PHILADELPHIA — The margin for error for the Philadelphia 76ers is currently very slim. Without the services of Joel Embiid, Tyrese Maxey, De’Anthony Melton, Nic Batum and Robert Covington on Friday, their execution had to be precise.
In a 103-95 loss to the New Orleans Pelicanstheir execution was anything but.
The Sixers fell behind by as many as 23 points in the first quarter alone. The Pelicans shot 70% from the floor, compared to 24% and 1 of 11 from deep for the Sixers. The defensive and offensive execution was poor, which upset coach Nick Nurse.
“There are several things you do when you put together your defensive game plan,” Nurse began. “So there are certain projects that you do as a team, and then there are certain things that you do with key personnel, right? And pretty much the whole second half we did the right thing. Obviously there were a few breakdowns here and there and there were a few loose ball bounces. Those kinds of things will always happen during the game, but for the most part we executed the plans and our plans on key personnel in the second half and that just allowed us to play a lot more in transition, right ?
The nurse is right. The Sixers were much better after halftime and cut the lead to six in the fourth quarter. They gave themselves a chance to steal one, but if they had just played a better first half, they would probably win this game.
“We got a lot more baskets on the floor,” Nurse continued of Philadelphia’s second half. “We started putting our heads down and driving and going for layups and things like that. So when we go down and they do that for the whole first half, we come back against a big, long, strong, athletic half-court defensive team, and we just weren’t very good there . »
Six of Philadelphia’s first seven possessions ended in a 3-point attempt Friday. They weren’t good 3s either and that bothered Nurse because the Sixers lost badly.
“Now I think we started, we came into the game with what I would consider a soft approach, because we took six or seven 3s on our first eight possessions, right?” The nurse continued. “Now a few of them are wide open. The one we did went up the court, Kyle (Lowry) swung to Kelly (Oubre Jr.) wide open in the corner, bang, but there were a bunch of dribbles that were at least moderately to heavily contested, don’t is this not ? And that’s not enough, is it? Like, you gotta play harder than that. You have to stick your nose in there and dig it into the paint and try to get to the foul line or draw a defense and send it to someone who’s open, etc.
Combine the poor offensive start with the poor effort on defense and it results in a deficit of up to 35. The Sixers simply cannot put themselves in a hole like that.
“So I thought about both things,” the nurse finished. “We had a soft mentality on offense. We tried to take the lead from the start and you can’t count on that, and we didn’t execute our defensive plans. Not a very good combination. That kind of led to what is that? I can’t even read between 30 and 15 years old. That’s a big number. I can’t read it, but it’s 30 or almost 40, right? »
The Sixers face the New York Knicks on Sunday.
