PHILADELPHIA — Whenever teams the caliber of the Philadelphia 76ers and the Denver Nuggets match up, it is viewed as a litmus test. A measuring stick sort of game shows where the teams stand.
The Nuggets are the defending champs while the Sixers are still trying to get over the hump in the East after three consecutive second-round exits. A 126-121 win over Denver on the second night of a back-to-back shows just how good the Sixers can be.
“Yeah, I mean, but it’s early,” Tyrese Maxey said . “It’s early, but like I said (Monday), the defending champs coming here and until somebody knocks them off this year, that’s what they are.”
The Nuggets are one of the more talented teams in the league. They are led by Nikola Jokic who is the best player in the game at the moment.
“I talked about it before the game and said it wasn’t about the matchup between the bigs,” Joel Embiid said. “It was about, for me, I looked at it in a way that where are we compared to the best? Reigning champs, they’re all healthy, and they’re playing their best basketball and I just wanted to see where we are.”
The Sixers had their lapses, especially at the end of the third quarter, but overall, a win of this magnitude helps their psyche and gives Philadelphia confidence it can win games such as these.
“We could have been better,” the big fella added. “I could have been better, especially in that third quarter when I really started feeling it. I was pretty tired, but I thought once we settled down and we got some stops, we looked pretty good.”
As Maxey mentioned, there is still a great deal of basketball to be played: 43 games. The Sixers have to figure out how to best build off a win such as this.
“There was a lot of hype, obviously,” Kelly Oubre Jr. said. “Two juggernaut big men and two great teams, but we’re at home. It’s one of the things that we have to take care of at home court, but the real test is when we go to Denver and play them at theirs, so I think whoever wins that game is gonna either break even or you’re gonna see who is more ready for April, May, June.”
Either way, the Sixers achieved what they wanted: Pick up a win over a contender on the second night of a back-to-back despite the challenges.
“Playing against the Nuggets, the team that won the championship last year, even if it’s a back-to-back, the energy was there,” Tobias Harris said. “The atmosphere in that arena was there the matchup between Jo and Jokic obviously, at this point in time, so our whole understood what our goal was. Nonetheless, of all those things that go into it, is to win and see where we match up with the reigning champs, and for us, we wanted to come out and play our best type of basketball.”
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