Facing a top team in the league is never an easy task. It gets even tougher when you’re down your two top players plus a guy who has established himself as your leader.
That is the task that the Philadelphia 76ers have faced to begin this four-game road trip as they faced off against the Los Angeles Clippers and the Los Angeles Lakers.
They put up a good fight in both games, but they eventually led to losses, but coach Brett Brown says he loves the challenges. In fact, he loves them a lot.
“You know what? Sadistically, we love it,” Brown said. “You really want to figure out what life looks like in the playoffs? Do what we just did. Go play the Clippers on the road, play the Lakers on the road, and I like it.”
To Brown’s point, both of those teams are teams that have a real shot at contending for a title. The Sixers faced both of those teams down Ben Simmons, Joel Embiid, and Josh Richardson and they did not back down. In fact, they were able to find some positives in the games.
“It was always going to be a difficult game, but my criteria is ‘Did we get something out of it? Did we move the needle a little bit?’ and I believe that we did,” Brown continued. “To get something out of Glenn Robinson was big tonight. I think for the most part, save for that time in the second period, I like what I saw. It was an eight-point game, we missed a few threes that could have cut it I think to six, late in the game and there were stages where you think the game is moving in the wrong way and, to the guys’ credit, they really didn’t roll over.”
To have that energy and sense of urgency, that is big for this team. They have to be able to dig deep and battle back from any deficit in the playoffs. For this team, that means having to be able to win games on the road. They have not been able to figure that part out yet, but there are some positives to take from the first two games of this trip.
“This is what you have to deal with,” the coach continued. “The intensity that the Lakers came out with in the second period, after we had a pretty good first period, that is playoff physicality. That is playoff defense and offensively, we didn’t respond to that. We got stood up, we got bent over, we threw things away, things got turned over, we didn’t go body-body ball, they took balls from us, you can’t do that.
Coming on the road against Kawhi (Leonard) and Paul George and then Anthony Davis and LeBron (James), I love it because it’s real.”
The playoff intensity will continue on Thursday as they face a Sacramento Kings team that is trying to make their first playoff appearance since 2006. They will need to answer the bell and continue to fight in that one and hope they can come away with a win. [lawrence-related id=27057,27047,27039]