The Philadelphia 76ers were once again playing shorthanded on Tuesday when they hosted the Milwaukee Bucks on the second night of a back-to-back. They were already missing Joel Embiid, Tobias Harris, and Matisse Thybulle, but they also found out they would be without Seth Curry as well.
Despite the challenges, the Sixers battled the defending champions to the end in a late 118-109 loss. Tyrese Maxey gave the Sixers a huge effort, they got a big night out of Georges Niang, and they received top efforts from Shake Milton and Andre Drummond. Unfortunately, it just wasn’t enough and they don’t want to hear about moral victories.
“It’s a loss,” said Rivers. “I wanted to win the game last night and tonight. We had chances. It’s an opportunity to grow, an opportunity to get better, I’m not down about the loss. You either do one of two things in a competition. You either win the game or you lose the game. Period.”
The Sixers were outscored 27-16 in the fourth and they shot only 20.7% in the final quarter including 1-for-12 from deep. Milwaukee knocked down four triples and the Sixers just couldn’t respond as Giannis Antetokounmpo got going for the Bucks.
“Obviously, they did a good job of taking us out of our offense,” said Niang who had 21 points. “Even I’m guilty of it taking some forced shots. Whenever we got to the paint, we kinda got what we wanted, and we stopped doing that for a segment in the fourth quarter and Giannis had a couple breakout dunks, And-1s, and those are run killers and run starters for them. We can’t let that stuff happen especially when we’re shorthanded.”
While the Sixers were missing their top guys, they were right there to win the game and they let an opportunity slip away. This is the NBA and teams are not going to care how shorthanded you are.
“I think everybody’s here to win,” Niang added. “We’re shorthanded, we know that, but that doesn’t mean we don’t think that we’re capable of winning. Obviously, it’s frustrating, but it’s a long season and you gotta take these bumps and bruises. Other teams are gonna go through it too. You can’t feel bad for yourself, you gotta go out there and compete, and I feel like we’ve done that the last two nights. Obviously, we just have to clean up some things in the fourth quarter to really seal a victory.”
The fight the Sixers showed was good. Any team will take that type of effort, but there has to be more consistency from this group on a nightly basis until they get healthy again.
“It’s obvious we have a lot of fight,” Milton added. “We’re out there playing hard. We would like to be able to play smart and play hard for the full 48, but the effort is definitely there. Effort alone is not gonna win games, we know that, it would also help having our best players in the mix, but the guys that we got, they’re gonna go out there and fight and it’s gonna be a team effort.”
At the end of the day, the Sixers lost. They have now lost two in a row and that is all that matters at the moment.
“We gave ourselves a chance to win the game in both and there’s something to be taken from that so we do learn a lot, but we didn’t win the games,” Rivers added. “That’s a fact.”
This post originally appeared on Sixers Wire! Follow us on Facebook!
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