Brett Brown confident Sixers can bounce back vs. Raptors
After a 36-point loss Tuesday, coach Brett Brown gave his team off Wednesday.
Brett Brown’s talk and actions can overflow with confidence.
The 76ers coach chose to give his players Wednesday off on the eve of their most important game of the season.
His team finds itself in a critical spot heading into Game 6 of the Eastern Conference semifinal series against the Toronto Raptors.
Toronto takes a 3-2 series lead into the matchup at 8 p.m. Thursday at the Wells Fargo Center. The Sixers must win in order to stay alive. One would assume they have a lot to work on based on their 36-point loss Tuesday in Game 5 in Toronto.
“The notion that you are down and out is not even a part of our mind-set,” Brown said Wednesday.
The Sixers have shown an ability to play good basketball and beat the Raptors in this series. They’ve also shown an ability to be tough to beat at home in the regular season, going 31-10. In the postseason, however, they are only 3-2.
“If you look at last year, there were two examples of teams coming back from 3-2 deficits,” Brown said of the Cleveland Cavaliers and Golden State Warriors in the conference finals. “... Everybody right now is just excited to play again, especially play again here in Philadelphia.”
Even though the Cavs and Warriors successfully battled back from 3-2 deficits, history is not on the Sixers’ side.
Dating back to 1984, Game 5 winners of conference semifinals series that were tied 2-2 have gone on to advance 86.8 percent of the time.
The Sixers might need to get better efforts from Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid if they expect to force a Game 7.
Embiid had one of his worst games of the season while battling an upper respiratory infection. He was a total nonfactor after being cleared to play right before the game.
The two-time All-Star center finished with 13 points on 5-for-10 shooting, including making 2 of 6 three-pointers. Embiid also had six rebounds, but his eight turnovers matched a season high.
He has actually struggled most of the series.
The 25-year-old had 33 points, 10 rebounds, and 5 blocks in the Sixers’ 116-95 victory in Game 3. However, he has averaged only 13 points on 14-for-42 shooting (33.3 percent). Embiid also had 19 turnovers in the last four games.
Simmons also had a tough time maintaining possession of the ball Tuesday. The All-Star point guard had five turnovers to go with seven points, seven rebounds, and four assists. He took just five shots in 25 minutes, 9 seconds of action, with only one of them coming after intermission.
“As a I said to the media last night, nobody is hanging their head or second-guessing anything,” Brown said. "We feel great about sort of what we’re trying to do defensively, and things we can for sure do better offensively. We are excited to come back to Philadelphia. "