The Philadelphia 76ers will have to get some tough games out of the way on their six-game road trip, and they will have to do it without the services of their best player, Joel Embiid, and with other guys hobbled.
The Sixers succeeded on Sunday. They battled a tough New York Knicks team and picked up a 101-100 win in overtime. Philadelphia had Ben Simmons return to the lineup after he missed a game with an injury, and they were missing Seth Curry. The team has had to overcome numerous obstacles to get the win.
However, the Sixers are still winning and that is due to the culture coach Doc Rivers and his staff have instilled.
“The coaching staff has done an amazing job throughout this whole year of putting us in the right positions to be successful and allowing us to play and embrace one another’s game,” said Tobias Harris. “They put a lot of confidence in each and every one of the guys and so they help us.”
It has not been an easy season for Rivers. The Sixers have been a relatively new team with a lot of new pieces, and they did not have much time to come together and practice as much as they would like to due to the pandemic. The injuries are also playing a factor.
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“When you have Ben and Joel out, Joel and Seth out, then Seth and Joel, and you’re still winning games,” Rivers started. “I think our guys know what we want to do every night, how we want to play.”
Sometimes, and this can be human nature, when one of the top guys is out, the other players on the team think they have to step up and score as much as that missing player did to make an impact. Rivers does not want his players doing that.
“That’s been the challenge,” the coach continued. “It’s really challenging when you know you’re human; you know a lot of guys are out. So you’re on the floor, you start thinking ‘I can do more,’ and we don’t really want that. We just want you to play the way we play and it will all work out for itself.”
The Sixers have historically struggled when they are missing Simmons or Embiid, and especially, both. Even at the beginning of the 2020-21 season, Philadelphia was struggling to win games without their stars and that is an issue that needed to be fixed.
Since the All-Star break, Philadelphia is 6-1 despite not having the services of their All-Stars for a majority of those games. That is due to the coaching staff stepping up and making big moves.
“They’ve done an amazing job, and I think it started way before the break, of evolving and changing the rotation to give guys confidence for this point,” said Danny Green. “The reason we’re able to win games now is because of the things we went through before the break, without Joel, without Seth, without Ben, when we had guys out, we took our lumps, and now guys are experienced, we believe.”
That belief from the staff is something that the team will have to carry with them throughout the season.
“With this particular season, we don’t get much practice time so we’re going into different things and just trying to build chemistry, but more importantly, we have pillars we stand on as a unit and as a team,” Harris added. “We want to bring that night after night.”
This post originally appeared on Sixers Wire! Follow us on Facebook!
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