CAMDEN, N.J. — As the Philadelphia 76ers prepare for Game 4 of their second-round series with the Miami Heat, there are still some issues that need to be cleaned up on the defensive end.
When one looks at the box score of Philadelphia’s 99-79 win in Game 3, they will see that Tyler Herro shot just 5-for-15. One would automatically think that the Sixers did an excellent job on him, and in some ways they did, but that isn’t the whole story.
Herro had a lot of wide-open looks in Game 3 that he just missed and coach Doc Rivers mentioned it at practice on Saturday. With the team convening for shootaround on Sunday, Matisse Thybulle understands that they cannot lose Herro again.
“There’s a couple guys on their team where it’s like if you go in and that’s your assignment, you can’t lose them,” said Thybulle. “It’s not an option. So I think guys have been buying into that a little bit more and I think it’s just showing like their inability to get easy baskets now.”
While Thybulle has begun to do a solid job on Herro, it’s not just him the Sixers have to worry about. There’s also Jimmy Butler, Bam Adebayo, Max Strus, Kyle Lowry, and others they have to be concerned with.
“Everybody’s got to be locked in because Jimmy is going to cut back cut, Bam is gonna roll, Strus, you can’t lose any of those guys,” Danny Green added. “You gotta always keep your head on a swivel especially guarding Tyler Herro, you just got to be locked in at all times because they have a lot of movement, have a great system, but defensively, we got to do it collectively. We got to talk, we gotta help each other but individually, it starts there first.”
This post originally appeared on Sixers Wire! Follow us on Facebook!
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