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]