Sixers vs. Spurs: 3 takeaways from a near-collapse

3. Rotation weirdness

During Sixers Twitter’s scheduled meltdown, a lot of heat was directed at Brett Brown for his rotational choices. He decided to roll with Raul Neto at backup point guard (again), while Ben Simmons played a random stretch of center with five fouls midway through the final period. It’s fair to say fans are starting to sour on Brown, and rather quickly.

I’m here to play the voice of reason. To remind you that it’s important to not get riled up over rotation choices in a wonky regular season game when foul trouble is a looming issue. The Sixers are currently deploying a 10-man group. Brown plans to cut that down to nine for the postseason, and in the process, will probably shed most of the out-of-place lineups.

For those who are mad at Neto, fine. He’s not the most exciting player, and Monday night was not his best performance. But he was solid on Saturday, and there’s no real harm in experimenting ahead of the postseason. Brown is exploring the full extent of his options, and that’s the right move. He never claimed to have the entire rotation figured out after “training camp” a couple weeks ago.

Neto is the 10th man when Glenn Robinson III and Mike Scott are both hurt. Unless you want Brown to shovel more minutes onto the starting five or key rotation pieces in a regular season contest, I frankly do not understand the outrage. Neto is a fine stopgap point guard, and I’d argue he’s even a beneficial presence on offense more often than not.

Another area of contention was the significant amount of time Al Horford spent next to Joel Embiid. Again, I’m not sure where the outrage is coming from. Horford was never going to play only backup center. As long as he doesn’t share the court with both Embiid and Simmons — which he didn’t Monday night — then Brown is avoiding what needs to be avoided.

The reason Horford spent more time than usual next to Embiid was because Simmons found himself in foul trouble. The Sixers’ point forward picked up his fourth foul 16 seconds into the third quarter, and Horford is the natural replacement at the four spot (especially when, again, Robinson and Scott are out).

We should blame the front office for signing Horford, but Brown is simply doing what he can with a messed up rotation. I’m not here to argue Brown was even a good coach on Monday. But some of the reactions to his rotation choices — in a regular season contest dealing with foul trouble and sans two rotation pieces — were a bit too strong.