As the Philadelphia 76ers got back to work on Thursday night following the All-Star break, life seemed good for them. They started hot as they jumped out to a 22-6 lead over the Brooklyn Nets. It was almost like Game 5 of the 2019 playoff series had come back when the Sixers ran away with it to eliminate the Nets.
Then, it wasn’t.
The Nets answered back in a huge way as they ripped off a ridiculous 44-8 run and they led by as many as 20. It was something that was almost like out of a movie. It seemed as if Brooklyn would come into Philadelphia, without Kyrie Irving, and shock the Sixers at home.
“Let’s start with, we didn’t guard,” said coach Brett Brown. “That’s the obvious answer because we struggled scoring. To me, they went on an onslaught of scoring. I felt like our fight, our spirit took a little bit of a dent there. To the guys’ credit, they came back and fixed it with some momentum at the end of the second period. There was that window where I would have blown through a lot of the timeout.”
The Sixers then had to dig deep and they rallied to win it 112-104 in overtime led by a dominant Joel Embiid who had 39 points and 16 rebounds. Tobias Harris also had a terrific game of 22 points, 12 rebounds, and six assists in support of Embiid.
“It just really taught us to keep our composure,” said Harris. “I really like the way that we handled the runs that they made and how they made them. We didn’t hang our head. We kind of looked each other in the eye and said, ‘We know we need to be better, we need to be more physical, we need to be better defensively and get stops.’ And once we did, we were able to get out in transition, run and get some easy ones. That just helped us crawl back into the game.”
Of course, those two had some help. Newcomer Alec Burks made some huge plays down the stretch as he had 19 points off the bench and Shake Milton actually had some big plays in overtime. It was that type of performance that had the team feeling good about themselves as it showed that they are never really out of it.
“It means a lot. We’re relentless,” said Embiid. “We’ve got a lot of guys that can do so many things. Tonight, Alec gave us something. Shake came in at the end of the fourth and in overtime and pulled out something. All the guys, all along, did their job. So, everybody knows we know what we’ve got to do, and I felt like we’ve got a pretty good chance of accomplishing something.”
These types of games help mold a team come playoff time. They can think back to these types of rallies and these types of big moments to help themselves get through tough moments in the playoffs. This is the growth and development of a championship contender. [lawrence-related id=26193,26174,26175]