While I wouldn’t overreact to one game, I actually agree with Kenny and Chuck that there are reasons for Philly to be concerned.
First of all, they finished the season 27-5, mostly beating up stank/injured teams. Through their first 50 games, they were a .500 team. People want to anoint them, but they went on a nice run yet you’ll be hard-pressed to find more than a handful of good wins in their streak.
But back to tonight, we are not the Heat. This is an athletic team that plays defense and makes the extra pass. We make them work for their offense; we close out, we rotate, and we switch effectively. Offensively, we can shoot and we have guys that can put the ball on the floor and make the right play.
Horford can drag Embiid away from the basket and Rozier can make Simmons work on defense. Without both of them on the court, they have trouble facilitating.
They came out a little flat but they also got soundly outplayed in the second half too. I know people want to use rust as the reason, but if they fell behind early and just ran out of time makin it up, I’d buy that. We outplayed them for the majority of the game.
Horford on offense and Smart on defense are the keys here, and of course getting Brown back healthy.
CBS said he wasn’t impressed with our play tonight and he’s right. They didn’t play that well, but we didn’t either. We could improve in a lot of areas and get back a very versatile, athletic two-way wing.
