The Philadelphia 76ers currently have bigger things to worry about off the floor after the news of Seth Curry testing positive for COVID-19. The team is currently still in New York where they will undergo testing and they will also complete contact tracing.
On the floor, they are coming off a pretty bad 122-109 loss to the Brooklyn Nets who were missing both superstars Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving where their defense was nonexistent and they seemed to have taken the Nets lightly.
This is the second straight game where their defense was not up to snuff. The team gave up 136 points, including 60 to Bradley Beal, in their win over the Washington Wizards on Wednesday and then the bad play on defense against the Nets the next night. Should there be any concern?
“Not concerned, not worried, but it is something that we want to clean up, nip in the bud, and try to grasp and learn as quickly as we possibly can to get better at,” said veteran Danny Green. “The sooner the better because that’s what’s we’re gonna have to hang our hats, there’s gonna be some nights where we shoot like we did tonight we didn’t shoot well, 34% from 3, 47 from the field not bad, but 34 from three is not going to get it done and we let them score 120 points, which is not good.”
It was surprising due to the fact that the Nets were missing their scoring maestros. The Sixers have not played defense up to their standard since the first half of the Wizards game.
“I’m not that concerned,” said coach Doc Rivers. “I love our defense overall. I thought last night, in the first half, we were terrific. We got a big lead and let up and then it carried over tonight so a lot of fixable things. Not that concerned with it, to be honest. Now, obviously, if it carries over, we play an excellent offensive team on Saturday so we’ll know where we’re at Saturday.”
That team that Rivers is referring to is the Denver Nuggets who are led by Nikola Jokic, Jamal Murray, and Gary Harris who engineer a high-powered offense out there. Philadelphia will have to get back to doing the little things in order to play defense up to their standard.
“Obviously, there’s things that we want to clean up,” Green added. “There’s things that we’re looking at, we’re still trying to find our identity as a team, defensively and offensively. We don’t know what we’re good at yet. So we’re throwing different things out there, we’re seeing what we’re good at.”
Obviously, it doesn’t help that the team can’t practice as much as they would like to during a time such as this one. Everything has been so compact and so condensed to the current world situation and the Sixers are a relatively new team. They have not had the proper practice time as they would like to.
“I think it just goes back to the details,” said Shake Milton. “The little things, being pulled in when they’re running pick-and-rolls, making sure you’re in your right help spots when you’re supposed to be. It’s just little things like that that we got to tighten up and things that would be easier if you had practice time, but you don’t so you kind of have to learn on the fly. As a team, we got to be, mentally aware of that and have that at the forefront of our mind when we’re going into games.”
The Sixers are currently on schedule to host the Nuggets on Saturday.
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