Philadelphia 76ers: Brett Brown’s playoff plan for Joel Embiid
Philadelphia 76ers head coach recently revealed his plain for his All-Star center for the postseason in regards to minutes per game.
Philadelphia 76ers head coach Brett Brown revealed several facts in a recent interview. One of those bits of information being is how many minutes he plans on having All-Star center Joel Embiid per game in the postseason, a tip of the hat to Kyle Neubeck of PhillyVoice for the quote.
"“‘My ideal thing is I’d want to play him about 38 minutes,…I really would. In a playoff situation as the head coach, that’s my ideal number. In the regular season, you bring him along, and I think 30 was the number where he ended up…Joel is completely aware that kind of how he goes with his health and his fitness, we go.'”"
Well at least during the regular season, Brown did keep Embiid around 30 minutes a game so it stands to reason that Brown will try stick to his plan during the playoffs. If this was a normal season than I would completely be behind this, but because of the coronavirus outbreak, the NBA season has been paused for over two months, this isn’t the most viable plan moving forward.
There’s a good chance that Embiid won’t be ready for those types of minutes, even if there was a three-week training camp of sorts. Embiid was coming back from injuries near the end of last season and didn’t get time to get back into basketball-shape prior to the postseason. As a result, he struggled to play big minutes in the playoffs last year.
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Last postseason, he only averaged 30.4 minutes per game and struggle shooting from the floor. Granted part of his down minutes was because the Sixers handled the Brooklyn Nets pretty easily in the first round, but he still struggled throughout the whole postseason.
Despite being healthy, this time off from basketball will, in all likelihood, hurt his conditioning significantly. If the NBA decides to jump right into the playoffs after a training camp, then Brown shouldn’t start Embiid out by playing 38 minutes per game. There would be just too big of a risk of injury, plus the center may not be able to handle that minute’s load right out of the gate.
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Brown’s ideal minute’s count for Embiid would work if the season hadn’t been put on hiatus, but with it being postponed it be in Embiid’s and the Philadelphia 76ers’ best interest for Brown to slowly build up Embiid’s minutes as the postseason progresses.