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The Philadelphia 76ers have an uphill battle in their Round 1 playoff series with the Boston Celtics. They will be without Ben Simmons who is one of the elite defensive players in the league and boy did they miss him in Game 1.
Celtics stars Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown had an easy go at it on offense as they combined to score 61 points. Now, the Sixers do have some capable defensive players in Matisse Thybulle and Josh Richardson, but there is only so much they can do. Thybulle has to defend Tatum and Richardson is locked into Kemba Walker.
That leaves the veteran Al Horford to defend Brown. While Horford is still a very good defender, it’s probably not best to have him defend a young star like Brown.
“I’ve watched the game slowly, studying Al and obviously others,” said coach Brett Brown. “I think that defensively Jaylen Brown had a great game. I think that he is in general a difficult matchup for anybody. So, defensively I put him in a situation that does have some punishment when you’re trying to guard such an athlete like Jaylen. We hope as a team, we can help Al more in that environment.”
Jaylen Brown when defended by Al Horford scores 12 points and shot shot 4/7 from the floor and 2/3 from deep #Sixers
— Ky Carlin (@Ky_Carlin) August 18, 2020
That then led to some offensive struggles where he had six points on 3-for-7 shooting and he had three turnovers. He finished the game as an overall minus-18 and that will not do in a series where Philadelphia really needs everybody to step up.
“Offensively, I thought that some stuff at the post where even when we got the ball, just making some sound passed out of the post was a ‘C-‘ yesterday,” Brown added. “Al was amongst that group and we hope to help him more with just better spacing around him where he knows where his outlets are when people come to double team him.”
For the Sixers to have a shot in this series, they will need to find a way to get Horford some help on defense against Brown. They could use Joel Embiid more as a backup defender since he is basically roaming the paint in this series with Boston’s bigs not being much of an offensive factor.
Whatever the case is, the Sixers need to figure out the correct adjustment when Game 2 tips off on Wednesday night. [lawrence-related id=36944,36941,36937]