It was believed that the Sixers had turned a corner and taken a huge step forward when they defeated the Bucks on Christmas Day, but they’ve actually gone in the opposite direction.
The Sixers have lost their last three games, and it’s clearly beginning to take a toll on the locker-room culture.
A few of Philadelphia’s star players have been critiquing each other in comments they’ve made to the media, and that usually doesn’t lead to anything good.
Veteran forward Al Horford, who is in his first year with the team, was critical of head coach Brett Brown over the way he’s been utilized.
“I’m out [there] for the team and doing what I can to help us,” he said, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. But offensively, I’m very limited with the things that I can do. So I can’t control that stuff.
“So all I have to do is make sure I’m there for the team, trying to do everything I can to help us win … Ultimately, we have to rely on [Brown] to make the decisions, to put us in position to go out there and play and keep competing.”
Josh Richardson then added his two cents on Wednesday, criticizing the team’s presence in the locker room.
“I don’t think there’s enough accountability in our locker room right now, honestly,” he said. “I think that we got some new guys who don’t want to step on toes, including myself. I feel like we kind of go play and don’t compete as much.
“There’s been games that we have [competed], and it’s been great. But when it’s not going good, we got to hold each other accountable. I think that’s where a lot of our problems start. … Going forward, we got to talk to some people about it, and we got to do it. We talk about playing hard every day. We talk about, you know, we break the huddle down with ‘chip’ every day, and we got a long way to go before we actually start competing for that. I think our locker room has some growing to do.”
Joel Embiid weighed in as well.
Lot of talk at the practice facility today about accountability and so forth. Mostly good stuff.
Here's Joel Embiid on the offensive struggles — doesn't seem that hard to read between the lines: pic.twitter.com/KXHRckuJFH
— Kyle Neubeck (@KyleNeubeck) January 2, 2020
The Sixers would be wise to hold a players-only meeting to get all this sorted out, as it seems to be taking a toll on the team.
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