MIAMI — The Philadelphia 76ers knew the challenge ahead of them when they visited the Kaseya Center on Christmas Day. The Miami Heat are the defending Eastern Conference champions, and they are one of the scrappiest teams in the league.
Throw in the fact the Sixers were missing MVP Joel Embiid, and it was a tall order. The Sixers battled all night, but the Heat walked away with a 119-113 win.
With Embiid out, the Sixers received 27 points from Tobias Harris and Kelly Oubre Jr. added 25 points. However, Tyrese Maxey struggled, shooting 4-for-20. He and De’Anthony Melton combined to shoot 3-for-17 from deep.
The Sixers jumped to a 10-point lead in the first quarter behind strong play from Harris and Oubre, but they crumbled after that. Miami led after one quarter and led by 14 at the half. They held Maxey scoreless in the first half.
“I thought we obviously started great,” said coach Nick Nurse. “Second quarter was really tough, right? We were really tough and I thought I almost felt like good at the half down 14. It felt like it could have been a lot worse. Then, they come out and blitz us right at the start and then we just went on our run to actually take the lead, and I thought we were in there with a chance down the stretch where we kind of ran out of a little bit of gas maybe in the last three minutes because it still was pretty much a one-possession game.”
The Heat jumped on the Sixers to start the third quarter. They led by 21 in the early moments. Even though Philadelphia rallied to take a brief lead, Miami jumped on them again. It was an uneven performance and Nurse knows it.
“They made some shots,” Nurse added. “We didn’t, but they outplayed us. We didn’t play well enough to come here on a night like tonight and win. We just didn’t play well enough. It wasn’t like we didn’t try. We really fought hard, but we just didn’t play well enough to win on the road tonight.”
To Nurse’s point, the Sixers fought. There was effort, but good effort doesn’t bring wins. There has to be execution and focus to get the job done.
“I thought overall we did a great job of fighting tonight and keeping our composure when they made runs,” said Harris. “We figured out ways just to find that pop for us. That energy. Obviously, for us, we would’ve loved to get the victory, but there are definitely some positives to take from it. We understand how much our big fella means so much to our team. Just his presence. We missed that.”
It definitely didn’t help that Embiid was out, but the Sixers know they have the talent to win games without him. They weren’t able to do so on Christmas.
“Obviously, everybody talks about everything that gets done offensively, but really his greatest impact we missed was defensively,” Harris finished. “Just his size, his presence, his ability to protect the rim. We got outrebounded pretty bad and that hurt us. Second chance points and whatnot. We take a lot from it and learn from it, but there’s still pockets in that game that we thought we could have gotten the victory, but there are still, obviously, areas of growth that we can get better at, too.”
[lawrence-related id=88161,88153,88148]