"The Process has been delayed"

Sports   — Marcus Hayes
Young Sixers team isn't ready to compete with disciplined Celtics | Marcus Hayes
Updated: MAY 5, 2018 — 10:41 PM EDT


by Marcus Hayes, STAFF COLUMNIST  @inkstainedretch |  hayesm@phillynews.com
The Process has been delayed. Stymied.


The talented, callow Sixers gave away a second consecutive playoff game, 101-98, and, with it, a series. No NBA team has ever come back from a 3-0 series deficit.

This one won’t, either.

Not with these kids.

Not with this coach.

Not against a toughened, disciplined, well-coached team such as the Boston Celtics.

They’re just not ready. It’s just that simple.

The Sixers hadn’t sniffed the playoffs since 2012. The Celtics went to the Eastern Conference finals last season. At this point in the teams’ respective developments, the Celtics are too savvy, too deep, and too well-run for the Sixers to beat.

Rookie point guard Ben Simmons can’t contend with a team that engineers its game plan to expose his inability to shoot. Second-year center Joel Embiid, who played in only 31 games last season, lacks the repertoire and the refinement to carry a team for four quarters. Brett Brown, in his first playoff run as a head coach, can’t get them past a Celtics team whose two best players aren’t even playing. That should tell you all you need to know about how well Brad Stevens is coaching his club by comparison.

This sort of yardstick series is a necessary part of The Process, but that doesn’t mean it hurts any less.

“Joel’s gonna learn a lot. Ben Simmons is gonna learn a lot. It’s painful admitting that now,” Brown said. “But there is some truth to that. There’s a lot of truth to that.”

That said, Brown refused to completely blame his team’s youth.

“We are navigating through this. This isn’t entirely a youthful thing at all. Nobody write that,” he said. “Some of the matchups have hurt us.”

Sorry, coach, but we’re going to write that. The matchups hurt the Sixers chiefly because the Sixers are so young. They’re so young chiefly because The Process – begun five years ago by Brown, former general manager Sam Hinkie and owner Josh Harris – is clearly far from complete.

It took a jump shot at the buzzer to force overtime in Game 3 on Saturday evening, and, with 1 minute, 5 seconds to play into the extra session, it appeared that the Sixers might, in fact, continue their astounding accelerated development; that they might survive this round despite having lost twice, disparagingly, in Boston.

In Game 1, they blamed five-day rust. In Game 2, they held a 22-point lead but frittered it away as Brown miserly hoarded his timeouts.

In Game 3, they first threw away chance a win with 4.7 seconds to play in regulation, when JJ Redick’s pass never found Embiid and Simmons, who collided near the free-throw line. Jaylen Brown’s layup forced Marco Belinelli’s hero shot.

The Sixers then threw away the game thrice more, all in the last minute of overtime. Leading, 98-96, Embiid turned the ball over with 46.6 seconds to play, which let the Celtics cut it to one. Embiid then missed a shot with 20.8 seconds, even as he insists, “I was built for this moment.”

He was not built for that moment. He’s a work in progress.

Still, Simmons got that rebound – and, inexplicably, he immediately shot it again (and missed), instead of kicking it out and trying to run out the clock or forcing the Celtics to foul.

The Celtics then scored with 5.5 seconds to play in overtime on an inbounds play on which Brown ordered every player to switch on every screen, which led to small forward Robert Covington defending power forward Al Horford, who caught and shot under the Celtics’ basket. The Sixers still had 3.9 seconds, down by one, but Stevens correctly anticipated the in-bounds play. Horford anticipated a pass to Embiid, stole it when Simmons threw it.

Those plays will weigh badly in the Brown vs. Stevens conversation.

“I’m the coach,” Brown said. “I’ll take responsibility for all of this.”

That seems satisfying in the moment, but it’s wrong to blame Brown for everything. He didn’t build the team.

Rookie forward Jayson Tatum’s 24 points Saturday made him the first Celtics rookie to hit the 20-point mark in five straight playoff games. Sixers general manager Bryan Colangelo traded a future first-round pick to Boston so he could select Markelle Fultz, who has scored five points in these entire playoffs, has scored zero in the last seven games and hasn’t even played in the last five.

