Brown looking for a home run to salvage series
Brett Brown, whose job it has become to keep the 76ers motivated as their season disintegrates, offered several sources of possible inspiration after a 128101 loss Wednesday to the Boston Celtics.
Some were reasonable. One was an outlandish reach.
“If the planet were normal, you’d be going back to Philadelphia,” Brown said. “And they would have done what they should have.”
Brown’s message was that, had the first two games been played in Boston, the series would still be on serve as it twisted back to the Wells Fargo Center, where his team was 292. With that, there would have been a reasonable chance for the series to turn tight in a hurry.
But in the all-neutral-site tournament that the 2020 NBA postseason necessarily became, there is, at most, a sliver of a home-court essence, if that’s what the adjusted faux crowd noise can be considered.
Maybe such mental gymnastics can work. Joel Embiid, for one, was not quick to buy in.
“If we were actually going to Philly, we have this thing where we don’t want to lose in front of our fans,” Embiid said. “But you can’t really look at it that way, that you are basically going home.”
Any other suggestions? “Well, we just have to take it one game at a time, one play at a time,” Embiid said. “We’ve got to be more physical offensively and defensively. We’ve got to keep the ball. We’ve just got to
keep on going.”
••• Matisse Thybulle received his first career playoff start, taking on the assignment of guarding Jayson Tatum. Al Horford was bumped from the lineup.
Thybulle was confident that his 11-month rookie season gave him the ability to mature as a defender.
“I have been able to make my decision-making process a little bit quicker,” he said. “I think I acted more instinctively before. And I still do.
“I can’t get frustrated out there. For me, it’s just about staying under control.”
Not that it was Thybulle’s fault, or that he was the only Sixer accepting a shift on Tatum, but the Celtics’ forward scored 33 points.
“I thought the guys were doing the best that they can,” Brown said. “Tatum is a handful.”
•••
The ankle injury that will keep Gordon Hayward out of the rest of the series should be to the Sixers’ benefit. But Brown long has had a healthy respect for the particular skill set of Hayward’s replacement, Marcus Smart.
“Gordon was such a versatile, two-way player,” Brown said. “And Marcus’s ability to make perimeter shots over his career has been on a steady, progressive, positive rise to the point where he is a legitimate
threat from the perimeter. So you combine that defensive toughness and his ability to catch and shoot, and I think their team takes on that kind of shape if he’s getting more minutes.
“I also think if he’s coming in and getting more minutes, it opens up rooms for (Semi) Ojeleye or (Brad) Wanamaker to come in.”
Hayward was averaging 17.5 points. He scored 12 points in Game 1. Smart delivered 10 points Wednesday.
•••
In Game 1, Brown technically was true to his policy of using a nine-man postseason rotation. But of the nine he used, Mike Scott played two minutes and Furkan Korkmaz played seven. That sure made it look like a seven-player workload.
“Playing that few wasn’t how we thought it was going to play out,” Brown said. “I matched minutes with Matisse and Josh Richardson, and because we really didn’t get in foul trouble, it did kind of play out like that.”
Before clearing his bench with 6:31 left Wednesday,
Brown gave nine players at least 14:44 of playing time.
••• Determined to improve the Sixers’ entry passes after that was a Game 1 disaster, Brown went early to Raul Neto, moving him ahead of Alec Burks in the order.
“We were just going to give him a good couple of minutes,” Brown said. “If you’re looking at how we substitute, there is a method to the madness. You are trying to see when Jayson is in the game or when Kemba (Walker) is in the game. And when they’re not, you come in with different things
“With Raul, we thought he could give us a quick burst. And we thought he played well. He came in, had an assist, made a shot and gave us a little spark.”
Neto shot 2-for-5. Burks, who had been one of the Sixers’ most reliable shooters in the Bubble, shot 1-for8.
••• Glenn Robinson III missed a third consecutive game, and the seventh in the last nine, with a hip pointer.