many. “We as coaches do our job and try to help remind them of that,” Brett Brown was saying Tuesday. “But I feel it. I don’t think the group needs my voice saying that all the time. I think they get it.”
They get it. That’s why they were able to muscle out a 10699 victory over Cleveland after being in a one-possession game with less than 30 seconds to play. And that’s how they were able to maintain their threeseed status in the Eastern Conference.
But they were sloppy, a little slow, inaccurate on three-point shots and not always quickly back on defense.
“The mood in the locker room,” J.J. Redick said, “was that we could have played better.”
It’s time for that. And it is especially time this season, one in which the Sixers were made over two times and haven’t had enough chances to blend. Even Tuesday, they played without Jimmy Butler, who was on a load-management pass. And though replacement James Ennis was excellent, shooting 6-for7, any reward of resting key players comes with a risk. By the time Cedi Osman completed a layup for a 97-96 Cleveland lead with 2:53 showing, that risk was real.
The Sixers need as many home-court postseason opportunities as possible to win games and get Josh Harris off their backs for a while. They did not need to slip into fourth place because they could not defeat a team that would end the night at 17-51. Yet at times, they seemed to take victory for granted … the 21 times, to be precise, that they were turning the ball over.
“I think it felt like that, too,” Brown said. “I didn’t feel it in the first period, when we held them to 12 points. But then they jumped into it.
“I thought our sandwich, our first and our fourth quarters, was OK. But in general, I thought that we could have been more urgent for longer and we weren’t.”
The Sixers won their final 16 games last year to roar into the playoffs as the East’s No. 3 seed, ahead even of the LeBron James-led Cavs. Urgency was not a problem. In fact, they needed more of it with Joel Embiid unable to play due to a broken face. In the encore, they are 2-0 in their final 16game stretch. But if it feels different, it’s because it is different.
“I feel like a lot of our guys last year didn’t know what the playoffs felt like,” T.J. McConnell said. “We had a few, but for the most part most of us didn’t know what the playoffs were like. So we were fighting for our lives for the last 16 games just to get that three-seed.
“I think we’re in a little different position this year. Not that we’re not fighting for our lives, but we have the three-seed and it’s ours to lose. And we just have to continue to play the way we have been. At this point last year, we didn’t have as many wins as we do now. So it’s different.”
Technically, the Sixers used that final spurt to peak last year, but their schedule was oddly favorable at the end. That doesn’t always happen. This year, they still have two games remaining against Milwaukee and one against Boston, and both are in the same frenzied race to the top.
“There is a playoff disposition that we need to harden up,” Brown said. “Our guys understand that we are getting to the middle of March. They understand completely. And they will see it on the board again: 15. We have 15 games left. And in not too long, they’ll see 1.
“That mindset, that disposition, I believe is amongst the group.”
That was evident Tuesday when, after the Cavs made it interesting, the Sixers scored 10 of the final 12 points. The fans, though, were not roundly convinced. After Cleveland used a 13-4 second-quarter flurry to earn a 38-37 lead, the Sixers took a timeout and were booed. Nor was it a throw-away boo. It was a loud exhale of disgust, and it was repeated, louder even, when Cleveland made its fourth-quarter push.
“They made a lot of tough shots,” Embiid said. “Give them credit. You want to come out strong at the start, and we did that. But then we kind of let up a little bit. But at the end of the game, we made a couple of defensive plays that led us to the win.”
That’s how good teams win regular-season games, and how others lose for the 51st time.
But it is not, as Brown would say, a proper playoff disposition.
“We’ve got to bring a little more sting and edge to how we’re playing,” McConnell said, “and let the chips fall.”
One look Friday at that number on the locker-room screen will remind them that those opportunities are running low.
To contact Jack McCaffery, email him at jmccaffery@21stcenturymedia.com; follow him on Twitter @JackMcCaffery