April 28, 2019
TORONTO — After Game 1 against the Brooklyn Nets, the Sixers were down but very far from out. Brett Brown's message to the public was one of confidence in the gameplan, and over the course of the series, Philadelphia's adherence to their plan ended up being a blessing.
There was a different tone struck after a disheartening Game 1 defeat to the Toronto Raptors. At the forefront of the discussion was everyone's favorite word in the playoffs: adjustments.
"You make adjustments," Brown said when asked how you balance adjustments against "chasing" the series. "Adjustments rule the day. All series you learn something from a game-to-game standpoint. You go into it with a starting point of baseline defense and you go back and watch the tape and say, 'could we have done something better or differently on Kawhi, could you have done something better or differently with Siakam?' And the answer is yes we can, and yes we can."
A couple of Philadelphia's best players offered their own thoughts on how the Sixers could adjust their strategy on Kawhi Leonard specifically in the wake of Game 1, with Ben Simmons suggesting they should defend Toronto's best player in a manner similar to how they covered Giannis Antetkounmpo in the regular season. Crowd him, force him to be a passer, and recover to the three-point line.
That trend continued on Sunday, with Tobias Harris echoing the sentiment of his teammate when the subject was broached at practice.
"First off, improving our physicality versus him and then showing more of a crowd, "Harris said. "I thought last night we kind of let them get to their spots on the court. Give them credit, too. They hit tough shots. You can see in the film, they were all contested and whatnot. But getting more up in their space and showing more of a crowd, presenting more of a crowd, making other guys make plays is going to be the biggest thing for us."
As you'd expect from the head coach in the playoffs, Brown stayed away from any specifics on the gameplan moving forward. But he seems to believe the film from Game 1 was revealing, at the very least, and that the Sixers can use it to be a better team the second time around.
"Whether it's just doing what we do better, whether we make adjustments, that's obviously stuff that's all considered and on the table," Brown said. "I have gone through the tape a few times, and I can tell you that I wake up good to go. I really feel that we can just come in and be better than we were in the first game."
The obvious first step is a lot more Ben Simmons on Leonard, after his (relatively) successful performance against a scorching hot Leonard in Game 1. Simmons admitted he would probably spend more time on Leonard moving forward, and getting the right personnel alignment is sometimes all it takes to change the complexion of a matchup.
As a refresher, the numbers for Leonard against Philadelphia's most frequent defenders in Game 1:
| Defender | Possessions | Leonard's shooting |
| Ben Simmons | 27 | 4/9 |
| Jimmy Butler | 24 | 5/6 |
| Tobias Harris | 14 | 5/5 |
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out where the Sixers go from here. Unfortunately, they will have to figure out how to slow down Pascal Siakam as well, whose big night on Saturday just got overshadowed by Leonard's all-world performance. The Sixers have to worry about Siakam all over the place — he beat them down the floor in transition, knocked down open threes, and dusted past various defenders off of his own dribble in the halfcourt.
These aren't the Brooklyn Nets, in other words. Adjustments will not come without pain somewhere else on the floor, and the Sixers need to figure out what they're willing to live with.
• Toronto's defensive strength stems primarily from their ability to put plus-defenders at every position on the floor, and they don't always have to make a spectacular play to get a stop or a turnover. There is value in always being in the right place at the right time.
That doesn't mean they aren't capable of the highlight-reel block you can't see coming. Harris fell victim to this no less than three times on Saturday nights, with lanes that looked to be open closing up quickly thanks to impressive plays from Kawhi Leonard and Serge Ibaka.
Oh man this Kawhi block on Tobias Harris was nasty pic.twitter.com/aCODQT4jL5
— Tom West (@TomWestNBA) April 28, 2019
Is there a way to solve that problem? Harris is going to make an attempt to, at least.
"There were a couple of plays where they came out of nowhere for me, really," Harris said on Sunday. "So just adjust to that. Some counter moves and if the pull-up is there early, just take it. Take it a little bit faster...I already saw clips about that, so I’ll be ready for Game 2 to adjust to that, to adjust to how they were playing. I thought they switched it up a little bit in the third quarter, so just adjusting to that also will be huge."
• Marc Gasol's play against Joel Embiid helped key Toronto's victory on Saturday, and Philly is going to have to get creative in order to get around that roadblock. The struggles Embiid had against his counterpart aren't new, and he owned those during his postgame availability on Saturday night.
But what does Gasol's impact on the game look like from the Toronto perspective? The Raptors have only had Gasol around for a couple of months, and they've learned a lot about what makes him a great defender in a short amount of time.
"I didn’t know how good a one-on-one defender he was. I’m not going to talk him up too much because we still have a lot of basketball to play, but he’s been really really really good defensively, one on one," backup guard Fred Van Vleet said on Sunday afternoon. "He’s back there seeing it all and letting us know. It’s just good communication both ways...he talks to us and lets us know what he sees and what we see, and there’s some kind dialogue there in terms of what we need to do and what we could do better."
"There are not many times where you don’t know what’s going to happen on both sides, and that’s always a good thing."
No one paying close attention in Philly takes these sort of things for granted; Embiid is the only person keeping the Sixers organized at times. They are finding out the hard way that they are not up against Jarrett Allen in this series.
• The offensive side of the ball may be where the Sixers need the biggest changes between games. They've been a team that wins on scoring all year, and the final big move of the year for Tobias Harris was about creating more offensive mismatches, not solidifying things on the other end.
JJ Redick and Simmons agreed that a big part of the problem in Game 1 was their lack of ball movement, a core component of the team's identity.
"We have to be better offensively," Redick said. "I won't bore you with the statistics, but we were significantly better when we passed twice or more, so we have to realize that this may not be a first-option offense for us. We may need to be able to get to the second side and second or third options to break down their defense."
Preserving your identity against a team that can muck up your best-laid plans is easier said than done. We'll see if Philly is up to the task on Monday night.
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