The Philadelphia 76ers are coming off one of their more disheartening losses on Tuesday when they trailed by as many as 36 in a 115-97 loss to the Indiana Pacers to fall to 0-3 on their road trip. For a team with a championship dream and expectations following the moves they made, these losses have been unacceptable.
Philadelphia was outscored by 22 points in the second quarter on their way to the loss and it caused a lot of issues for them. They were not able to recover and it led to a bad loss as it seemed like they gave up fairly easily.
“More of a sense of urgency, starting on the defensive end,” said veteran Al Horford. “We need to do better, we’ve been talking, Coach has told us things that we need to do and we’re still making a lot of those mistakes. A lot of those things are on us and we need to be better.”
Philadelphia shot 6-for-29 from deep on Tuesday as their road struggles continued. To win on the road, teams have to have an extra sense of focus and an extra sense of urgency in order to get it done in adversity.
“I think we’ve gotten open looks, but they haven’t been able to fall,” said Tobias Harris. “The big thing about it is we haven’t gotten enough stops. Which is limiting our transition offense and in the half-court, it’s just been tough for us to get anything going.”
Philadelphia has a lot of issues that they need to figure out as they head into 2020. They’re 16-2 at home, but they are now just 7-11 on the road which shows a lack of focus that could cause issues when they need to win big road games in the playoffs.
“I think in general, after coming out of Miami and losing two games prior to being here, that’s a disappointing performance,” coach Brett Brown. “We certainly had people down. They were some of our better players, just didn’t have the performances that they’re used to having…We look forward to going back to Philadelphia and recalibrating, getting settled in.”
Before they can truly come home, the Sixers have to head to Houston to face the Rockets on Friday to complete the brief four-game trip where they will be looking to salvage a game. [lawrence-related id=22512,22504,22497]