PHILADELPHIA — The 76ers carried a seven-game winning streak into a Monday game against the visiting Orlando Magic, and that’s how it will be recorded in history.
Seven games. Seven wins.
The headaches that came with that achievement – and there were plenty – will be easily camouflaged by the results.
But that was 15 points the Sixers trailed by before outworking the Denver Nuggets Saturday, 126-119. And that would have been them earlier in the streak, down 21 on the final leg of a five-game road trip before defeating a good team in Sacramento, 129-127.
In any NBA regular-season there will be quirky, interesting spikes of results. In any 48-minute game with a 24-second clock, there likely will be lead changes. But the way the Sixers had been going full-service rope-a-dope in recent games is more than a passing fad.
It’s the way they are built, the way they are coached, the way they compete. And it’s definitely the way they defend when it most matters.
“It’s funny,” Doc Rivers was saying after the Denver game. “In the first half, I thought we were too busy trying to score. We thought it was going to be an offensive game where we were just going to trade baskets with them. There was no physicality in the first half. We had 10 deflections in the first half. We had 20 deflections in the second half.
“To me, in the second half, we played the way we need to play to be a good basketball team. The first half we wanted to trade punches. They were shooting 66% at one point, and I just thought physically, we changed the game.”
The trick to that is to have the assembled talent successfully respond to in-game strife. It’s one thing to have the determination to rally, it’s another to have Joel Embiid on the payroll. At this point in their development as contenders, the Sixers are blessed with multiple, star-level players who have seen everything … everything but a championship. So Embiid, James Harden and Tobias Harris – others, too – don’t just have the know-how to concoct a rally but the desire to complete the job.
Then again, Harris had another theory.
“It’s probably,” he thought out loud, “just Doc screaming at us.”
Whatever works?
“Nah,” Harris said, smiling. “We just find something during those deficits that allows us to gain some momentum and some energy. We just figure some things out to get some stops. At that moment, we’re just trying to find anything. And guys stepping up and making shots is huge for us to cut a deficit to however many points, to try to go out in the fourth quarter and try to make something happen.”
Rivers has been splendid all season at supplying the right scouting reports for the right defenses at the right time. But what has made the Sixers function lately is how he was able to split a relatively new-to-each-other group into two functional units. There is Embiid, Harris, Harden, P.J. Tucker and De’Anthony Melton as the core group, but with Tyrese Maxey complementing Shake Milton, Matisse Thybulle, Montrezl Harrell and Georges Niang, the Sixers are rarely at a talent deficit. Thus, the rallies can be sparked at just about any moment.
“They just turned up the pressure, attacked us and got to the basket way too easily,” lamented Denver coach Michael Malone. “They have an attack mentality.”
If it must be traced to a source, it would be to Rivers. But Daryl Morey’s eye for that kind of player, stemming in large part from Embiid yelling that the Sixers needed Tucker, has been a benefit, too. Whether it’s because of the added presence of Tucker or just the maturity of his own game, Embiid has grown this season from an iffy late-game offensive option to a reliable final-possession closer.
“I like that challenge, going into the fourth quarter with those type of possessions where you have to make the play, whether it’s offensively or defensively,” he said. “That’s where you find out who is made for those type of moments.”
Source: Berkshire mont
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