The Philadelphia 76ers were hanging with one of the better teams in the Western Conference on the road on Saturday night despite still missing their best player in Joel Embiid. They were only down five at halftime, but a bad third quarter allowed the Los Angeles Clippers to get separation and it led to an eventual 122-122 loss.
It was a good effort considering that the Sixers were on the fourth game of a 6-game road trip and it would have been understandable if they were just blown out in this one, but they were right there. They just had a tough time handling the physical play from the Clippers and how they did not have the size to matchup in this one.
“Physicality, I think it kind of disrupted our flow tonight,” said Tobias Harris who led Philadelphia with 29 points. “It presented a different team. They switched a lot of things, we were able to get to some matchups that we wanted to, but I thought defensively the third quarter, they just kind of drove by us a little bit too much. They have a lot of guys that can go straight-line drives and we didn’t do a great job of imposing our will defensively like we know we can play.”
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The Clippers shot 10-for-19 from the floor in the third quarter and they also shot 5-for-9 from deep. Philadelphia shot 6-for-16 in the third and they were 0-for-6 from deep as things began to unravel there.
“Third quarter, we just didn’t have enough physicality in the beginning of the game,” Harris added. “I thought we let the offense dictate our energy defensively. It was kind of a perfect storm for another team to really get that confidence and from there, they made shots and they got the 50/50 basketballs tonight. That also was a big key to us really falling tonight.”
This was just one of those games where it was tough to muster up the correct energy. The Sixers do not have much size at the moment due to Embiid’s injury and sending out two big men in the George Hill deal. On top of that, they lost Dwight Howard again to an ejection early in the fourth quarter after he picked up two quick technicals.
“Their size bothered us, switching bothered us,” said coach Doc Rivers. “Five technical fouls in a game that you’re playing one of the best teams in the West, right? Those are the things that can’t happen. It’s funny you look at it, we shot 50%, but we allowed them to shoot 53. I thought they got everything they wanted. I thought they lived in the paint which created shot so fixable things.”
The Sixers will continue the road trip on Tuesday when they go take on the Denver Nuggets in the Mile High City.
This post originally appeared on Sixers Wire! Follow us on Facebook!
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