On the Beat: Closing Season Strong Starts with Closing Out Games

PHILADELPHIA, PA – Back on the court together for the first time in a week, members of the Sixers’ roster seemed to of similar minds.  Many of them agreed the team’s recent six-day hiatus was timely, and will serve the squad well. “It was much-needed. I needed it,” said Jahlil Okafor on Wednesday evening, after he and the Sixers wrapped up an hour and a half-long practice at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine. Okafor had spent Saturday through Wednesday morning at Duke University, where he played 38 games between November and April of last year.  He’s already logged 47 appearances with the Sixers as a rookie this season.”It was a good rest,” the center added.  “I’m ready to start the second half of the season.  I’m excited about that, and I’m ready to get going.”With Okafor running the NBA gauntlet for the first time, his remarks about having the chance to unwind were understandable.  But make no mistake.  The league’s annual All-Star Game lay-off was welcomed by players of all experiences levels.”Oh my goodness it was,” said Ish Smith.  The veteran point guard admitted to having felt the effects of an intense personal stretch that began on December 26th, the day of his Sixers season debut, and ended 20 games later on February 10th, with the team’s pre All-Star break finale. “I haven’t really played the middle part of the season that we just went through playing a lot of minutes,” said Smith, looking back on his six-year career.  The 656 minutes he logged during that 21-game chunk of the Sixers’ schedule marked the highest total accumulated by any player on the team.   “I think it kind of got to me a little bit, physically, mentally, being tired, and different things like that.  So this break was huge.  It was good for me, and hopefully [I’ll] able to finish strong.”Brett Brown used almost identical language when discussing the theme he laid out for the final eight weeks of the Sixers’ season. “Ending strong,” Brown said of the directive he imparted to his players on Wednesday.  “Going overboard with their health.  It’s not something that we want to talk about, ‘In the summer we can do this, in the off-season we can do that.’  We want to do it now, and so we want to go overboard with our fitness, we want to go overboard with our health, we want to be better physically prepared, with all the pieces that that means.  We want to go overboard with their skill acquisition.  We want to continue to grow them.”The payoff, Brown hopes, is that by addressing these points of emphasis, the Sixers will be positioned for improved performance in high-pressure, late-game situations.  The team’s 114-110 setback to the Sacramento Kings in its last appearance before the All-Star Game still sounded as if it was fresh on Brown’s mind.  The Sixers led by as many as 17 points in that contest. “How are we going to walk down some NBA games?,” said Brown, whose club has gone 4-20 in games decided by nine points or less.   “We’ve been in a lot of close games.  How do we better execute?  How do we better defend?  How do you execute better in fourth periods?  How do we continue on the stand that our world, while I’m coach, is how do we defend, and we got to get better.”Wednesday’s practice presented the Sixers with an immediate chance to pursue that mission.  Brown formatted the workout primarily around running, an activity he believed would reinforce his message.”Flush ’em out, get up and down the floor,  get some blood flowing again,” said Brown, describing the purpose behind Wednesday’s on-court drills.  “You can’t deliver a talk that I spoke to them about pre-practice and not have a practice like we had.  It was high intensity, up-and-down, it was great…with a flavor of ‘let’s get better,’ ‘let’s get in better condition,’ and ‘how do we execute to close out fourth periods better than we have.'”  Another notable feature from Wednesday session, at least from an auditory standpoint, was that the players ended the evening by serenading two members of the coaching staff with a belated, acapella rendition of “Happy Birthday.”  Assistant Billy Lange, a three-year member of Brown’s bench, turned 44 last Thursday, while Brown himself became a 55-year old on Tuesday.