After pondering options, Brown makes safe lineup choice

Even to the second week of August in a basketball season that began in October, Brett Brown was determined to shield as much about the Sixers as possible on Monday.

Aware that Ben Simmons would be unavailable as his left kneecap settles into its surgically corrected position, Brown was non-committal about his starting lineup until almost game time of Game 1 of the Eastern Conference quarterfinals.

Having earlier appointed Shake Milton as his point guard, Brown recently seemed comfortable with simply allowing Al Horford to replace Simmons in the starting lineup. But the dangerous nature of the Celtics, who are flush with perimeter threats, inspired the Sixers’ coach to give deep consideration to trusting long rookie defender Matisse Thybulle as a starter.

“You want it all,” Brown said, before revealing his starting unit for Game 1 in which an early Sixers jump only would settle into a 109-101 loss. “You can’t always get it the way you want it. But it will be revealed quite clearly how we plan to play this.”

By tipoff, Brown had made the conservative choice, using Horford, Tobias Harris and Joel Embiid on his front line, with Josh Richardson and Milton in the backcourt.

Brown stressed that it would be just as important to see who

finishes games as it will be to see who starts. Horford was signed away from the Celtics as a free agent for $109 million smeared over four years for a reason: Crunch time was one.

“If Al is known for anything,” Brown said, “it’s how he responds in playoff environments. And so, here we are, against his old team.”

Just the same, Brown made it clear in the hours leading up to the most important postseason of his head-coaching career that Thybulle would be a vital rotation piece.

“For me, it’s exciting, because I think that means I’ve earned a certain level

of trust from my teammates and from the coaching staff,” Thybulle said. “They trust me in the playoffs to do my job and fill my role. I have been trying to do that for this whole season.

“I think it’s exciting because my work paid off.” ••• Convinced they were closing in on fulfillment, the Sixers added two important trade-deadline pieces they were convinced could make a postseason difference.

One, Glenn Robinson III, was not available Monday due to a slow-to-heal hip pointer. The other, Brown knew would be vital to any success.

“I’ll be watching Alec Burks come in and try to maintain that lightning-ina-bottle scoring that we’ve seen since we’ve been here in Orlando,” Brown said.

Expected to play some backup point guard while providing some perimeter shooting, Burks arrived with Robinson Feb. 6 for three second-round draft choices, yet played just 11 games before the virus shutdown.

When Brown opened the lead-guard spot for auditions in the eight-game Orlando ramp-up, however, Burks sparkled, making 16 of his 28 three-point attempts. With his nine years of NBA experience showing elsewhere on the court, he was able to earn a spot in Brown’s nineman playoff rotation at the expense of Raul Neto. •••

Never recognized as a plus defender, Furkan Korkmaz is prepared to be challenged at the Boston end. He figures he’s seen worse.

“To be honest, this is not like the beginning of the

season,” Korkmaz said. “At the beginning of the season, everybody was trying to pick on me.”

Though Korkmaz had been something less than a defensive stopper, he was trending toward presentable in the summertime portion of the season. And with his catch-and-shoot capabilities and potential to go for a double-figure quarter, Brown cannot afford to deny Korkmaz playing time.

“We’re ready to go,” he said. “We plan for it. Not just me, but everybody. Whether somebody is attacking me or not, I will say, ‘I’ll just do my job, I’ll just do my best.’ It doesn’t matter, offensively or defensively. I was in this stretch early in the year, but I changed my mentality a little bit.”