CLEVELAND — The Philadelphia 76ers had a tough night in The Land on Wednesday as they fell to the Cleveland Cavaliers 132-121. The road-weary Sixers, playing their third game in four nights, fell behind quickly 17-4 as the well-rested Cavs jumped on them behind their star backcourt of Donovan Mitchell and Darius Garland as well as their hulking frontline.
The Sixers, to their credit, dug deep and rallied to tie the game at 72 in the third before the Cavs answered with a 13-0 run to regain control and put Philadelphia away as Cleveland rebuild the lead to as large as 26 in the fourth. On the second night of a back-to-back, one could have expected coach Nick Nurse to pull Tyrese Maxey, VJ Edgecombe, Quentin Grimes, and others, but Nurse kept them out there as the Sixers did cut the deficit to 14 with 3:16 to go, but a Sam Merrill triple ended that thought.
The Sixers were thinking of pulling those guys, but Nurse wanted to give those guys a chance.
“We were considering it, and then we kind of just made a run back with a couple minutes to go to get it down to I think, 10, or 11, or nine, or something like that, and I don’t know,” Nurse explained. “We’re in a stage right now where I’m way more in the we gotta continue to show fight.”
The Sixers have rallied from big deficits to win games in the early part of the season. So, Nurse is right in that respect. He was not only hoping Philadelphia would be able to pull off another miracle in Cleveland, but he’s also wanting the Sixers to set that standard. The 2024-25 season was, obviously, a disaster. He doesn’t want to give in at any moment no matter the situation.
“We’re trying to dig ourselves out of some stuff from last year, right? And the attitude and the fight and all that stuff needs to be something that we got to continue to establish, right? Once we started making a little run there, I was not gonna pull the plug on that run until it was time. And to be honest with you, I’m proud of it. I’m glad we left them in. I’m proud of the way they played to try to continue to fight, and they cut that thing down to, I don’t know, I can’t remember, but it was probably around 10 with a couple minutes to go, and I don’t know, we were just in one or two or three of the games just like that, so anything could happen in this league.”
Maxey ended up playing 36 minutes after playing 39 in Chicago on Tuesday. Edgecombe played 37 the night after playing 38 against the Bulls. Unfortunately for Nurse and the Sixers, he has no choice, but to play those guys. They’re missing a lot of key pieces and he has to have those guys out there. With two days off now before another back-to-back on Saturday and Sunday, Nurse is hoping to have some guys return.
“I mean, the tricky part for us right now is obviously there’s probably four guys, maybe five that are playing heavy minutes, right?” Nurse stated of the plan over the next two days. “Those guys obviously don’t do much, but the tricky part is we got a whole bunch of guys on minutes restrictions and guys coming back and stuff, and we got to get those guys in condition and in shape. So, it’s a little bit of tale of 2 teams, right? That we gotta do, but that’s where we are. We’re happy that these guys are starting to filter back in. We just got to make sure we manage it correctly, but that would be it. The guys that are playing heavy minutes won’t get on the floor much at all. The guys that aren’t need to get on the floor.”