Sixers

Notes and Quotes from an Ultra-Rare Philadelphia 76ers Practice Session

By Kevin Kinkead

Published: May 19th, 2021 · 9:12 AM EDT

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The Sixers will play the winner of Thursday night’s Wizards/Pacers game in the first round of the NBA playoffs.

Game 1 is set for Sunday, though we don’t have a time yet. That’s something the league should be releasing sooner rather than later… we hope. Waiting around for this tip-off time is a pain in the ass.

Meantime, the Sixers actually get some valuable practice time this week, which is an ultra-rarity. The schedule was so crunched this season that they barely practiced at all, instead going game/rest/game/rest for most of the campaign. Doc Rivers told reporters on Tuesday that the entire team took part in the session and also had this to say about his squad:

• They’re using this time to “fine tune” and “sharpen” up what they were doing in the regular season.
• Rivers says they’ll “go hard” for a couple of practice days, then light, and then make it more like a shootaround session on Saturday.
• Without a confirmed opponent, they’re pretty much focused on themselves at this point.

More Doc on that third bullet point:

“We still work on NBA sets, you know? In this case, there were what, four teams available? We probably work on a couple of sets that they all run. But we do that every practice. Every practice we work on a NBA set and sometimes we’re playing one team and working on another team’s set, just because I think it’s good practice for us.”

Rivers, continued:

• On watching the play-in games, Rivers said he’s getting pasta from Saloon, steak from Steak 48, and will have a notepad in front of him, if he can “reach over the food.”
• He was annoyed that nobody in the media informed him about Saloon earlier.
• Rivers wants the Sixers to make their cuts sharper and clean up their offensive execution. He felt like they slipped up offensively in the last month of the regular season.
• He thinks they’ve handled Joel Embiid double teams and zone defenses pretty well this season, but feels like they got lazy with spacing and cutting at the end of the year.

Tobias Harris also spoke to the media and said this:

• He noted that even when they did practice this season, the sessions weren’t strenuous. Just too much going on with the crunched schedule.
• Harris noted that transition defense is the biggest thing they need to improve. (The Sixers finished 29th out of 30 teams in this area in the regular season.)
• On the flipside, he thinks their half court defense is really good when locked in, based on the length of the team and their mental focus.
• He thinks it’s an “amazing opportunity” to play as a #1 seed and won’t worry about what happened last year in the playoffs.

Harris was then asked about playoff expectations and the fact that he’s now in his third-straight postseason after an early career that didn’t often go beyond the regular season:

“It’s something that you really can’t take for granted. I was talking to my older brother and it’s funny because a couple of years ago, after the regular season it was over. You plan a vacation and get ready for the offseason. But this is why you play basketball, for these opportunities and these moments, to be able to reach the highest peak of the game and win at the highest level. That’s something I don’t take for granted. That’s something that continues to make me strive to work. It’s an opportunity in front us, and to be on this good of a team, besides talent, just to be around this group of individuals as a whole, that’s important. We have fun being around each other and playing basketball.” 

…

“I’ve been on the other side of that, and it’s not a good feeling to go home and not play in the playoffs.”

Another practice session today for the Sixers, starting at 2:30 p.m. Washington and Indy will play Thursday night, then we’ll get the first round matchup set.