Sixers look to reverse road woes out west

Brett Brown says at least he knows the answers, to the 76ers’ struggles on the road. Fixing them is another story for the Sixers coach.

The problems away from the Wells Fargo Center have been a season-long frustration for the Sixers.

They are 9-21 on the road, where they have lost seven in a row and now embark on a four-game West Coast trip that begins Sunday afternoon at the Staples Center against the title-contending Los Angeles Clippers (40-19).

The Sixers, who are 28-2 at home, will also play Tuesday at the Staples Center against the Los Angeles Lakers and Thursday in Sacramento before ending the trip next Saturday in San Francisco against the Golden State Warriors.

Adding to the difficulty is that All-Stars Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid are both sidelined. Simmons, out with a nerve impingement in his lower back, won’t travel on the trip and is likely to be re-evaluated before the Sixers’ next home game, March 11 against the Detroit Pistons.

Embiid, who suffered a left shoulder sprain Wednesday in a 108-94 loss in Cleveland, won’t travel to Los Angeles while continuing to receive treatment. He has not been ruled out for the entire trip,

The Sixers said Thursday that Embiid was expected to be reevaluated in about one week.

Brown said it was easy to pinpoint why the team has struggled so badly away from Philadelphia.

“At least we know the answer, it’s not like we are scratching our head wondering what it is,” Brown said Saturday before the team departed for Los Angeles.

“We don’t shoot threes like we do at home. ... At the end of the day we are missing a lot of shots we don’t normally miss. ..."

The defense, he added, lacks bite and attention to detail.

All that is true. The Sixers are shooting 33.6% from three-point range on the road compared with 37.5% at home. The Sixers are allowing 110.7 points per game on the road, compared with 102.4 at home, They are also scoring 112.5 points per game at home and 104.9 on the road.

Brown admitted that his team hasn’t always handled adversity well on the road. That actually might be the biggest reason for the poor record.

“There is a human side, like when you are not scoring," Brown said. “... You can’t let your offense influence your defense. The defense needs to be a mainstay, the defense needs to be non-negotiable.”

As the record shows, that hasn’t been the case.

Furkan Korkmaz, who is averaging 9.8 points, echoed Brown’s thought about bad offense leading to worse defense.

“I think it is all about energy,” said Korkmaz, who is shooting .44.5% from three-point range at home and 34.5% on the road. “Team spirit sometimes on the road (is affected), we just play like, bad basketball maybe offensively and that affects our defense.”

So battling through the rough stretches is a major key for the Sixers.

Al Horford, coming off a strong game with 15 points, nine assists, and seven rebounds Thursday in a 115-106 home win over the New York Knicks, talked about a lack of focus at times on the road.

“We need to have more focus on the road and we have talked about it,” said Horford, who hit all four of his threes against the Knicks. “We have been better at times, but we have to be able to handle runs, we have to be able to handle when things don’t go our way, we have done that poorly, so we want to make sure we are better than that.”

Now the Sixers have to begin the trip with the two Los Angeles teams, who entered Saturday a combined 85-31.

Making matters more bleak, of the Sixers’ nine road victories, only one has come against a team with a winning record now. That was a 115-109 win at Boston on Dec. 12. The Sixers are 1-14 on the road against teams with winning records.

Following the game against the Lakers, the Sixers won’t face a road team with a winning record in their remaining nine road games. Then again, the Sixers are just 8-7 on the road against teams with losing records, showing that no road opponent can be taken for granted.