The Philadelphia 76ers were able to come away with a 123-110 win over the Orlando Magic on Wednesday at home thanks to a huge night from Joel Embiid out on the floor. The big fella put up 50 points on 17-for-23 shooting and he had 20 points in the first quarter and then had 23 in the third.
All of that was great, but on the other side, Magic big man Mo Bamba had a big night of his own.
Bamba set a career-high in the first half alone when he had 28 points at the break and he was 7-for-8 from deep. He didn’t look like Mo Bamba at that point, he looked more like Stephen Curry, and he led the Magic to a 57-47 halftime lead.
“He obviously made a bunch of jumpers and they went on that run when I went to the bench so we needed to kinda change our approach defensively,” said Embiid. “I was more aggressive on the pick-and-roll whether it was trapping or hedging and trying to recover to him.”
In the second half, Bamba only took two shots, making both of them, and he had four points after halftime before fouling out.
“I told him after the game he was not going to do anything in the second half,” Embiid added. “Not on my watch. He was great. That’s what he does. He’s amazing defensively and then offensively, a pick-and-pop big. He still has a lot of potential, but he’s great.”
Bamba was not able to get the same types of looks in the second half as coach Doc Rivers was on his team about it in the halftime locker room.
“We just got out to him,” said Rivers. “We had a bunch of missed coverages. He is shooting 33% from the 3 before the game and he caught fire, but he’s capable of making 3s. We had some bad veers, you know, veer means switch, and we didn’t do that much different. We trapped a couple of times which guaranteed that we were gonna have a rotator.”
Either way, the Sixers were able to get the job done on Bamba and pick up an important win at home. In the dog days of the NBA season, it’s nights like these that can be very satisfying in order to help the team move forward.
This post originally appeared on Sixers Wire! Follow us on Facebook!
[mm-video type=playlist id=01f09kz5ecxq9bp57b player_id=01eqbvq570kgj8vfs7 image=https://sixerswire.usatoday.com/wp-content/plugins/mm-video/images/playlist-icon.png]
[listicle id=57101]
[lawrence-related id=57505,57502,57496]