Covington is in his fourth full NBA season, but this is his first playoff run. He scored three points in Game 1, had just one point Saturday, and is 0-for-14 in the two games combined. He’s known as a good defender, but he often defends Tatum, so …

Dario Saric, who should have been rookie of the year last season, is shooting 37.1 percent from the field against the Celtics, more than 8 percentage points worse than his season’s average.

Brown is reluctant to blame his players’ inexperience for everything, and he shouldn’t, because he and Colangelo haven’t been perfect, either. But they helped these kids win 52 games in the regular season, including 16 in a row to end it, and they waxed the Heat in five to win the first round.

“I don’t like blaming youth.We made mistakes. It doesn’t matter how old we are,” Embiid insisted. “It doesn’t matter we’ve never been in this position.”

Of course it does.

“They showed up in the time when it was the time to show up, and we didn’t,” Embiid continued.

They will, of course. They will one day.

Sports — Mike Sielski
Ben Simmons' recklessness and overconfidence cost the Sixers in Game 3 | Mike Sielski
Updated: MAY 5, 2018 — 10:52 PM EDT



by Mike Sielski, STAFF COLUMNIST @MikeSielski | msielski@phillynews.com
Sometime soon – perhaps during this playoff series, if he has a moment to spare before the Celtics finish off the 76ers, or perhaps once the offseason begins – Brett Brown has to invite Ben Simmons into his office, close the door and sit down for a heart-to-heart talk about the basics of basketball.

Simmons possesses some of the greatest gifts of any Sixers player in any era, speed and vision and a willingness to pass that permeates throughout the entire Sixers team, with so much potential yet untapped. But he is still just 21, far from a perfect player, far from a finished product, and this series against the Celtics and Saturday’s 101-98 loss in Game 3 have been loaded with Icarus moments for him, with too many bad decisions born of recklessness and overconfidence.

When Brown pulls him aside for the kind of conversation a coach sometimes must have even with a player as precocious as Simmons, a replay of Game 3 had better already be rolling on the coach’s laptop. Simmons had been awful and overwhelmed in Game 2, scoring just one point in 31 minutes, admittedly lost in his own head because he’d finally encountered a coach, Brad Stevens, who had figured out how to build a wall between Simmons and the basket. The numbers suggest that Simmons was better Saturday – 16 points, 8 of 14 from the field, eight rebounds, eight assists – but those solid statistics don’t tell the full story of his struggles.

There was an embarrassing missed dunk with just more than five minutes left in regulation and the game tied. It was an uncontested attempt, Simmons as open as he would have been if the Wells Fargo Center were empty, and in his haste and desire to demoralize the Celtics, he didn’t take care of his top priority: making sure the ball went through the hoop. There was that inbounds pass in the final seconds of overtime, intended for Joel Embiid and stolen by Al Horford, that lacked the crispness and conscientiousness that every pass in a close, important game must have.

And there was Simmons’ most grievous and inexcusable sin of the night: With the Sixers holding a 98-97 lead, with less than 20 seconds left in overtime, Simmons grabbed the rebound of an Embiid miss and immediately flicked the ball toward the rim from the right baseline. The shot clock was off. There was no need, no good reason, to take any shot at all. Yet instead of holding the ball or passing it to a teammate or dribbling for a few seconds or doing anything else that would have burned so much precious time, Simmons disregarded the context of the game, made a mad grab for glory, and back-rimmed that put-back. Worse, when asked about the sequence, he was defiant, insisting that he’d do it again.

“I got a shot that I practice a lot,” he said.

You don’t regret taking that shot?

“You never know what can happen after that. Had that wide-open shot that I make a lot of the time. … It was natural instinct. I’m right next to the rim. It’s a shot I take every practice, every day. Every game, I take one of those. And I missed it. It’s happened. That’s the game. You miss shots; you make them. You win, or you lose.”

Look, one of Simmons’ finest qualities – and one of the most surprising, relative to his lackluster season of college ball at Louisiana State – is his competitiveness. He aims to kill all comers, and it can make him a sight to behold when he’s at his best. But there’s a place for intelligence and prudence, and that shot was wrong in every sense of situational basketball, and Brown knew it.

“If it was a point-blank dunk, you probably would take that,” Brown said. “But he didn’t do it. It’s true: He makes that all the time in practice. There’s 19 seconds left. If we had it again, you’d probably bring it back out and let them chase you and foul you and chew up the clock. But on so many levels, this being one of the examples, it’s the thing I see and feel the most and sort of internally hear the loudest: that our young guys, at times, look young.”

