The Philadelphia 76ers had some trouble in the first half of Thursday’s 105-87 win over the Los Angeles Lakers as Anthony Davis went to work rather quickly for LA.
Davis had 23 points on 10-for-13 shooting by halftime, but Philadelphia kept the lead due to a team effort. The fact that Davis went off though was enough for coach Doc Rivers to make an adjustment in order to make sure the Sixers were still in a good position to get the job done.
“We started coming over on him, using Tobias (Harris) on him, with Joel (Embiid) coming,” said Rivers. “Joel’s such a great rover. He’s so smart. I thought it was a good adjustment for us.”
The Sixers held Davis to just eight points after halftime as they did a good job with Harris defending him and then having Matisse Thybulle even come over and double him at times. At that point, Davis had a tough time getting open in order to get the shots he needs.
On top of that, if Davis did shake free, Embiid came over and bothered the hell out of every shot he took.
“Just try to be in his space,” said Harris on Davis. “He’s such a tough player and a very good isolation scorer, one-on-one scorer in the low block. Just being able to be physical, when you have Joel rolling around on the backside as well that helps because he’s looking at angles to get to the rim so I think it was a good adjustment that we made at times and we flipped back and forth a lot. I thought that was a nice adjustment.”
It also helped Harris that Thybulle came over with the help because the Sixers really needed it. There were plenty of plays he made to give the Sixers a bit of a spark and that was helpful against Davis.
“Those plays he makes are huge for us and they’re timely as well,” Harris said of Thybulle. “When teams start to make a run and he comes out there and blocks a shot and we go back in transition and score, that’s a big swing of a game. Our crowd gets energetic, gets hype, like it shifts the whole atmosphere of the arena in the game and he makes a lot of those plays.”
This post originally appeared on Sixers Wire! Follow us on Facebook!
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