When you get booed off of your home floor four times in one game, it probably wasn’t your day.

The Sixers were atrocious on Saturday afternoon, and that’s putting it mildly. They couldn’t defend, couldn’t rebound, couldn’t get a loose ball, and couldn’t shoot the three. The personnel decisions were questionable and the effort was worse. It was one of those games you’d like stricken forever from your memory, like when the Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones use that mind-eraser thing from Men in Black and you instantly forget that aliens exist.

By far, the biggest disappointment Saturday was on the glass, where the Sixers conceded 19 offensive boards. Jake Layman had 6 himself, a career high in 28 minutes off the bench. Portland didn’t even shoot all that well, just 5-23 from three, but the combination of Enes Kanter and Jusuf Nurkic working pick and rolls just annihilated a Joel Embiid-less Philly team that ended up allowing 66 points in the paint and 19 second chance points.

Which brings us to the center position:

There’s no reason for Amir Johnson to be in the game. None at all.

He was a -10 in four minutes on the floor, getting posterized on the defensive end before chucking up an air ball three point attempt on the ensuing offensive possession. Johnson had not played in an NBA game since January 26th and was coming off a Friday night in which he went down to Delaware just to get some run. Jonah Bolden, who played eight first-half minutes spelling Boban Marjanovic, didn’t return to the floor until garbage time.

Brett Brown said several things about that after the game, beginning with a question from Rich Hofmann, who asked if the rebounding disparity was why he went with Johnson in the second half.

Brown:

It was Rich, and big ball wasn’t getting it done either. They had 14 offensive rebounds in the first half. I tried to look at Amir to see if that could help with some rebounding stuff. And it didn’t. When you try that sort of combination and that too didn’t work, big ball didn’t work. We really didn’t fix much with Amir. My instinct is, when the game is clearly leaving us, that I’m going small. We’re gonna switch stuff and I’m gonna try to speed it up and hunt threes. It still hurt us, but I think they only had five offensive rebounds (in the second half). Big ball hurt us. Really, as it relates, we can’t connect the dots with small ball and offensive rebounding, that’s not true. So yes, to your point, why did we, it was for those reasons.

The Sixers small look featured Mike Scott playing the five, and it’s true that the rebounding disparity didn’t change via the small or big look, but the defense and effort was pretty poor throughout.

I asked Brett if had any thought on going back to Jonah Bolden in the second half:

I mean it gets to a stage where I made a decision to go with Amir over Jonah. Most of that was driven for I hoped defensive rebounding purposes. When we went back with Amir, the game escaped us a little bit more than we had hoped, and at that stage, I felt like the small ball environment was going to be our best chance.

Follow up question:

Was there a part of him that thought about the fact that Amir hasn’t played an NBA game in almost a month?

Brett:

A little bit. But I also sat and watched him play courtside down in the G-League last night and I thought he looked good. I respected his effort. When you’re searching without Joel and you’re reminded of what Amir has done in the past, I’m not afraid to try to resurrect a 13-year NBA veteran. I’m not intimidated by the fact that he has not played the quantity of NBA games. I hold zero regret of giving him that chance.

I thought that was a forceful quote, and I get it. You trust the veteran to come back and pick up where he left off. I think that shows a lot of respect from coach to player.

However, I’m in the camp of people who believes that Amir just does not have anything left in the tank. He’s 31 now and playing his 14th year in the league. When your legs go, they go, and there’s a reason he came out of the rotation 20 some odd games into the season. Don’t go back on that now unless you absolutely have to.

Yes, I know Jonah Bolden has his rookie deficiencies, and this was a tough matchup for Boban Marjanovic, who can’t slide laterally in pick and roll defense like a more mobile big, but I just can’t come up with a reason why Amir Johnson should have been in that game. I would have preferred to see 23 year old Bolden get obliterated vs 31 year old Johnson getting obliterated. One guy is just beginning his career and could use the learning experience. The other is nearing retirement.

Derek Bodner asked about Bolden and the balance between the rookie learning curve vs. just having a tough matchup against two good bigs in Nurkic and Kanter:

Brett:

I think a lot of it is completely the newness of all this stuff we’re going through. I really do. I think as a simple example, when we’re in pick and roll defense, how many times can you not let the roller get behind you. Can you collapse and absorb the drive, and at some point in that charge circle area make a decision? He’s so bouncy and he wants to come up and it’s a lob fest with rollers going behind him. I think that type of newness and rookie side of Jonah stands out. What I expect from him going forward, I’m not sure. We’re studying this and feeling this. We ‘get’ Joel, and then it’s ‘now what?’ We went through the evolution of Amir, then in the playoffs we had Ersan. We went small. Ersan was our backup five. What does that mean for this year’s group? I don’t know. I’m sharing the experience because that’s ultimately where you have to make the decision to grow the team, guessing where you will end up…

I was gonna cut some video, but I don’t see the point. This was a forgettable game, a bad matchup with the Sixers missing their best player. If we do a sidebar on pick and roll defense, we’ll revisit this game and pull 4-5 clips as an example of what not to do. Plus, it’s Saturday night, and most people are doing more important things than reading about a shitty Sixers loss.

Other notes:

  • Saturday was Franklin’s birthday. Happy birthday, Franklin.
  • T.J. McConnell enters the game, very first play is a steal off an inbound pass and run out for a layup. I thought that energy might help kick start a sluggish team, but it really didn’t.
  • Terry Stotts reminds of that Nate Duncan guy who does the nightly NBA commentary on Twitter.
  • The Sixers couldn’t fight through a screen to save their life on Saturday. It was like watching an undersized linebacker trying to shed a Mike Alstott lead block.
  • Ben Simmons took two early jumpers in this game. He missed both.
  • JJ Redick had another bad outing, just 1-10 from the floor.

I’ll leave you with this: