The Philadelphia 76ers were able to accomplish a couple of things with their win over the Cleveland Cavaliers on Thursday night. They were able to finish up a long 6-game road trip at 4-2 without the services of MVP candidate big man Joel Embiid and they were also able to finally knock off the Cavs this season.
A big reason for that was due to the play of the bench stepping up in a big way in order to help the team on the offensive end, but the other was their defense against the Cavs backcourt of Collin Sexton and Darius Garland.
Sexton finished 7-for-15 for 24 points, but he had three turnovers and he made a lot of tougher looks. Garland shot just 3-for-8 for six points and he also had seven turnovers.
“We packed the paint,” said coach Doc Rivers. “It’s all we talked about. They have to see guys, we had to have men on the elbows and the boxes. When they look up, they see five guys. We talked about it all yesterday we talked about it this morning, every time the guards have the ball, they have to see five guys on defense, and I thought overall we did that.”
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The Sixers had trouble stopping those two in the previous two games when the two teams matched up earlier in the season. Philadelphia did a much better job of making sure they were pressured and they had to see a lot of players in their eyesight.
“I would say our ball pressure was big tonight,” said Tobias Harris. “We know that those are two of the quickest guards in the NBA. Young, quick guys, run up and down and get downhill and make shots at the same time. We wanted to show them a lot of bodies out there tonight, but really bring a lot of pressure to them. I thought in the other games that we played them, they were the guys bringing the ball so I thought that was the biggest difference.”
At the end of the day, it was a solid win to end what was a successful road trip. Now, they return home on Saturday to take on the Minnesota Timberwolves.
This post originally appeared on Sixers Wire! Follow us on Facebook!
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