Nice game for the Sixers, who erased a fourth-quarter deficit to win by eight and snap Sacramento’s four-game winning streak.

That’s a pretty good Kings team. They aren’t world beaters, but had won seven of eight going into Tuesday night’s game and they’ve got a quality group of scorers on the roster. Doc Rivers’ team turned up the defensive intensity in the second half, holding Sacramento to just 20 points in the 3rd and 4th quarters, which was the catalyst for a solid W to kick off the road trip.

You probably were not awake to see this one end, but if you were, nicely done. I fell asleep in the third quarter, like a sad loser, and then treated myself to a nice 6 a.m. DVR resumption, which revealed that Sacramento couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn from beyond the arc in game’s latter stages. They started out hot then went ice cold as the Sixers ratcheted up the effort.

“We didn’t make any adjustments, we just started playing better defense, honestly,” said Rivers after the game. “I thought a lot of it was we kept them out of the paint. That’s what created a lot of threes. I thought transition threes were one, and then paint threes. Their transition game is amazing with the speed of (De’Aaron) Fox and their other guards. I don’t think we adjusted well to it in the first half but we did a much better job in the second half.”

One of the tweaks the Sixers did make was shifting Matisse Thybulle to Fox towards the end of the game, which moved Ben Simmons to Buddy Hield and Harrison Barnes.

As a result, Fox’s matchup data looked like this:

That’s pretty good. Fox shot a combined 6-17 against the combo of Simmons and Thybulle. If you go through his 30 field goal attempts on the evening, he missed nine of his last ten.

“(Matisse) was great,” Rivers added. “We needed it, too. Ben did a good job on (Fox), but Matisse was almost better suited to him, so that allowed us to put Ben on someone else. That was a really good adjustment for us.”

Scorer 1a and 1b

Not surprisingly, Joel Embiid and Tobias Harris led the way for the Sixers in the fourth quarter, scoring 10 and 13 points, respectively. That comprised 71.8% of the team’s scoring in that period. They took the game over.

“Yeah they did, and they let it come to them,” Rivers said. “I thought it was interesting at halftime, we had 66 points or 60 points or something like that, and you could feel the frustration, like the ball wasn’t moving and we weren’t getting it to the right guys. And I said ‘guys, take a deep breath, we have 60 points, we’re shooting almost 52%, this is pretty good.’ But I thought in the second, our execution (was better); we had three plays that we ran to the final option and got Tobias and Joel the ball in their spots, with spacing. That was beautiful to see.”

There was one sequence in particular where they ran the same play for Harris, who nailed two straight buckets:

Simple elbow hand-offs right there. Embiid ran a lot of this action with JJ Redick, though it was more spaced out. This is one of those sets where Harris can turn the narrow corner and either pull-up or back down a smaller guy. It’s bread and butter for him and Doc is doing a really nice job of putting him in comfortable positions.

RE: Embiid, Rivers said this was his favorite Joel play of the night:

Pretty much the dagger right there. That’s a pass Joel struggles with in 2020 or 2019, or doesn’t even attempt.

Other notes:

  • Seth Curry is looking a lot more like himself following his post-COVID struggles. He was 7-13 and 4-6 from three in this one.
  • 14, 7, and 9 for Simmons, who was 6-13 from the floor. Only 2-6 from the line through. Still needs to improve there, but he’s fine right now. With Embiid and Harris filling up the basket, Ben can be scorer 3 or 4, or even 5 on any given night. The defense and tempo setting is more important.
  • Good bench game. 13-23 shooting from the trio of Dwight Howard, Furkan Korkmaz, and Shake Milton. Thybulle didn’t even attempt a shot, but he didn’t have to.
  • Fox is really fun to watch. Could watch him play every night. Think about how fast Simmons is in the open court, then you watch him flying down the floor at warp speed. He’s like the roadrunner, his legs are moving so fast that they look like a blur.

Solid late-night win for the Sixers. As the great Judas Priest once sang, they were Living After Midnight. Rockin’ to the dawn. Lovin’ ’til the morning. Then I’m gone!