bball4life wrote:The more I think about it, the more pissed off I get. With crippled Oladipo, foul trouble Miles and missing Sabonis and Brogdon, TJ Warren was literally the ONLY player who could score for them. Yet our dumbass coach just let him do it. No adjustments, no trapping, no double teams. Just rolled over and took it up the backside.
We also lost Jeremy Lamb to an ACL injury back in late February. Honestly, I'm really surprised that we won this game. I would be happy if we simply kept it close but TJ Warren had other plans.
Look, I know that it really isn't my place to talk about your team but after reading your game thread, here are my two cents:
On Brett Brown: He is definitely not a good coach. Not everything should be blamed on him but he has definitely committed enough mistakes to earn the ire of your fanbase.
On playing Raul Neto down the stretch: Honestly, I kind of understand this one. Turnovers were a major problem for the Sixers in this game. I'd say that turnovers were the second biggest reason why we won the game (TJ Warren being the biggest reason, of course). Raul Neto played 21 minutes and didn't turn the ball over once. There is some value on that. Now, it is definitely true that Alec Burks felt more dangerous to me as a Pacer fan since he was shooting great from 3. But he also turned the ball over 4 times in 12 minutes. That's really, really bad. Going for Neto over Burks (or Milton who also turned the ball over 3 times) was an understandable decision. I do believe that going with Thybulle and having Simmons or Richardson be the main ball-handlers would be a much better decision but as I said before, Brett Brown is not a good coach.
On Horford: The -26 plus/minus is definitely misleading. Horford wasn't that bad and he was definitely not the reason why the Sixers lost. That said, he wasn't very impactful either. I never felt like Horford was a big threat for us in this game. He basically did what a role player is supposed to do. Came in for 20ish minutes, scored a bit, grabbed a few boards, made a couple of nice passes. The problem is that he isn't paid like a role player. He is paid like a player that's supposed to have a much bigger role on the team and, unfortunately, due to the construction of your roster, he isn't in a position to play that role. Perhaps he'll produce more as the time goes on. This hiatus was probably hard for a veteran like him so it could all be attributed to that.
On your team not running the PnR enough: Part of that is your roster construction, in my opinion. Embiid is an incredibly dominant post player. You can't really run the PnR when the big is posting up and Embiid posting up will almost always be a good play for the Sixers. The fact that Ben Simmons is not a willing 3-point shooters limits your spacing as well when running PnRs. Utilizing Ben Simmons as the PnR roll-man is a very intriguing idea that could potentially work but that would mean that Embiid would have to play the role of the floor-spacer. Embiid can definitely shoot the 3 but he's far more potent as an inside scorer. That's probably why you aren't running a ton of PnRs. It doesn't quite fit the play style of your star players.
On your team's roster construction: Your team definitely has a lot of talent on its roster but that talent isn't well-balanced. I believe that this is what VDT was alluding to in his post in the previous page. Let's start with your two stars. Their hot spots overlap. They are both at their best when they're taking shots right at the rim. That's not the only issue, though. The other issue, though, is that neither of the two can be the go-to perimeter guy that can both create with their ball in their hands out in the perimeter and make perimeter shots off the dribble if needed. Ben Simmons can definitely create with the ball in his hands but he won't shoot 3s. Joel Embiid can definitely shoot 3s but creating with the ball in his hands is not something that you ask out of your 7ft, 280 lbs Center. This problem extends to the rest of your starters as well. Tobias Harris can shoot from the perimeter and he can definitely create for himself off the dribble but he can't create for others. Horford, like Embiid, can shoot the 3 but he is a big and he shouldn't have main ball-handling duties. Josh Richardson could potentially be that guy for your team but he definitely wasn't that player today.
Basically, here's the main flaw on your roster. You need a main ball-handler that is a threat both to create for others and make perimeter shots. That player doesn't necessarily need to be a star but he does need to be a consistent performer for you. Without that player, the fit is simply off and no coach can fix that (unless you go for a triangle offensive scheme like it was suggested? I don't know, I'm not sure but it's a possibility).
Anyway, here are my two cents. I want to make clear that the intent of this post isn't to insult anyone here or to rub tonight's result in. I also want to make clear that I'm not claiming to be an experts on the Sixers. I am 100% sure that you know your team better than I do. These are just the observations of someone who watched tonight's game and read your game thread. That's all.
Peace