Brett Brown making the most out of a limited roster
The Celtics have been a bad matchup for the Philadelphia 76ers. Brett Brown is doing the best he can.
As heavy favorites coming into the second round, the Philadelphia 76ers‘ struggles against the Boston Celtics have been nothing short of disappointing. A red-hot team seemingly ran into a wall, losing three straight to a group missing its two best players.
Of course, with the Sixers losing games in the playoffs, people will naturally find ways to overreact. What better way to do so than to call for the head of the man who got them to this point: Brett Brown.
After years of building the Sixers’ culture from the ground up and leading a young, inexperienced team to 52 wins, people are blaming Brett Brown for their series deficit. Some rather extreme folks have said he needs to be fired.
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That’s flat-out dumb. Brown is a borderline elite coach, and taking that kind of leap after a young team struggles in the postseason is ill-advised.
Have there been certain points in this series where Brown’s decision-making was questionable? Yes. Should he have called a timeout during that back-breaking stretch in Game 2? Probably.
But, even through all that, one thing is abundantly clear: the Sixers are still a few pieces away from being legitimate contenders. That’s not an indictment on Brown (or even Colangelo), just an honest evaluation of where the roster stands and what Brown has to work with.
The Celtics are a particularly bad matchup with a coach that’s capable of exploiting the Sixers’ biggest weaknesses.
Defensively, the Sixers have struggled to contain Boston’s athleticism on the perimeter. Just about everybody in the Celtics’ rotation can handle the ball, allowing them to hunt down Marco Belinelli or Dario Saric on switches an take advantage.
They’ve also kept Joel Embiid out of the paint for stretches, making him hover around Al Horford on the perimeter and opening up clean driving lanes to the basket. Even Aron Baynes has hit a few threes, which doesn’t make things any easier.
On the offensive end, the Sixers have found themselves with a completely ineffective Ben Simmons. He found some life in Game 4, but the Celtics’ three wins all came in games in which Simmons was mostly a non-factor.
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When Simmons is avoiding the paint and refusing to attack smaller guards, there isn’t much Brown can do. He can draw up certain plays to get Simmons going toward the rim, but he has to take advantage of those opportunities.
Belinelli and Covington haven’t been hitting shots, but they’ve been important parts of the Sixers’ offense this season. If you take Belinelli out of the game plan entirely, that’s one less shooter the Celtics need to keep track of while Simmons and Embiid control the ball.
Despite all those issues, Brown made an impressive adjustment in Game 4, inserting T.J. McConnell into the starting group and generating some much-needed dribble penetration. That adjustment alone helped the Sixers stave off elimination and push things back to Boston for a Game 5.
It is pretty telling, though, that Brown’s best possible rotational adjustment in the playoffs is starting T.J. McConnell. That speaks to the limitations of this current group more than anything else.
The Sixers are a good team that has vastly under-performed in the second round, but calling for Brett Brown’s job simply isn’t the correct reaction. Boston is a tough matchup that is uniquely capable of shredding the Sixers’ biggest weaknesses.
Brown has had the unenviable task of trying to counteract the Celtics’ well-executed game plan. We’ll see what else he cooks up as things head back to the TD Garden.