The Philadelphia 76ers are considered to be championship contenders and that is still true, but another loss to the Orlando Magic on the road has people scratching their head on this team. They obliterate the Milwaukee Bucks on Christmas Day, but then lose to the Magic who is a lesser team and that suggests that the Sixers play down to their competition.
It is something that is concerning for this team’s future. No matter who the opponent is, the Sixers have to figure this out and it’s an issue that befuddles the team right now.
“You tell me, I don’t know,” said coach Brett Brown. “That’s something that we have to figure out. It’s part of our journey and they’re good people, they’re high character people, and we will together dig in and figure it out.”
Philadelphia looked like zombies for a stretch in the fourth quarter before coming alive late, but it’s something that has to get better from here on out. That sense of urgency needs to be there from the jump, not just the final few minutes.
“I just don’t think we came out with the right urgency,” sais Josh Richardson. “I think we picked it up in the fourth quarter, we cut a 10 point lead down in a minute so we’ve just got to play free like it’s our last game every night.”
Josh Richardson speaks on lack of urgency until the final minutes #Sixers pic.twitter.com/DNo5JYKV3k
— Ky Carlin (@Ky_Carlin) December 28, 2019
The Sixers are still figuring out who they really are as a team and it’s something that they will have to learn from as time moves on.
“You’ve got to learn from it and get better,” said Joel Embiid. “We struggle on the road the whole season, tomorrow we’ve got another big one, we’ve got to get that win. It was mentioned earlier, we can’t play down to the opposition. Orlando is a pretty good team, but when you know you have a better record than them, you should come out and play like it. Overall, we’ve just got to get better.”
The Sixers now head to Miami on Saturday to face the Heat to complete this Florida back-to-back to begin this road trip. [lawrence-related id=22292,22277,22240]