PHILADELPHIA — The Philadelphia 76ers got off to a very nice start at home on Friday night against the New York Knicks. They jumped out to a 10-point lead in the first quarter and appeared to be in control.
Then, things unraveled starting at the end of the first. New York caught fire and took a lead after one quarter. The Knicks knocked down 13 triples in the first half and they took a 75-55 lead over the Sixers. New York then cruised to a 128-92 win on the night.
Philadelphia committed 14 turnovers on the night which led to 15 points for the Knicks. Joel Embiid had 30 points and 10 rebounds while Tyrese Maxey had 27 points and nine assists for Philadelphia.
“They were physical, I guess you could say,” Maxey said after the loss. “Then we missed some open 3s. They made their open 3s and then we turned the ball over a little bit. I think we had, what, 14 turnovers? That’s high for us normally so you take care of that and they made some shots.”
Maxey shot 2-for-7 in the second half to score seven points after he scored 20 in the opening half. It was just an overall tough night for the Sixers. Especially, in the third quarter.
Philadelphia worked its way back into the game, but it just couldn’t get over the hump. After trailing 86-66, the Sixers cut the deficit to 88-76 with 2:39 to go in the third, but they couldn’t get the job done.
“We just missed shots,” said Embiid. “Got a few in transition. We missed them. We had a few wide-open 3s, we missed them. We didn’t take advantage of getting stops. I think at some point, we had close like 10 in a row, something like that, and we didn’t take advantage of those. It was just one of those nights. Even for myself, missing easy shots. Whether it was layups or shots that I usually make and everybody was just missing wide-open shots and they made them when it counted so. We didn’t take advantage of that.”
To Embiid’s point, yes. The Sixers did generate a lot of open looks. They just weren’t able to execute and take advantage of those shots.
“I just think that kind of everything we did seemed to roll out,” added coach Nick Nurse. “We just didn’t finish well enough. I thought we did generate some decent looks from 3 as well. I didn’t think we played very good in transition because we were getting a lot of stops to get out and have break opportunities that we weren’t capitalizing on. Just kind of irregular spacing up the floor when we had advantage, chances there, and just wasn’t to be tonight offensively, I think.”
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