Simmons’ mistake wasn’t merely a matter of his youth, though. It was also tied to the weaknesses within his skill set. His refusal and/or inability to take and make a shot more than 12 feet from the basket has been an obvious Achilles’ heel all season, and it’s only now that an opponent – the best defensive team in the NBA, with maybe the best coach in the NBA – has exposed it. And in watching Simmons collect that rebound and hot-potato the ball back toward the rim, it was difficult not to conclude that the last place Simmons wanted to be in that moment was at the free-throw line. He made just 56 percent of his foul shots during the regular season, and his fourth-quarter free-throw percentage was 55.2, his worst in any quarter.

“I would have been confident,” he said, which is the sort of thing a young player says even if he wouldn’t have been. Yes, Simmons should be a marvel for the Sixers for years to come, but Brett Brown still has to shut that office door tight, look him in the eye, and level with him about his limitations. It’s the only way Ben Simmons will ever be the player he can and ought to be.

by Marc Narducci, STAFF WRITER  @sjnard |  mnarducci@phillynews.com
Before the Eastern Conference semifinal series with the 76ers, much was made of the physical toughness of the Boston Celtics, and rightly so.

Yet, the Celtics have a mental resolve that was tested to the limit during Saturday’s 101-98 overtime win at the Wells Fargo Center that gave them a 3-0 stranglehold over the Sixers in their best-of-seven series.

The Celtics took an 89-87 lead with just 1.7 seconds left in regulation after Terry Rozier stole the ball and fed Jaylen Brown for a layup.

Boston, which had lost six straight road games – the last three in the regular season and three in their first-round playoff series with the Milwaukee Bucks – was less than two seconds from taking a commanding lead.

Then, on the inbounds play inside half court, Ben Simmons found an open Marco Belinelli, who hit a turnaround two-pointer in the corner to send the game into overtime.

Most teams would be deflated at that point.

The Celtics response?

“We were not deflated, even a little bit,” said Marcus Morris, the former Philadelphia high school star at Prep Charter, who had nine points, seven rebounds, and three assists. “We were happy.”

Happy?

“Then we knew we could beat them in overtime.”

Even Terry Rozier wasn’t down, and he had the worst view of Belinelli’s last-second shot. Rozier was guarding Belinelli, and he tripped and watched from the ground as the shot went in.

“It was a moving screen, and I got hit and fell, and I have to do a better job with him,” said Rozier, who had 18 points.

An arena worker thought that Belinelli hit a three and fired off a confetti gun, which caused a delay.

Rozier realized the confetti was premature.

“I knew it wasn’t a three. That was my man who hit the shot, and I had to watch him hit the shot on the ground,” Rozier said. “I wasn’t worried about it being a three.”

Even that delay didn’t bother the Celtics.

“It took about 10 minutes to clean up the confetti, and I thought it was funny,” Morris said. “It provided a little more motivation.”

Not that the Celtics needed much more to be motivated about. The chance to break open this series was motivation enough.

So the Celtics kept their poise, but not the lead.

It wasn’t long before the Celtics found themselves down 94-89, when JJ Redick hit a three-pointer with 3 minutes and 41 seconds left in overtime. The Sixers still led, 96-92, after Redick hit a 15-footer with 1:44 left, but the Celtics kept charging.

“I have never been around a group of guys, and I have been around some really special ones, that can just turn the page,” Boston coach Brad Stevens said. “They just turn the page and play the game the right way.”

The Celtics didn’t even grab their first overtime lead until Al Horford’s layup off an outstanding inbounds pass from Morris made it 99-98 with 5.5 seconds left. Horford then stole the ball, was fouled, made both free throws, and the Celtics survived a missed Belinelli three-point attempt to earn the win.

“They made a tough shot to go into overtime, but unfortunately we have been there before,” said rookie Jayson Tatum, who had 24 points and was plus 24 for the game. “We know how to respond, and that is what we did today.”

The frustration on the road in the first round benefited the Celtics on Saturday in Philadelphia.

“I think we learned a lot from the first round, playing on the road,” Horford said. “We just stayed with it and kept fighting, and I felt like we made a lot of winning plays down the stretch.”

The Sixers thank God that they have youth and inexperience as an excuse for losing to the geezer Celtics who everyone knows are a much older team with Tatum, 20, Brown, 21, Rozier, 22, and Smart 23 playing key roles.

