On an emotional night that caused the Philadelphia 76ers to get off to a sluggish start, they needed some type of spark. That spark came in the form of Raul Neto who played the final 15 minutes of the first half to give the Sixers some life in a 115-104 win over the Golden State Warriors.
Neto scored 19 points on 7-for-10 shooting from the field and he made three shots from deep on a big night for him. His performance in the first half helped the Sixers take a 59-54 lead into halftime.
“It felt great, to be honest,” he said afterward. “I was just trying to be aggressive, staying confident, I think I put a lot of work on those kinds of shots so when I saw that those shots were open, I was kind of happy. I made them, they kept going under and giving me space and I was just being aggressive. It felt pretty good.”
His play was so strong that when coach Brett Brown tried to bring Ben Simmons back in, Simmons waved it off and allowed Neto to keep going.
“As it was communicated to me, as I’m getting ready to have Ben Simmons come back in and to Ben’s credit as a teammate, he sort of passed on down the bench to one of my assistants, ‘Let’s let him keep going.’,” Brown explained. “That’s an interesting selfless instruction, so we did it and he rewarded us. I think he had 19 first-half points. It’s not something that you are normally going to do, letting Ben sit there. Raul had played so well, so we decided to roll with it.”
When Neto heard the news, he was happy with it, but he understood that that’s just the spirit of the group and they want each other to succeed.
“When we see somebody out there playing great, I think we want each other to play good,” he said. “We want each other to be out there and have good minutes. That’s just the spirit of the team.”
Raul Neto speaks on Ben Simmons telling Brett Brown to continue to play him in the 2nd quarter #Sixers pic.twitter.com/DKE1qFXXqV
— Ky Carlin (@Ky_Carlin) January 29, 2020
As mentioned above, the Sixers did get off to a slow start and Neto noticed it. The Bryant tragedy set the mindset for him to really enjoy life and understand what it all means in the grand scheme of things.
“I could feel the energy was kind of low at the beginning,” he added. “But if we take something from that it’s just: enjoy every minute we are here. We never know what the day of tomorrow will bring and that’s what my mindset was. Just being present, just being there.”
Philadelphia will now head to Atlanta on Thursday to begin a four-game road trip against the Hawks.