Alright.

Let’s talk about Brett Brown and everything else that went wrong last night.

I’ll frame the article with this disclaimer:

One of the things that bugs me about Philadelphia sports fandom is that we tend to narrow our focus when looking to assign blame. For whatever reason, we insist on pinpointing one specific thing or one specific person when seeking accountability or trying to explain what went wrong over the course of a 60 or 48 minute game. We do it in football, when we say “the offense deserves the blame!” or “the defense deserves the blame!” or “the refs deserve the blame!” While identifiable mistakes might tip the scales towards one or more of those phases of the game, you know as well as I do that there is typically blame to go around when you suffer a bad loss in any sport. It’s very rarely ever on just one person or boiled down to one play.

To that point, there was a lot that went wrong in Chicago last night.

I watched the final five minutes of the game three times this morning and wrote down these bullet point problems:

  1. Robin Lopez was getting offensive rebounds against Mike Scott, who was playing center in the Sixers’ small ball look.
  2. The field goal drought went from 7:10 on the clock to the 3:29 mark. The only points they scored in that time frame were two Ben Simmons free throws.
  3. JJ Redick bad pass turnover looking for Scott
  4. some easy pick and roll switches put Zach LaVine in mismatches against Scott (the bigger, macro-level issue here is that the Sixers still really struggle against good guards)
  5. Redick misses wide-open three after Harris offensive rebound
  6. There was a defensive sequence where Redick got switched onto Lauri Markkanen, Tobias Harris got lost, and Otto Porter was wide-open for a game-tying three-pointer.
  7. Ben Simmons offensive foul while trying to set a screen (kind of a weird call)
  8. Butler offensive foul (I don’t know if this was an over the back, I thought he actually made a good play on the ball)
  9. Simmons lost the ball while driving 1v3 for some reason after a brilliant steal on the defensive end
  10. Scott’s foul on Lopez, which I’m not sure was a foul. He did get some forearm on him before the shot was taken.
  11. Blown switch on LaVine’s game-winning basket
  12. I didn’t like the final play call (the first one). Not sure if Ben was supposed to go to Harris there, but Butler was the target, he was closest to the rim, and his momentum was taking him away from the basket. On the second one, they didn’t run anybody at the rim at all and tried to get Jimmy on a heave.

Thoughts on those bullets after the jump:

Regarding point #1, I get the idea of bringing in Amir Johnson for defense. Jonah Bolden is inexperienced in those situations and had already racked up five fouls. You also have to consider that Mike Scott essentially iced the Orlando win just 24 hours prior with a clutch three-pointer. You could certainly make an argument that you’ve got enough guys on the floor who can do things in isolation now (Butler/Harris) that you can try Amir for defensive posture and sacrifice spacing on the offensive end.

To that end, Jimmy did not seem happy with the way they continued to defend the Lopez/LaVine pick and roll:

Regarding point #2, they would have iced this game if they could have hit anything in the middle portion of the fourth quarter.

Regarding points #3, #7, #8, and #9, those are four turnovers in the game’s five final minutes. If you want to blame Brett for that, I get it. Ultimately if the ball control issue continues, it’s on him to find a way to remedy it. It’s been an issue spanning multiple seasons, and it’s not always due to their “space and pace” philosophy. Some turnovers are just careless and lazy.

I also think the drive was a dumb Simmons play. Why not slow it down and bring it back out there? The offensive fouls were whatever, and Redick is usually good for one backbreaker of a turnover down the stretch, so that’s par for the course. I don’t think Joel Embiid turns that ball over, but Scott has played almost zero two-man game with JJ this season.

Regarding the blown switch, Noah Levick has some quotes over at NBCSP:

That’s an environment where we switch,” Brett Brown told reporters in Chicago. “If we had to do it again, we would’ve and should’ve done that better.”

Ben Simmons had a different perspective.

“Every player on the court was in the right,” he said. “I think every player did the right thing. I think what we were in was what we really wanted to be in. That happens.”

And Butler, after posting a team-high 22 points, took responsibility for allowing his man an unobstructed path to the hoop.

“I think I should’ve just fought through the screen, stay with my man,” he said. “A lot of that’s on me. I think I just gotta be better on the defensive end.”

So with that kind of play, do you blame veteran players for making mistakes or do you blame the coach for using a scheme and philosophy that you find ineffective? To me, the blown switch was less about that specific play and more of a microcosm related to the failure to make any sort of defensive adjustment after Chicago ran the same pick and roll at you on something like four or five plays in the final few minutes of the game. They literally just did the same thing over and over again. It was similar to the last Boston loss, where the Celtics just continuously hunted JJ Redick in the fourth quarter.

Regarding point #12, I didn’t like the call. I also don’t weigh that with as much significance to what happened prior. You could steal one there, sure, but the percentage of getting anything reasonable off with 0.5 on the clock is very low.

There was also this on Twitter:

That’s about it.

You can blame the coach. You can blame the players. My take is that there were a lot of mistakes made last night, top to bottom. There is blame to go around, as is typically the case when you lose a shitty game to a shitty team.