Quote (Red Sox @ Feb 1 2021 12:20am)
Insane. Sixers went to a 2-3 zone in the 4th and the pacers legitimately forgot how to play basketball.
Under Brett Brown we never would have seen an adjustment, even as simple as that.
It was a beautiful thing
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The common saying on NBA Twitter is that zone defense is for cowards, because people think it’s a cheap college and high school tactic, but Sunday night it won the game for the short-handed Sixers, who got their first W of the season without Joel Embiid. They were previously 0-4 without the big man in the lineup.
The Sixers were losing by double digits as the fourth quarter began, and looked atrocious in all facets of the game, but they went on a ridiculous run to ultimately outscore the Pacers 37-15 in the final 12 minutes and win by nine. They’re now 15-6 on the season and remain atop the Eastern Conference.
This would have been a really stinky loss, but instead we’ve got a fantastic win to talk about, and the turnaround was spurred by Doc Rivers, who put his team in a 2-3 zone with the long and lean Ben Simmons at Matisse Thybulle at the top of the defense. It was a look that totally flustered Indiana, and when we say “flustered,” that’s being kind. Indy had no clue what the hell they were doing. It looked like they’d never seen a zone before. You’d think these guys were English majors who got dropped into advanced accounting and were just trying to skate by with a 60%, because “D’s earn degrees,” as we were told at age 19.