The Philadelphia 76ers are in the midst of one of their toughest stretches of the season. They knocked off the Milwaukee Bucks on Christmas Day in an impressive fashion, but since then they’ve lost four in a row after wrapping up the winless road trip.
They got back to work at practice on Sunday as they continued to work out the kinks and grow as a group. It was a long and grueling practice that focused mostly on offensive role clarity and what each player’s responsibility is on that end. It was a productive one that made coach Brett Brown delighted.
“I love it,” said Brown. “You feel like you’re coaching. You feel like you have a chance to coach. It’s almost that simple. You can have time on your home court and you have a chance to coach and for me that’s the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It’s really quite that simple.”
During the grind of an 82 game season, teams very rarely have the opportunity to get into the gym and work on things as a team in a controlled setting. So Sunday is something that can bring a team together.
“It’s important just because we can work on some of the things we need to get better at, to be in the gym more, and that’s that,” said Al Horford. “The only way you get better is, obviously the more games that you play, but also in practice continuing to work and you get these opportunities a lot of the time, especially with it already being past December so this is huge for us.”
It’s huge for a Sixers team that is still trying to work out a lot of the kinks. This team still has so much they need to work on and so much that they need to get down offensively. That makes this practice time that much more valuable and needed for this team to move forward. [lawrence-related id=22774,22766,22755]