CLEVELAND — The Philadelphia 76ers found themselves in a tough situation as they paid a visit to the Cleveland Cavaliers on Wednesday on the second night of a back-to-back. The Sixers were missing key pieces such as Joel Embiid, Paul George, Jared McCain, and Dominick Barlow while the Cavs were welcoming Darius Garland and Jarrett Allen back to the floor.
The game started off in a bad way for Philadelphia as the Cavaliers built a 17-4 lead and put the Sixers in a tough position as they eventually earned a 132-121 win to send Philadelphia to its second straight loss. Coach Nick Nurse saw that his team was struggling a bit as they were unable to find much energy following traveling from Chicago the night before.
“We just weren’t quite ready to go at the start,” Nurse said after the loss. “They’re sitting in here for a couple days waiting, and we talked about it. They’re gonna come out super fast, and we gotta make sure we get ready to run back, but again, I thought our offense kind of ignited their offense, right? Some turnovers to start and all that kind of stuff got us back on our heels a little bit.”
Tyrese Maxey, who had a solid overall game, committed four turnovers in the opening quarter as the Cavs used their athleticism, size, and shooting ability to build their lead. It was an uphill climb after that which is not what anybody wants on the second night of a back-to-back. Especially, after blowing a 24-point lead in the loss to the Bulls on Tuesday.
“I think, again, we tried to fight our way after the 17-3 start, I think it was,” Nurse continued. “We fought our way back pretty good, the rest of the half there, and got things under control a little bit. You gotta be ready. I think the same thing happened on the 2nd night of our other back-to-back, too, not quite that drastically, but similar. So, you don’t want to dig yourself a hole on a back-to-back.”
To Nurse’s point, the Sixers didn’t quit. They did eventually rally and tie the game at 72 in the third, but the Cavs responded with a backbreaking 13-0 run and the Sixers couldn’t get back into it after that. It was just too much as Cleveland star Donovan Mitchell went off for 46 points.
“I thought it seemed like if we didn’t score the ball, we were really struggling in transition, right?” Nurse said of the third quarter run by the Cavs. “So either we turned it over, or we just missed a shot, a driving layup or whatever we missed, and it was really hard to get back to their bigs at the rim. They kept finding them. Obviously, Mitchell was cooking, too. He was playing fast and pulling up and driving, and when we started sending multiple people at him, he started finding a lot of dunks. Weakside was a little late on some of those and just we weren’t protecting the rim good enough at all.”
Either way, the slow start for the Sixers did them in. While they were able to recover and get back in the game, it just wasn’t enough as they ran out of gas down the stretch.
“A little bit of everything,” said Kelly Oubre Jr. “A second night of a back-to-back. We weren’t fully loaded. We didn’t have all of our guys, but yeah. They had two days off. Nice rest. We came off kind of a heartbreaker last night as well, so. We were kinda putting pressure on ourselves to just overthink things, try and figure out what went wrong last night, but I just think we kinda started off a little slow, but they were running. We could’ve stayed disciplined with our game plan for 48 minutes.”
The Sixers have two days off before hosting the Toronto Raptors on Saturday.