The Philadelphia 76ers are the team that needs to make a serious adjustment heading into Game 2 after they dropped Game 1 on Monday night, but a major injury to the Boston Celtics might force the Sixers to change their starting lineup as a whole.
The aforementioned injury is to Celtics forward Gordon Hayward who was diagnosed with a Grade 3 ankle sprain and he will miss the rest of this series. Boston now has to turn to its depth in an effort to replace one of its main contributors on offense.
As fas as the Sixers are concerned, coach Brett Brown has a few things on his mind, and one of them is who the Celtics will turn to in place of Hayward. That then influences him to change his starting lineup.
“One, who will inherit that starting position because it may influence what we do as far as how we start the game,” said Brown. “I think everybody saw where the lion’s share of the defensive minutes were distributed to for (Jayson) Tatum and Kemba Walker, but that’s the first thing.”
If Boston were to turn to a guy like Marcus Smart, that could cause Brown to go a little smaller and move Al Horford back to the bench. These are all ideas that are on the table moving forward in this series.
“Secondly, trying to get out in front of projecting what does that mean,” the coach further explained. “You would assume Marcus Smart as an example would have far more responsibilities, minutes, those types of things. So just trying to look out a little bit further on both a starting lineup and the ripple effects it’s going to have on others.”
However, the idea that Matisse Thybulle and Josh Richardson had some success on defense is what interests Brown the most. He wants Richardson on Walker and Thybulle with Tatum.
“I think at that point, it’s all on the table,” Brown added. “I’m very influenced by and large with just trying to match minutes. I thought Matisse did a great job. I thought J-Rich was J-Rich and we need them to be elite defensively on those two great scorers so anything’s on the table once we’ve learned this Gordon Hayward news.”
Thybulle did have success against Tatum in Game 1 holding him to 2-for-9 shooting and a block.
Matisse Thybulle defended Jayson Tatum for 6:40 last night. Tatum scored 4 points shot 2/9 and Thybulle blocked him once. Against all other defenders, Tatum had 28 points on 8/12 shooting. #Sixers
— Ky Carlin (@Ky_Carlin) August 18, 2020
Whatever the case comes out to be, the Sixers will need to play much cleaner basketball in Game 2 to get back in the series. [lawrence-related id=36928,36920,36917]