Tag: Aaron Holiday

Players who didn’t extend and are headed to restricted free agency

Here’s a look at those players that will be headed to restricted free agency in 2022 after the rookie-scale extension deadline passed.

The rookie-scale extension deadline has passed with a flurry of extensions for the 2018 draft class. Eleven players were extended, including four players signing maximum extensions. These extensions combine for a total of $1.146 billion in guaranteed money.

Twelve players on rookie-scale contracts that were extension-eligible did not extend and it will be interesting to see how the 2022 free agent market shakes out for them. There are now only 4 teams that can generate significant cap space next offseason, which explains why so many players extended now. Here’s a look at those players that will be headed to restricted free agency in 2022.

Brett Brown upset with unacceptable defense, toughness from Sixers

Philadelphia 76ers coach Brett Brown is upset with his team’s lack of defense or toughness against the Indiana Pacers.

The Philadelphia 76ers are a team that is built on defense, speed, and length. However, the complete opposite happened on Saturday in their restart opener as they fell to the Indiana Pacers 127-121 and they allowed T.J. Warren to score a career-high 53 points.

Warren’s heroics aside, the Sixers allowed the Pacers to score a ridiculous 46 points in the fourth quarter and that was what did them in. It was troubling considering Indiana was missing All-Star Domantas Sabonis as well as former Rookie of the Year Malcolm Brogdon. Warren scored 19 of those 46 for Indiana.

As the team got back to practice on Sunday, that is something that must be addressed.

“For me, you look at the defensive intensity coming out in the third period. I liked what I saw,” said coach Brett Brown. “I liked watching Ben Simmons sit in a stance and get stuck into T.J. Warren at times. I liked watching J-Rich (Josh Richardson) stalk the Holiday brothers around. Then you fast forward and you say ‘A 46 point closeout period?’ That’s not acceptable. You’re not going to do anything of value unless you fix that so that’s where my head is at. You’re going to come in today and speak the truth and hold these guys’ spirit together, but the toughness question is a simple answer for me.”

Just for reference, Warren scored 24 points and shot 9-for-10 from the floor when defended by Simmons. It was an overall disappointing effort for a guy who is a legitimate Defensive Player of the Year candidate.

It was a game that showed that the Sixers need to get tougher as a team. They will not go deep into the playoffs or achieve their objective if they do not become mentally tougher and figure out their issues on a regular basis, then they won’t last long in the playoffs and that’s just the facts put plainly.

“The toughness aspect is and will always be, that is the thing that allows you to put a crown on some team,” Brown continued. “There’s no team that I’ve ever been around in 20 years of this league that you say ‘Wow that was a pretty team. They just outran, outscored, and out finessed everybody and they’re the champions’. I’ve never seen that once. In fact, it’s not even close.”

The toughness factor will affect two aspects for Philadelphia and that is their work on the defensive end and the number of turnovers they committed. Shake Milton, for example, had a rough night as he was bothered by the pressure put on by Aaron Holiday and T.J. McConnell and that is something that Brown would like to see fixed.

“There were seven of them that were like a moving screen, there was an offensive foul just driving to the basket, the turnovers that most upset me are like a sloppy pass or something like trying to get Shake the ball full court and T.J. mugs him,” Brown added. “The turnovers are probably eight of them that you just say ‘that’s not good enough’.”

Their next matchup is Monday against the San Antonio Spurs and that will give the team their next shot at figuring out their issues moving forward. [lawrence-related id=36010,35999,35982]

Sixers believe Pacers will be test for Shake Milton as new point guard

The Philadelphia 76ers are expecting a lot of pressure from the Indiana Pacers on Shake Milton.

The Philadelphia 76ers are implementing a brand new lineup as they get set to resume the season in Orlando and one of those moves includes moving second-year guard Shake Milton into the starting lineup as the point guard in place of Al Horford.

For the Sixers to achieve what they want to do on offense with Milton in the lineup and Ben Simmons at the power forward spot, he will need to understand that he must be better defensively and he has to handle the pressure that other teams will throw at him.

For example, in their second scrimmage game against the Oklahoma City Thunder, waves of defenders were thrown his way and he committed a couple of bad turnovers that will need to be cleaned up. Coach Brett Brown was happy that the Thunder did that as Milton will need some experience against that and the Indiana Pacers will probably do the same thing on Saturday.

“I think it’s as good as any test that you can find,” said Brown. “I feel that it’s just imminent. It’s not if, it’s going to be when, and you’d expect that if I’m guessing, straight out the gate, they’re going to jump him. You’re going to see defensive players play a lot of run-slide-run and slide-run-slide, full-court pressure, stuff that you would think you might see more in a college game than perhaps an NBA game, I’m anticipating.”

Indiana is a smaller team that is going to do their best to force Philadelphia into a ton of turnovers so they can get out in transition. They will send active defenders such as Malcolm Brogdon, Aaron Holiday, T.J. McConnell, and others. So this will be a nice test for Milton to see what it is going to be like for them moving forward.

“If I’m wrong, well then no harm, but it’s not anything that we feel we’re going to get surprised at,” Brown added. “How we handle that, I won’t go through now, but we’ve talked about it, we’ve practiced against it, and I think it’s going to extend to other teams, not just Indiana.”

The official tipoff for the NBA restart is at 7:00 p.m. EST for the Sixers on Saturday. [lawrence-related id=35884,35874,35865]