After two nightmare games at home against the zone defense, the Philadelphia 76ers were able to figure it out and fight through to score 125 points in a win over the Washington Wizards. Philadelphia shot 14-for-33 from deep and they looked like themselves again a bit.
Coach Brett Brown has had the challenge of figuring out how to help his team attack that zone and on Saturday, he and his team found the right formula.
“I thought they did a really good job of executing stuff, going to floor spots, setting screens, understanding who to pick on in the zone,” said Brown. “Understanding like after you get somebody to play you, now if you can find somewhere in the scheme of things to others to make a decision like ‘who’s got this guy?’ and you get into gaps and seams and from that point, the world makes sense.”
Brown has made it a point in the past to grow Ben Simmons as a point guard and allow him to really run the offense allowing him to call plays on the fly. On Saturday, Brown wanted to take more control in order to get the team more organized.
“I called a lot of plays more than I normally do and just trying to get us into an organized environment,” he added. “I give them a lot of credit for executing just plays that would expose zone rotations.”
Simmons didn’t think that Brown called any more plays than usual, but he did agree that the team was a bit more under control than they were in previous games.
“I didn’t think there were that many more plays called,” said Simmons. “I think that we’re just more structured and organized before we got into anything.”
The Sixers now hit the road on Monday to face the Detroit Pistons as they have finally been able to break the zone defense that had bothered them. [lawrence-related id=21829,21812,21791]