Philadelphia 76ers: Game 2 win secures Brett Brown’s job future
There shouldn’t be any questions about Philadelphia 76ers head coach Brett Brown’s job security after the game two victory against the Toronto Raptors.
Brett Brown may not be a candidate for Coach of the Year, but it doesn’t mean he’s done a great job for the Philadelphia 76ers. He’s had to coach 26 different players throughout the regular season and had to make major adjustments after landing two All-Star level players in two separate trades. Yet due to last year’s postseason’s failure against the Boston Celtics, Brown has been coaching for his job this postseason.
In the past, I wrote about how Brown had the most pressure out of all the coaches in this playoff race. It didn’t help that general manager Elton Brand has put reaching the conference finals the bar (subscription needed for link in tweet) to which Brown has to meet with this loaded roster. Yet even if Brown doesn’t meet that goal, the game two win against the Toronto Raptors in the second round should put to rest that Brown doesn’t have what it takes to lead this roster.
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In game two, Brown made the proper adjustments to win, especially on the defensive end. He switched around defensive assignments which played to the favor of the 76ers. Putting Joel Embiid on Pascal Siakam, Jimmy Butler on Kyle Lowry, Tobias Harris on Marc Gasol, Ben Simmons on Kawhi Leonard and J.J. Redick on Danny Green has appeared to equal success.
The Raptors only scored 38 first half points and 89 points total for the game, so obviously Brown’s adjustments worked. Siakam and Leonard killed the Sixers in game one, so putting Embiid on Siakam slowed him down enough to help the 76ers win game two. It seems slowing down Siakam is a key to winning this series. Replacing Boban Marjanovic with Greg Monroe as Embiid’s backup has also worked well in game two and should continue be the rotation in this series.
Stealing home court advantage against the Raptors is something that shouldn’t be taken lightly by the team’s management. If the Sixers would have lost game two, there wouldn’t be much of a chance of the 76ers winning the series. However, with the changes that Brown was able to implement and being able to get a win off of those changes now gives the 76ers a much better chance of upsetting the Raptors.
dark. Next. Slowing down Siakam key to series victory
In the event that the Philadelphia 76ers do bow out of this second round and Brown doesn’t meet the conference finals expectation set before him, his job should still be safe. This game showed Brown can make changes in the course of playoff series and has coached this club well. This is in spite of roster fluctuation and injuries, he has the put the Sixers in position to possibly reach the conference finals.