The Philadelphia 76ers find themselves now in an 0-2 hole to begin the 2020 NBA Playoffs and it is mostly due to the fact that they are having issues against Jayson Tatum.
After scoring 32 points in the series opener, Tatum followed that up with 33 points and he drilled eight shots from deep to lead the Boston Celtics to a 128-101 win in Game 2. Not only that, but Jaylen Brown had another 20 points and Kemba Walker had 22 as the Celtics were able to get easy shots all night long.
“We just got to be aggressive. We got to be physical,” said Joel Embiid. “They got a bunch of guys that can put it on the floor and can score the ball, but you got pick your poison.”
A big lingering issue with this team is that coach Brett Brown would rather have Embiid sit back in the paint on pick-and-roll defense in order to protect the basket. However, that allows the Celtics to just walk into any jump shot they prefer and Embiid does not like that.
“Jayson has been killing it so you got to find a way to get the ball out of his hands,” the big man added. “I know they want me to sit back on the pick-and-rolls and protect the basket, but they’ve been coming up and just making a lot of threes so we got to make adjustments. Either I’ve got to come up and we got to scramble all over the place, but something’s got to change. It feels too easy and they’re just walking into those shots. We got to fix that.”
The issue with having Embiid come up and apply pressure on the ball-handler is that with him coming up, that now exposes the basket. That opens up backdoor cuts for the Celtics and it allows putbacks for Daniel Theis and Enes Kanter if Embiid is not back in rebounding position.
“I think that you have to be smart about it,” said Brown. “The obvious answer is to bring 7-foot-2 out the paint and up so there is some level of pressure. The punishment behind it is real. I think that if you look at how many baskets they scored out of the pick-and-roll as far as threes go, I think Tatum had three and I think Kemba had one. I feel like in the second half, we did do that with some success, but it wasn’t enough.”
The Sixers will now have to go back to the drawing board and get ready for Game 3 on Wednesday. The turnaround in this series is quick as these games are every other day. They need to make sure they are prepared or else their season will be theoretically over. [lawrence-related id=36987,36984,36972]