NEW YORK — The Philadelphia 76ers brought in new coach Nick Nurse to help them get over the hump in the Eastern Conference. To do that, they need everybody to buy in to what he is teaching and how he wants to win.
The Sixers forced 28 turnovers in Monday’s preseason win over the Brooklyn Nets, which is exactly what Nurse is preaching. Throughout training camp and the preseason, he has wanted his team to play with intensity, toughness, physicality, and to play defense for all 48 minutes.
“Nick definitely emphasized causing disruption out there no matter what it is,” said De’Anthony Melton who had four steals on Monday. “Bodies on bodies. Flesh on flesh. We had a video before the season started just being physical and showing our clips from last year. I think that’s the emphasis this year. Our physicality and I think the physicality will wear down teams for us.”
Melton revealed Nurse showed video from the 2022-23 season of Philadelphia’s positive defensive clips for the players to understand they have the potential to be the team he wants them to be.
“New coach is trying to establish your identity here and your concepts and schemes,” Melton added. “He just showed us some stuff that we did last year that he liked and stuff like that so we gotta emphasize and do more of it which is any team, but especially for us, it’s just physicality which will help us on rebounding, transition defense and stuff we lacked from last year.”
The Nets pushed back a bit in the third quarter when they did get some drive-and-kick 3s to fall. Overall though, the Sixers did a really good job of making sure everybody was accounted for to put on a dominant defensive effort which is the identity they would like to build.
“Absolutely,” added Oubre Jr. “That was everything. Defense leading to easy offense and once the game kind of settled down and they made some adjustments, but we stayed solid and that’s what we need to do. We need to be physical and go out there every night keeping the consistent energy.”
[lawrence-related id=84943,84919,84940]