In midst of big slump, no panic from Brown
CAMDEN » A late-season game with playoff-seeding implications.
A postseason series, Game 7.
Any two-point game with two seconds left.
Those are some standard situations for an NBA team to be at the point where the Sixers have arrived. What point?
Ask Al Horford. “Our backs are against the wall right now,” the Sixers’ forward said Wednesday, after practice.
That point.
The Sixers have lost their last three, all on the road, the last by 31 points Monday in Miami. Their four-game road test will conclude Thursday night at 8:30 in Milwaukee, where the 43-7 Bucks have been the kind of team Brett Brown expected to coach.
With diminishing hopes for a major boost before the 3 p.m. Thursday trade deadline, the Sixers may be nearing a breaking point. Even Joel Embiid, the franchise’s “crown jewel” according to Brown, seemed exhausted, if not confused … and there are still 31 games to play.
“Still trying to figure it out, where I fit,” Embiid said. “It’s a work in progress. Try to take it day by day. And I am trying to get better every day.”
Six years and 51 games into a process, and Embiid is still doing the work-inprogress chant. Then again, the general manager, Elton Brand, recently said the same thing, so it’s going around.
Asked directly if the Sixers have an offensive identity, Embiid replied, “No, we don’t. Spacing is an issue. Sometimes we play fast. Sometimes we play slow. But at the end of the day, when you think about it, you get ready for the playoffs. But that’s where the game slows down. It becomes a halfcourt game. And that’s where we struggle the most.”
They’ve been struggling plenty, but they are on a pace for 50 wins. There have been worse seasons, too many by design. Just the same Wednesday, Brown found himself being hounded about why the Sixers are still trying to find their way, and even if he believed his players were still heeding his messaging.
“I do,” he said. “You’d be better off asking them. And I am not naive enough to not understand why you asked. But I look forward to coaching them. When it gets to an epidemic stage, this thing you’re talking about, I’ll admit that. I don’t at all right now.”
That the Sixers were overwhelmed by the Heat is undeniable. Less clear was whether it had anything to do with some of them being seen the day before at the Super Bowl, or, as reported, lounging poolside in the Florida sun.
“Coaches always want more, for sure,” Brown said. “But to cite the examples that they went to the Super Bowl or they went outside to read a book or a newspaper, if you came up with better things than that, maybe I could take to you a little better. And so, truly, I don’t see it like that.”
As he sees it, he can win with the players he has, regardless of what happens at the trade deadline, and no matter what chatter has begun about his job security.
“This is what I am worried about: Going to Milwaukee and being proud to coach the team, and that they compete the way they usually do. We’re the fourth best defensive team in the NBA. And that’s where I am at.”
That doesn’t necessarily mean is back was to the wall.
“As a coach, you always want to seek the perfection that you know is required to play at a championship level,” Brown said. “I’ve been doing this for 20 years in the league. And what I’ve seen is that it is all about the momentum, and, as you get closer, health. If this performance was 10 games out, we’d all have reason to talk. It’s not ideal at all. But for me to overreact, I get it, I live in the real world, I know what problems we have to fix.
“I get the visual that it presented down in Miami. But we have played 51 games in kind of funky terms with availability and injury. It’s not meant to be an excuse. It’s the truth. And it’s my job to piece this together with more than enough time.” NOTES » Josh Richardson, who has missed the last five games with a hamstring issue, has been declared “out” for the Milwaukee game. The starting guard is “nearing” a return, a Sixers spokesman said … With Richardson unavailable, Marial Shayok was recalled from Delaware and practiced Wednesday … Horford says the Sixers’ troubles have been addressed among the players: “There’s some stuff going on in our locker room and we’ll keep that internal.” ... The Sixers will return home Friday to play the Memphis Grizzlies.