PHILADELPHIA — The Philadelphia 76ers fell short to the Brooklyn Nets 114-106 on Tuesday night as they fell to 16-12 on the season. Despite having Joel Embiid and Paul George on the floor alongside Tyrese Maxey, the Sixers were just unable to do much on the offensive end of things.
Philadelphia shot just 41% from the floor and 7-for-27 from deep while the Nets shot 17-for-46 from beyond the arc. Overall, it was just a tough night for everybody on offense. Especially, Maxey who started 1-for-10 from the floor and finished 3-for-14 in a rare tough night for him.
Maxey said he liked the shots he got offensively, but he just couldn’t convert.
“I just wasn’t good,” Maxey said after the loss. “I didn’t get in rhythm. I I didn’t feel like I was in rhythm, but it’s OK.”
On top of the struggles offensively, the Sixers had issues with Nets forward Michael Porter Jr. who had 28 points and five rebounds to lead Brooklyn. He had 14 points in the first quarter when he got off to a hot start and led the Nets after the Sixers jumped out to an 8-1 lead.
“I thought we came out the start of the game, playing some really good defense,” coach Nick Nurse said. “We were really into some things and ready to go, but then, just in general, the game took a took a turn of them beating us in a lot of ways. They beat us really badly from the 3-point line, right? I thought their athleticism and stuff was just—their energy was way better than ours, and that’s what happens when the ball is going in for them. They get extra bouncy and all that kind of stuff.”
The Sixers were then unable to overcome the struggles of Maxey on the offensive end as they were unable to really find any type of rhythm on the offense while the Nets pumped in a ton of triples.
“We never really could find much of a rhythm on offense,” Nurse added. “We were trying lots of lineups and trying a bunch of different defenses and stuff like that. We just never—there’s only two segments of the game where I thought we were playing kind of well, at both ends tying the two ends together.”
As far as the issues with Porter are concerned, there just isn’t much the Sixers could do to bother him. The sweet shooting forward got free way too many times and destroyed any defensive scheme Philadelphia implemented.
“We lost him a couple of times,” Maxey said. “We got to stay on his body. We messed up couple switches. We missed him in transition a couple times, but, yeah, that wasn’t good on our part.”
The Sixers will start a 5-game road trip on Friday when they visit the Chicago Bulls after Christmas.