Before the Philadelphia 76ers took the floor on Saturday night to face the New York Knicks, coach Brett Brown stated that the team needed to play better defense on the road. There have been too many lost games on the road due to not being able to finish games on the defensive end and he wanted that to change.
“It’s just not even close for me it’s a far more pronounced defensive identity on the road,” he said pregame. “We live two worlds, we’re 20-2 at home and we’re 7-14 on the road. You can’t always blame it on whether you have Joel (Embiid) or you don’t. For me, there’s a discipline that we have to show to a knowledge base of how we’re guarding.”
In Saturday’s win over the Knicks, they held New York to just 87 points and they made just enough shots down the stretch to snap a six-game road losing skid.
“You can’t hope you make shots to win,” Brown said postgame. “You have to have a paradigm shift, you have to see the world through ‘we better guard and not be as reliant on making three’s or shots’. We struggled. I thought we had some good looks, we just weren’t able in the fourth period to convert them.”
Tobias Harris made a big shot late to give Philadelphia a 2-point lead and then he and Ben Simmons combined to force a turnover late to give the Sixers a big stop. They eventually went on to win 90-87 thanks to that last stop.
“We couldn’t allow a three, we let them lay it up, but we didn’t want to give up a three,” explained Simmons. “So we played the high side, had an opportunity to try the ball at the sideline. Tobias came over, great energy and hands. That was just the mindset, everybody was just locked in.”
That type of defense had been missing for them in their past six road games.
“I think defense fueled us throughout the game,” added Harris. “We kept them to 87 points, so we did a good job defensively getting our stops and get out in transition.”
Al Horford, who is filling in admirably for the injured Joel Embiid, had a rough game stat-wise, but he did a solid job of playing positional defense and this was much-needed on the road. They have let a few games slip away and a lot of them were really winnable.
“No question, there was a real sense of urgency of getting a win on the road and getting stops down the stretch defensively,” said the veteran big man. “It was an old school type of game and it felt good to come out on top.”
The Sixers now need to take this type of effort and continue it on their road trip as they head to the Barclays Center on Monday to face the Brooklyn Nets. [lawrence-related id=23809,23773,23695]