In order to win a championship in the NBA, a team has to continue to fight through a lot of wars and a lot of adversity in order to reach the mountaintop. The Philadelphia 76ers are quickly learning that as they have gad to dig deep to win a few games this season.
The latest example came on Sunday when they were down by 20 points on the road to the Indiana Pacers and they rallied to win despite not having star big man Joel Embiid. They got big games out of Tobias Harris as well as getting big nights out of Furkan Korkmaz, Matisse Thybulle, and Tyrese Maxey.
This is a moment the team can use moving forward.
“It’s just resilience from the whole group,” said Harris. “Obviously, with Joel out, we needed to find a lot of energy from different guys and I thought we got that energy from guys like Matisse, Furk, Tyrese, Dwight (Howard) came in and he was a beast on the boards and being able to control the paint. We know that there’s going to be games where we don’t have Joel and we have to figure it out, find a way.”
Games like this will serve them well come playoff time. The Sixers will have to be able to show off that resiliency when the time comes and a game like Sunday will be able to help them in the future.
“We’re starting to get that,” said coach Doc Rivers. “You’ve seen it several times now, fourth-quarter comebacks, fourth-quarter execution down the stretch of games, we have a long way to go, but just to grow for this team down the stretch of games, that’s where you’re gonna win playoff games and our guys are starting to believe they can run stuff down the stretch of games. They can get to shot they want, they can get stops, and when you start feeling like that, you start winning close games, and we’re starting to do that.”
When the playoffs do roll around, the Sixers will most likely have Embiid out there, but a game like Sunday shows that they can be more than just the big fella if they can put their minds to it.
“Usually when he doesn’t play, the intensity, the energy drops,” said Dwight Howard. “I think we showed that we are all capable of doing with Joel in or out of the lineup and I think we got to continue to gain confidence in each other throughout the season knowing that anything can happen. Any one of us could be out, but if we play the way we played tonight, then there’s not a lot of teams who can beat us.”
A win like Sunday also sets the culture. It lets them know that they must be able to pull together and win at all costs. They have to go out there and hold each other accountable in those situations.
“I thought this was a great game for us to really do that and to really look each other in the eye and know that we can hold each other accountable out there on the floor,” finished Harris. “It’s just a winning culture that we want to have and night after night, we gotta bring it.”
This post originally appeared on Sixers Wire! Follow us on Facebook!
https://embed.sendtonews.com/oembed/?SC=xGkXJrWzjo-1133198-7498&autoplay=on&V=2&format=json
[lawrence-related id=42008,42004,42001]