Brett Brown was an excelent hire for a team that wants to tank.  Losing for 5 years however instills a bad culture.

Brown should be fired at the end of the season.

worcester wrote:The Sixers thank God that they have youth and inexperience as an excuse for losing to the geezer Celtics who everyone knows are a much older team with Tatum, 20, Brown, 21, Rozier, 22, and Smart 23 playing key roles.

wow...just reading those ages...wow

I was surprised (and very disappointed) with Doris Burke (I think, if she was the female behind the Mike) during the game. The Sixers were playing well, lots of dunks and easy baskets and she said, "Take that Process!!", or words to that affect.

Seriously? Actively supporting tanking? Bragging it up in an important nationally televised game?

If the league wants to stop tanking, the people who comment during the game need to watch their words.

Hi,
To be precise, Smart and Rosier are 24 (born in March 1994). And they do play as greezed veterans.
After these playoff both Js will be greezers, too. But even now, looking how they play you wouldn't say they're 20 and 21.

AK

http://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/celtics/2018/05/05/game-win-earns-place-celtics-lore/W9yS5Ho1YJ2PO3vi4iFqNI/story.html

DAN SHAUGHNESSY
Game 3 win earns a place in Celtics lore

That’s how certain it was that the Celtics were going to lose.

It reminded me of the night Red Auerbach noticed balloons ready to be dropped from the rafters of the Los Angeles Forum before a Celtic-Laker Game 7 featuring Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell. Red made sure the Celtics knew of the Lakers’ celebration plans and the Celtics, of course, deflated the Lakers, then mocked the balloons.

In Saturday’s Game 3 on South Broad Street, confetti was released when the Sixers thought they had won and we had to wait seven minutes for the stuff to fall, and get swept away, before starting overtime. And then the Celtics drove a stake through the heart of Philadelphia.

Defending against Ben Simmons’s inbounds pass with 5.5 seconds left and the Celtics leading by 1, Al Horford stole the ball — John Havlicek style — to preserve a win for the Celtics.

It’s over. The series is (unofficially) over.

The Celtics defeated the 76ers, 101-98, to take a 3-0 series lead in their Eastern Conference semifinal against the Sixers. No team in NBA history has ever recovered from a 3-0 deficit and the Sixers won’t be the first — especially after the way they’ve lost the last two games.

On Thursday at the Garden, Philly blew a 22-point lead and lost Game 2.

Saturday was worse, much worse for the Sixers as poor coach Brett Brown morphed into a roundball Andy Reid.

Philadelphia thought it had the game won, but Sixers kept mismanaging the clock and turning the ball over, while the undermanned, relentless Celtics would . . . not . . . quit.

The Sixers thought they’d won at the end of regulation on Marco Belinelli’s buzzer-beating corner shot. But it was a two. Not a three. And so the game was tied, 89-89.

It was a sequence that would have demoralized some teams. The Celtics seemed to have won on Jaylen Brown’s breakaway layup with 1.7 seconds left. But then Belinelli’s shot splashed through the cords and the confetti fell from the artificial sky.

Confetti is a stupid idea unless it is a clinching game. Seriously. Can everybody in the NBA just hold off on the confetti falling from the ceiling until they win the NBA championship?

It did not bother the Celtics

“We didn’t want to dwell on that,’’ said Horford. “The whole confetti thing. I was like, ‘Man let’s go!’ When you’re at that point you just want to play. I wanted to play right away, so I didn’t care about the confetti.’’

Before overtime could get started, workers had to get the premature-celebration confetti off the court.

In overtime, the Sixers bolted to a 5-point lead and all looked lost again for Boston. But indomitable rookie Jayson Tatum (24 points in 41 minutes) kept scoring and Terry Rozier kept stealing the ball and Horford — invisible in the first half — stole the ball with 3.9 seconds left to clinch the game.

“We all understood what was at stake,’’ said Horford. “Just stay in the moment . . . These are the kind of moments that you want to be in as a basketball player. We just stayed with it. We kept fighting. I felt like we just made a lot of winning plays down the stretch.’’

Amen, Not-So-Average Al.

“Al, he’s our leader,’’ said Tatum (who is making a clear case that he’s a much better rookie then Simmons). “He’s been in every situation possible. We know we can look toward him to make the right play at the end of the game.’’

