Stevens calls 76ers ‘heck of a team,’ No. 1 offense sans Simmons

Recently-extended Boston Celtics head coach Brad Stevens was heavy with the praise of his team’s first-round playoffs opponent in the 76ers.

According to head coach Brad Stevens, the Boston Celtics have been planning for the Philadelphia 76ers as a first round playoff opponent for some time, which probably shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise.

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic hiatus was over, the Sixers were looking like a likely opponent, and the team’s hard work and meticulous research in the film room has put them in a position to succeed.

“We’ve been looking at Philly with the idea that there are likely opponents,” offered Stevens after the Celtics’ loss to the Washington Wizards Thursday afternoon,  “and there are a heck of a team.”

Unlike many analysts, Stevens sees a lot of strengths that could emerge despite the loss of point forward Ben Simmons to injury for the series.

“In the games that Simmons hasn’t played they’re the number one offense in the league, and the spacing, the shooting around, [Joel] Embiid posting [up], the ability to play both bigs with Embiid and Al [Horford], and then small with one of those two guys at the five and a bunch of shooters around them. It makes them very tough, super physical, [a] well-coached basketball team.”

While it definitely represents a knock to the 76ers transition game, it also opens up their rotations to use former Celtic Al Horford in a more natural role, and allows for a stronger half court game.

“Everybody talks about their frontcourt,” added the recently-extended coach, “rightfully so with [Tobias] Harris, Horford and Embiid, they’ve got a lot of good basketball players on that team.”

Prompted by a question on whether Horford’s familiarity with the team’s sets could pose a problem for Boston, Stevens deflected, instead noting that they’ve had plenty of time to study their Atlantic Division rivals.

“I think everybody’s pretty familiar with each other by the end of the season, but we’ve all changed a little. So, again, we’ve been working on potential playoff opponents for a while, as everybody else has — that’s not unique to us — and we’ll get ready to play on on Monday or Tuesday [August 17th or 18th].”

In the regular season so far, the Celtics have struggled, only managing one win of four meetings to date. But with the loss of Simmons and Embiid dealing with some minor aches and pains of his own, the Celtics are likely a slight to heavy favorite among most analysts.

The burning question on Stevens mind, given all of this?

When he’s going to be able to practice, of course — in this regard at least, the Indiana native is very predictable.

“I think the biggest thing that we would like to know and everybody else would like to know is which day we’re playing, because that would obviously impact our practice plans and all that stuff.”

For those of us who want to set our calendar for what is quickly becoming a new postseason tradition, we can’t say we disagree.

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