Black Mage wrote:As some will recall, I have been a big Brett Brown supporter throughout the entire process and the past two years. However, I have seen enough this year to come to one conclusion. Brett's preferred offensive scheme of "free flowing" offense is a 4th quarter failure and might be a playoff killer to boot.
Brett has stated repeatedly over the years that he does not like to call plays. He wants his players to run the offense freely and to know by instinct where to be, how to move and get open. That's great for run of the mill first three quarters of a regular season game. However, I think what we have seen is that type of offense fades quickly when defenses tighten up and defenders start to key in on our guys. This is even more true in the playoffs when teams focus solely on stopping you.We don't have ideal guys to run that offense when we have one or two non-shooters on the floor. Those dribble hand offs to JJ start to fail as refs swallow whistles and grabbing gets a bit more freedom. Plus, with TJ or Simmons there's one and sometimes two free defenders to help bottle up our other offensive weapons. This causes our guys to hesitate, tighten up, turn the ball over or just get lost trying to find that "free flow" Brett wants. I think Brett needs to stop being so stubborn and try calling plays for at least 75 to 80% of a 4th quarter and see if having structure with designed plays helps our guys execute better.
He also dislikes traditional offensive schemes such as Iso's and/or PnR. In fairness, he hasn't had a good enough ball handler with a respectable jump shot to try Iso plays at the arc. Moreover, for all of Ben's passing skills the only player he really played well with in PnR was Richaun Holmes. So for a few years I gave Brett a pass. However, he has Jimmy now and he is an excellent PnR player. Yet Brown rarely calls that play. He rarely calls a Butler Iso. He almost exclusively pairs Jimmy together with Ben in rotations and rarely has Jimmy and Embiid on the floor without Ben also in the picture. Would it kill Brown to give a 4 min run to just Jimmy and Embiid with Jimmy acting as the primary playmaker? In the playoffs they are going to need Jimmy and Embiid to be a 2 man game and right now those two barely get to play that way.
I still think Brett can be a good coach, but in order to do so he needs to stop being stubborn and bend on his offensive philosophies. Even Pop recognized that a Parker or Manu PnR or Iso was a good thing in the guts of a game. Yes, passing is great, but sometimes your guys need a set play using a traditional offense to get that bucket.
Do you agree or disagree?
I dont think the problem is Brown or the plays. If anything the team (and Brown) has overachieved the last years. There are only so many things he can do on the basketball court, if there was some highly efficient play, be it iso pnr or whatever, the players would have figured it out even without Brown.
The truth is that the Sixers have a lot of young, inexperienced and with holes in their game players, and they have no player to anchor the offense at the highest level. That is they dont have a player that you give him the ball and he will either score or create an open shot. Embiid is the closest but his game has still weaknesses and the roster is not built around a heavy post play as you need to surround him with willing and capable shooters. There is a reason championships are generally won by the top 10-15 GOAT players.
Still Brown has handled everything until now better than expected (in the tanking era and now) and the team has been overachieving the last two years, so maybe the best course of action atm, in the absence of any obvious trades or better coaches available, is just to be patient.
