The third-quarter curse was stalking the Philadelphia 76ers.<\/p>\n
A nine-point halftime lead Tuesday night over the Milwaukee Bucks had been halved within three minutes. The game was tied before the midway point of the frame.<\/p>\n
But each time the Bucks tried to get their noses in front, Paul George was there.<\/p>\n
George tied a franchise record with nine made 3-pointers, 16 of his 32 points coming in an explosive third quarter to send the 76ers to a rare comfortable win, 139-122, over the Bucks.<\/p>\n
George finished 9-for-15 from deep. Two of the misses were quick-pull, heat-check 3-pointers just to see if he could miss in the third.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s his best shooting performance as a 76er \u2014 he hit seven in a game twice \u2014 and his third-highest scoring game with the team.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think coach called my number early,\u201d George said, \u201cand just going from there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tuesday marked the second time that George, Joel Embiid (29 points) and Tyrese Maxey (22) all scored 20 or more points in the same game. The first was the Jan. 7 win over Washington. That was 10 games ago, George playing six of them and averaging just 13.8 points and 22.6 shooting from 3-point range in them.<\/p>\n
Embiid and George in particular knew that the 76ers needed a boost a day after trailing by as many as 50 points in a beatdown in Charlotte, the front end of a back-to-back that Embiid and George both missed.<\/p>\n
They made up for it quickly on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me tonight, it was to come in in these moments and create extra energy,\u201d George said. \u201cI know they\u2019re tired. And if I can be a force and boost the team\u2019s morale, that was my whole mindset coming into that. \u201c<\/p>\n
Embiid carried the load early, shooting 9-for-17 for 24 points in 17 minutes in the first half.<\/p>\n
Three of the misses came on the same sequence where he pogo-sticked at the rim and eventually finished, part of 31 second-chance points.<\/p>\n
The biggest basket of the nine was a lob thrown by Maxey that Embiid got up to jam in transition, the point guard so elated that he forgot to get back on defense and instead went to jump-hug Embiid while play was going on.<\/p>\n
But George came to the rescue with the game in the balance.<\/p>\n
A 71-62 halftime lead, even against the Giannis Antetokounmpo-less Bucks, looked less than stable.<\/p>\n
Milwaukee trimmed the lead to five before George awakened with a 19-footer, an 18-footer and a triple on consecutive trips to stabilize the 76ers offense.<\/p>\n
The Bucks got even at 81, but Kelly Oubre got to the rim twice to make sure they didn\u2019t get a lead, then George assisted on a VJ Edgecombe corner 3-pointer.<\/p>\n
That got the 76ers out of the woods. Embiid got on the board for the first time in the third with a jumper.<\/p>\n
Then George canned 3-pointers on consecutive trips with less than two minutes left to open the lead back up to nine and ensure the storm had passed.<\/p>\n
\u201cPG got cooking on some random stuff, and then we were able to run some stuff for him, too, quickly,\u201d coach Nick Nurse said. \u201cThat kept him cooking a little bit. VJ did a good job of executing that stuff. Everybody was good at getting Paul free.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was great tonight,\u201d Maxey said. \u201cHe played really well, really confident, shot the ball well. He was scared and didn\u2019t want to get 10 3s, but it\u2019s all right.\u201d<\/p>\n
There were plenty of positives to take a day after snow-delayed travel landed the 76ers back home at 1 a.m. After 44 points in the first half against the Hornets, Embiid led them to 42 in the first quarter.<\/p>\n
Jared McCain had his best game of the season, scoring 17 points on 5-for-6 shooting from 3-point range with Quentin Grimes out due to an ankle injury and the second-year pro assuming primary backup duties.<\/p>\n
Justin Edwards provided 11 quality first-half minutes with Edgecombe in foul trouble. Pretty much everything shy of letting the Bucks shoot 47 percent from 3-point range in the first half worked the 76ers\u2019 way.<\/p>\n
As much as McCain and George get the headlines, a good portion of shooting 22-for-42 from 3-point range (52.4 percent) is down to ball movement and getting everyone involved.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m just happy when the ball goes where it\u2019s supposed to go,\u201d Nurse said. \u201cWe had some moments of that tonight and moving it to the more open man.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMoments\u201d are a good way to describe the 76ers\u2019 recent stretch. They went 6-2 starting on the holiday road trip, then disappointed in a six-game homestand that dumped them off Tuesday as losers of five of seven.<\/p>\n
Sacramento and New Orleans should offer chances to pile wins before a five-game western swing. Tuesday\u2019s win, the 25th of the year, surpassed last year\u2019s total, not that that is cause for celebration.<\/p>\n
George showed Tuesday that he\u2019s still capable of moments.<\/p>\n
The 76ers have won games with Oubre and Edgecombe stepping up to augment their two stars. George maintains he\u2019s more in that former category, an auxiliary piece to augment Maxey and Embiid that will punish defense who don\u2019t account for him.<\/p>\n
Tuesday\u2019s triumph was over the 11th-place team in the East, one in trade-deadline turmoil. But any glimpse of how the playoff pieces might one day assemble is valuable.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we\u2019re right there with the New York Knicks, with the Clevelands,\u201d George said. \u201cI think we\u2019re right in the mix. When things are clicking and we\u2019re playing the right way and we\u2019re firing on all cylinders, we still have the one ungradable layer, and that\u2019s the trump card. So absolutely we\u2019ve got a chance.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The third-quarter curse was stalking the Philadelphia 76ers. A nine-point halftime lead Tuesday night over the Milwaukee Bucks…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":567243,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3769],"tags":[679,7,6,678,207,3817,66,7464],"class_list":{"0":"post-567242","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia-76ers","8":"tag-76ers","9":"tag-basketball","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-philadelphia","12":"tag-philadelphia-76ers","13":"tag-philadelphia76ers","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-top-stories-tmc"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=567242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567242\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/567243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=567242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=567242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=567242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}