CLEVELAND — The Philadelphia 76ers fell short to the Cleveland Cavaliers on Wednesday 132-121 on the second night of a back-to-back in what was a tough performance overall. The Sixers finished the 3-game road trip at 1-2 and suffered tough losses on two straight nights to end the trip as the Cavs jumped on the Sixers right away with a 17-4 lead and led by as many as 26.

Tyrese Maxey shook off a slow start to finish with 27 points, nine assists, and seven rebounds for Philadelphia, Trendon Watford had 16 points and six assists off the bench, and Andre Drummond added 13 and 13 rebounds. Kelly Oubre Jr. had 19 points and Quentin Grimes had 27 points and four assists.

Here are the three biggest takeaways following the loss:

Road weary Sixers

The Sixers were, obviously, fighting fatigue in this one. The Cavaliers raced out to their big lead and while Philadelphia deserves a lot of credit for digging deep and fighting back to tie this game up, they just didn’t have enough down the stretch to come up with a win. The regular season is a grind in the NBA and the Sixers fell victim to the 3-game in 4-nights set. The good news for them is there’s two days off before they play again to start another back-to-back over the upcoming weekend.

“(Nick) Nurse did a good job of taking me out the game,” Maxey said. “I was disgusted early. TWatt came in, QDot came in. They had a lot of energy, Drum, and then I think the stars just kinda piggybacked off of them, and then honestly, I think we just ran out of gas if I’m being completely honest with you, but it was a tough one. Gotta be able to persevere and fight through those games and it made last night hurt even more, but it’s OK. We move on. We got a game Saturday.”

Lesson learned

The Sixers learned a lesson in this matchup with the Cavaliers: they can’t miss opportunities. Philadelphia knew this contest was going to be extremely tough, regardless of whether or not it had won in Chicago the night before, but seeing a 24-point lead slip away in the loss to the Bulls and then having to quickly turn around and have a tough night against the Cavs serves as a lesson that the Sixers needed to close out the Bulls on Tuesday, and probably would have had more energy in Cleveland.

“That’s any game,” Maxey said. “That’s any lesson. Regardless of if you have a back-to-back or what. It’s hard to win in this league. So, you got to take advantage of those opportunities. We did not take advantage of that opportunity, but it’s a learning experience. It’s game 8. We got a lot more to go. We got a lot more to go. So, this trip was alright. We should’ve been better, but it’s OK. It was our first little road trip of the year. We’re gonna get home and try and get these next two games.”

Watford takes control

If there was one positive that stood out for this one, it was Watford taking control of the offense off the bench. When he was on the floor, he demanded the ball, made sure everybody was in the right spots on the offensive end, and barked out orders. The Sixers are counting on the 5-year big man out of LSU to use his unique skill set in that way to give Philadelphia more versatility on either end of the floor.

He’s obviously showing quite a bit. Just ball handling, helping us in execution, scoring in a variety of ways. So, it’s good. I think that’s what we hoped he would be. I think he’s still got some room to get a little more in rhythm, a little bit more conditioning underneath him, all that kind of stuff, and hopefully he can continue to do that. I think he slots into a role nicely, there for us.”