It was bad enough that the Philadelphia 76ers were down Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid, but to lose another starter? What did the Sixers do to anger the basketball gods?
The Sixers lost Josh Richardson in the first half to what was initially diagnosed as a nose contusion, but he was then diagnosed with a concussion. He scored nine points in 10 minutes of Sunday’s 136-130 loss to the Los Angeles Clippers and it’s a shame because he started well for the team.
However, this is nothing new for coach Brett Brown. He has been dealing with star players being hurt before so this is not anything he has not seen before.
“You just move on, you move on,” lamented Brown on Sunday afternoon. “You look down the bench and you’re like ‘Who else can come in?’ and boom, next man up. It’s the way that it should be.”
Brown has dealt with injuries to guys like Simmons and Embiid as well as, going further back, Nerlens Noel and Michael Carter-Williams before them. Injuries are, unfortunately, part of the game and Brown is ready to lead the group.
“As long as nobody tells me they’re season ending things, I’m quite used to dealing with this type of stuff,” he added. “I want to make sure the guys look back at me and understand the confidence I have in the team and I’m with them and we’re trying to extract whatever we can together out of the environment that we have and move the program forward.”
For Richardson, he will now have to try and recover quickly. It is a concussion at the end of the day so the team won’t rush him. It is all about making sure he’s ready to go when he, himself, is ready.
“J-Rich will be fine, he got hit in the nose, we’ll learn more about it, and you just brought in Mike Scott,” the coach continued. “I thought he was great, move Tobias (Harris) over to the 3, Shake (Milton) has 39, things like that are why you coach 14 guys.”
The Sixers take on the Los Angeles Lakers on Tuesday to continue their road trip. [lawrence-related id=26900,26891,26883]