Cooney: Injuries complicating matters for new-look Sixers

SHORTLY AFTER the long list of 76ers who weren't going to participate in Thursday's game against Washington in the preseason home opener was delivered, Brett Brown met with the media and conveyed that there's a sentence uttered at nearly every meeting: "Deliver them to Opening Night."

More than anything during his four seasons with the team, Brown has had the unenviable task of trying to deal with devastating injuries. In each of his first three years, one of his key players was sidelined, and rookie sensation Ben Simmons will miss a big chunk of time this season after having surgery to repair his fractured right foot.

But even with Simmons sidelined, fans have hopeful expectations, largely because of the arrivals of Joel Embiid and Dario Saric. Against Washington, those two only heightened the hope, with Embiid going an active 12 minutes with five points, three boards and a monster block, and Saric delivering 14 points in 19 minutes.

The bad taste, however, was still palpable. If you glanced at the Sixers' bench, you saw Jahlil Okafor, still recovering from the surgery last March to repair a torn meniscus. Nerlens Noel tweaked his groin and didn't dress. Nik Stauskas pulled up with a hamstring injury in the opener Tuesday. Starting point guard Jerryd Bayless said in the locker room before the game that the team has an MRI of his ailing left wrist, then said, "It's not the best right now."

So the starting point guard, who is new to the team, probably won't play with his teammates in preseason, maybe not until after the regular season starts. Embiid has yet to play with Okafor or Noel, and he is on a 12-minute restriction for the time being. Stauskas won't be able to find his shot from the bench. And so on and so forth.

There is a scene from one of the Rocky movies in which Balboa is about to fight someone. The guy tells Rocky, "Hit me and I'll sue." A downtrodden Balboa says, "Sue me for what?"

It's the thought that popped in my head when Brown talked of delivering a healthy team to Opening Night. What are you delivering?

Here's the problem: There are nine new guys on the roster, with Saric and Embiid probably playing the biggest roles. If everyone gets delivered to that Oct. 26 opener against Oklahoma City, will they even recognize one another? A preseason that was so important in terms of meshing a group has instead turned into a M.A.S.H. unit.

Brown refers to his former job in San Antonio as Disneyland, where the jump from one season to the other was as smooth as Tim Duncan post moves. Delivering that product healthy to Opening Night meant the beginning of another 50-plus win season, where everyone fell into place just perfectly and any additions filled roles to perfection.

That's not even close to being the case here. While the hope is Embiid will carry the team, this is his first action in 2 1/2 years. He won't even really begin to understand the NBA until well into the season, at least. Same with Saric. And we haven't even mentioned how Brown expects to settle his trio of centers, not counting the improved Richaun Holmes.

The caution surrounding injuries and the amount of them will stunt the growth of this team seriously this season, hard news to swallow after such a summer of excitement.

"It would be not true to say you just sort of push it aside and move on," Brown said. "You come into this with grand plans and you hope to have everybody healthy, because it allows you to sort of grow something and build something and better assess something. I think the preseason for me, just when I put my coaching hat on, it is about finding a playing rhythm, a rotation. How do you sub the group? How do you play the group? Who plays well with each other? When you're beaten up, I don't see the opportunity to do that. That's part of it all. I think if you wanted to go to every locker they'd say almost the same thing."

Yes, but other locker rooms aren't coming off 49 combined wins in three years and don't have rosters with as much turnaround as Brown's. Every piece of this season was going to be a struggle anyway; now , with the injuries, it will be a dogfight each and every night to be competitive.

The most disappointing of the injuries is Okafor, as you get the feeling Brown was excited to see how he could pair him with Embiid. A supremely gifted scorer, Okafor could help overcome offensive deficiencies when needed. There really isn't anyone else, right now, who can do that.

"I think some of it is a little bad luck," Brown said. "You can't say anything other than that with Ben Simmons coming down and stepping on somebody's foot. Even with Jerryd Bayless with the wrist injury, that sort of came out of nowhere. It has taken a little longer than we all, mostly Jahlil, had thought. You just sort of are very, very guided by the people who know more than all of us as it relates to his health. It's just been stuff that we're so cautious of everybody where we want to deliver them. If you were in our offices you would hear this sentence often: 'Deliver them to Opening Night.' What's it going to take to deliver a healthy team to Opening Night? With that direction, you're a little bit watered down, you're a little bit less ambitious. You're very cautious and responsible as to how you're going to play it, practice it, etc., with that as the end game."

Just how long it will take for Brown to mesh the team is anyone's guess, because there is no timetable when everyone will return.

"It will take time," Bayless said. "This is a young team. But also, from Brett's standpoint, he's trying to get everybody healthy and hopefully it works out. I think it will. I think he's done a great job preparing everybody.

"We are practicing hard and getting to know each other. That's what we have to do. Hopefully that will take care of itself. You see really good teams take it to after the All-Star break to really get on a roll and to really be consistent."

But this isn't a really good team, yet. And, more than anything, the players are very unfamiliar with one another. It's as hard to write as it is to read, but patience among fans must be practiced yet again.

@BobCooney76

Blog: philly.com/Sixersblog