It was not pretty at the Wells Fargo Center on Tuesday night. The Philadelphia 76ers put up a ton of bricks on their way to an 8-for-38 shooting night from deep, including a combined 1-for-19 from Tobias Harris and Josh Richardson, but yet the Sixers came out on top 98-97 over the Cleveland Cavaliers.
The Sixers are still trying to find their way and learn each other as they were without veteran Al Horford who was out for a scheduled rest day. The lack of playing time together continues to lead to a lack of cohesion, but according to Joel Embiid, there’s light at the end of the tunnel:
Pretty new team. The starting lineup is pretty new if you ask me. Tobias got here last year, late, so it’s basically been me and Ben(Simmons) in the starting lineup. So we’re still figuring out how to play with each other and I don’t think we’re nowhere close to our potential offensively.
He’s absolutely right in that statement. Despite Harris’ shooting struggles, it is hard to continue seeing him shoot at such a low rate and the same goes for Richardson. Having Horford back in the lineup always helps and Furkan Korkmaz has continued to play well. There is the offensive potential here to do big things. They just need to put it all together.
Now on the defensive end, they held Cleveland to their own struggles from deep as they shot 5-for-21 from beyond the arc and they were held to 97 points. Until the offense can figure it out, they will have to rely on the defense as Embiid added:
Defensively, I thought the last couple games have been fine defensively. Offensively, we just got to, you know, that starts with me. I haven’t been efficient. I’ve been turning the ball over so I’ve got to go back to being efficient and taking care of the ball again.
This team has only played 10 games and they’re sitting at 7-3. When stepping back and seeing that and taking into consideration that they have been missing pieces of the lineup for most of those games, it’s tough to get a really good assessment of how good this team can be.
Richardson has preached patience in the past. That is one thing that the fans of Philadelphia have a tough time with. [lawrence-related id=19181,19170,19164]