This was a classic, every bit worthy of Russell vs. Wilt, Kevin McHale blocking Andrew Toney, Red Auerbach challenging Moses Malone, and Larry and Doctor J with their hands at each other’s throats.

There’s no way the Celtics should have won, just like there is no way they should be winning the series. The 76ers were series favorites. The Sixers have been favored in every game. Wise guys in Vegas had Philly as 9½-point favorites before Game 3.

The Celtics, as you know, are playing without Gordon Hayward and Kyrie Irving, and Saturday they had to play without Marcus Smart after he fouled out late in the fourth quarter. And the Celtics had to stand around while confetti was swept off the floor.

The confetti could not stop the Celtics, just like the Greek Freak could not stop the Celtics, just like the overrated “Trust the Process” Sixers cannot stop the Celtics.

It seems that nothing stops these guys in green. And in a spring season that seemed lost when it was learned that Irving was done for the year, the Celtics are going back to the conference finals, probably for another matchup with LeBron James and the Cavaliers.

Maybe it will take LeBron to stop the Celtics. Or maybe the Green Team can make it all the way to Oakland for a showdown with the World Champion Warriors.

No matter what, it’s going to be a fun ride.

gyso wrote:I was surprised (and very disappointed) with Doris Burke (I think, if she was the female behind the Mike) during the game.  The Sixers were playing well, lots of dunks and easy baskets and she said, "Take that Process!!", or words to that affect.  

Seriously?  Actively supporting tanking?  Bragging it up in an important nationally televised game?

If the league wants to stop tanking, the people who comment during the game need to watch their words.

Gyso,
Very good point!
I didn't even think about it when she said that. I wonder if many people paid attention.
OTOH, the Process nowdays is interpreted as something different.

AK

Anyone seen Kevin Hart?

Steohen A blamed all 3 losses on Brett Brown.  He has obviously been outcoached but just about every team gets outcoached by BS.

The big issue I have with Stephen A statement is that it draws on the assumption that Philly has superior talent.  Sorry but I can't buy that false assumption.

The Celtics beat the Bucks because they have the better coach and the better players.  They are up 3-0 over Philly for the exact same reason.

The Process has proven to be flawed.

For example not only  is Tatum better than Fultz he is better than Ben Simmons and as Jason continues to develop his body as well as his skills and understanding of the game he will be considered as a too 5 best pick of all Celtics ever drafted.

The ROY plays for Boston.

steve3344 wrote:Anyone seen Kevin Hart?

Lol I’m gonna throw that little midget in a trash can

dboss wrote:Steohen A blamed all 3 losses on Brett Brown.  He has obviously been outcoached but just about every team gets outcoached by BS.

The big issue I have with Stephen A statement is that it draws on the assumption that Philly has superior talent.  Sorry but I can't buy that false assumption.

The Celtics beat the Bucks because they have the better coach and the better players.  They are up 3-0 over Philly for the exact same reason.

The Process has proven to be flawed.

For example not only  is Tatum better than Fultz he is better than Ben Simmons and as Jason continues to develop his body as well as his skills and understanding of the game he will be considered as a too 5 best pick of all Celtics ever drafted.



The ROY plays for Boston.

His drives the repoitoire of them were a thing of beauty, the dunks and finger rolls, who were all these idiots in predraft that labeled him not a great athlete? Both these guys Brown and Tatum might be the most athletic players in the league at their height right now, both put Andrew Wiggins to shame. This series their athleticism on both ends chasing the ball, covering ground, running and finishing/dunking jumps out on my TV screen, 76ers have no answers for them....and Jaylen isn’t even 100%

Let them keep patting those prima donna's on the back. Embid even had the audacity of complaining about the referring in the game!! That guy could have been fouled out in the first half the way he was playing. I won't call it physical, I will call it dirty, and they let him get away with it. He travelled half the time, near the basket, by lifting that pivot foot.

I think he has a way to go, needs to grow up and act like a pro. He is childish out there sometimes. But, what talent he has if he channels it properly.

I guess both of them are still very young but I am not so sure Simmons will be that great of a player in the long run. If he learns to shoot he could be a very good player but its not just a shot that is missing in my opinion. I think Embiid will be more of a force than Simmons five years from now provided he stays healthy.

Re: "The Process has been delayed"
New post by steve3344 Today at 1:13 pm

"Anyone seen Kevin Hart?"


Horford stuffed him for the Celts to go up 99-98.