Trends, optimism growing already
PHILADELPHIA » Delivering players to April, May and June. Managing players’ loads. Checking boxes.
Somewhere in his growing sevenyear stack of to-do lists, Brett Brown has strived to achieve all of those things, using exactly those words, always with the same burst of sincerity. So it would be Tuesday in an exhibition against the Guangzhou Loong-Lions of China, a 144-86 walk-over of the highest order, that Brown would be able to hit that trifecta.
In order of importance, the Sixers emerged healthy, didn’t over-exert themselves and won. There was also the side-show of Ben Simmons, who had never made a three-point shot against NBA competition in the preseason, regular-season or playoffs, whistling a wide-open triple
over a drawn-in defense to end a non-competitive first half.
“He made a shot,” Brett Brown said. “Good. And personally, that was the extent of it for me.”
Long before then, Brown was in search of trends, leadership, execution and a player or two to bump a notch up on the unsettled depth chart. He would find all of that in a game that, for the Sixers, was not as sloppy as the final score would hint.
“I like the fact that we turned them over a lot,” Brown said. “That was a tremendous launching pad for running. I liked the fact that we had 35 assists and only eight turnovers. We were able to try some things. It gave us a chance to work against a zone a lot, and you don’t get that much in the NBA.
“The talent discrepancy is what it is. But there were six or seven things that we had a chance to practice. And that was a good thing.”
In the mosaic that should be a fulfilling Sixers season, the Loong-Lions Bowl quickly will be forgotten. But it was not without some hints of what was to come. Begin with the playing rotation, which has been about the only mystery to cloud an otherwise controversy-free training camp. With Brown having announced that Joel Embiid, Tobias Harris, Al Horford, Simmons and Josh Richardson would be his starting five, and with little outside pressure to consider anything else, all questions would be based on what came next.
Tuesday, Brown threw some early hints.
His starters having established dominance against a team basically with mid-level college abilities, Brown’s first move was to insert Matisse Thybulle andJames Ennis and pull Embiid and Richardson. That said he would be comfortable sliding Horford into Embiid’s spot early. It also revealed whatBrown had been so hesitant to say earlier: That Ennis and Thybulle, the first-round draft choice, were among the training camp winners.
“I wouldn’t say there was anybody who blew you away on a day-by-day basis,” he said of the camp. “There were always days that you’d say, ‘Wow, Trey Burke was really good today.’ Or, ‘Mike Scott came in and had a heck of a practice.’ And we all came away thinking Matisse was really good down in Delaware. Everybody had a chance to put their hand up and say, ‘Here I am, pay attention to me.’ And they would have been right. There were multiple people in the course of a six-or-seven-day period that were interesting.”
With camp closed to the press and public, there were only muffled signals about the on-court goings-on. But after impressing in an intra-squad scrimmage Saturday in Delaware, Thybulle excelled Tuesday, particularly at the defensive end, blocking two shots and making three steals while scoring 10 points.
With 20 players available, Brown faced substitution riddles. The decisions he made when it mattered, if it mattered at all, revealed that Ennis, Thybulle, Trey Burke, Mike Scott and Kyle O’Quinn have been tabbed to fill out an early-season 10-man rotation.
Brown, though, insists that jobs and assignments remain available. And considering that the Sixers haven’t played a major-league caliber team yet, why not?
“I intend to give people opportunities to earn it,” Brown said. “I have said, and I will say again, the gym will tell me.”
Tuesday, the gym revealed that Embiid is in top physical shape, that Richardson can be quietly effective, that Horford has deep versatility and that Thybulle will be a candidate to play in the All-Star Weekend Rising Stars Challenge.
That … and that Simmons may take the occasional threepoint shot.
“For us, it’s not like a huge deal because he has been making them in practice the last few weeks,” Richardson said. “I have only been up here practicing with the team for two weeks. But it was dope. And I was wondering why the crowd was standing up and everything, and I was like, ‘What’s happening?’ And I looked at the situation and I looked at the clock, and I was like, ‘Ah, OK.’”
The Sixers did some more full-court pressing and halfcourt trapping than they had in the past. In their first game post-JJ Redick era, they made a responsible 16 of 43 threepoint shots. And they took care of the ball.
“I want to get out to a fast start,” Brown said. “I don’t feel at all the rush to go play Joel 34 minutes. So how I am going to grow it, offensively or defensively, putting stuff in incrementally? I don’t feel rushed. And I am not going to allow myself feel rushed internally.”
There’s time. There are four more preseason games before the Oct. 23 opener against visiting Boston.
“I feel more than comfortable that we will have what we need to go play the Boston Celtics,” Brown said. “I feel comfortable that we are on track.”
One checked box at a time.