The Philadelphia 76ers took a 14th straight regular-season road loss to the Toronto Raptors on Monday night after Joel Embiid went scoreless for the first time in his career, but they were right there in the driver’s seat before allowing Toronto to go on a 13-2 run to end the game.
Philadelphia missed eight straight shots and committed three turnovers over the final four minutes of the game while Toronto used a combination of Pascal Siakam and Norman Powell in order to rally and win the game.
There are a few positives to take from the game, the Sixers had a chance to win this one on the road against the defending champions despite Embiid having the worst game of his career. There are just a few different issues that they have to clean up such as little turnovers like the Ben Simmons one late and the missed free throws by Embiid and Josh Richardson. These are the little things that can hurt a team in a five-point loss.
Coach Brett Brown acknowledged that stating:
If we are big boys, you’d say of course there has to be. You are going to walk out of here and find something that is going to make us better, and we will do it. At this moment, it stings. You’ll wake up in the morning; you’ll be wiser for it and learn things that we have to just respond to better. We had a stage where we missed four free throws, they came back and hit a three and it’s kind of like a seven point swing. You would like to have a few of those turnovers back, at the end of the game. That’s where I’m at.
The Sixers are a team that is still growing and learning how to play with each other. The big outlier is the play of Embiid who will never have that type of game again. He is too talented and too dominant to have that again. Nonetheless, it an inexcusable performance and now it’s an issue of taking the experience and not letting it happen again. It has to be a teaching moment for him and the team really.
Their next challenge is returning home on Wednesday to host the Sacramento Kings. [lawrence-related id=20074,20064,20057]