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The Sixers Looked Tired in Cleveland, and the NBA Schedule Sucks
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The Sixers looked knackered in a 132-121 loss in Cleveland on Wednesday night. It was the second-night of a road/road back-to-back and they were coming off a rough collapse in Chicago the night before. Joel Embiid wasn’t available and Nick Nurse kept the starters out there even though they were down 20 points for the first half of the fourth quarter.
So that’s one thing, the heavy legs. Through eight games, which is just about 10% of the schedule, Tyrese Maxey, VJ Edgecombe, and Kelly Oubre are ALL top five in minutes per game. Some of that will be alleviated with Jared McCain getting back to full health, and Paul George returning at some point, but it’s certainly not sustainable right now.
On the other hand, if you’re Nurse, you can argue for keeping the starters on the floor instead of waving the white flag on consideration that the Sixers don’t play again until Saturday, a home game at night against Toronto. You take a short flight back to Philadelphia and get two full recovery days after running the midweek gauntlet.
Which begs the question –
Why is this even a thing in the first place? Why do the Sixers have to play back-to-back on Tuesday and Wednesday only to be off entirely on Thursday and Friday? There is a grand total of one game on the Thursday night slate, and it’s a west coast game between the 3-4 Clippers and 3-5 Suns. Not exactly appointment viewing for The Association.
What’s more is that the Cavs had not played since Sunday, so they got two full rest days to prepare for the Sixers. Chicago, Tuesday night’s opponent, hasn’t play a back-to-back this season. Philadelphia has already played two back-to-backs in which they’re 2-2 so far (front ends included), sneaking past Washington on the road with an overtime win on October 28th. They had to play 3 games in 4 nights this week, all on the road. The Flyers, meantime, are on the road this week and back for a 1 p.m. / 7:30 p.m. doubleheader at The X on Saturday night, so it’s not like there’s a scheduling complication there.
FWIW Nurse said this after the Cleveland game, from Ky Carlin at Sixers Wire:
“We were considering (pulling the starters), and then we kind of just made a run back with a couple minutes to go to get it down to I think, 10, or 11, or nine, or something like that, and I don’t know,” Nurse explained. “We’re in a stage right now where I’m way more in the we gotta continue to show fight.”
…
“We’re trying to dig ourselves out of some stuff from last year, right? And the attitude and the fight and all that stuff needs to be something that we got to continue to establish, right? Once we started making a little run there, I was not gonna pull the plug on that run until it was time. And to be honest with you, I’m proud of it. I’m glad we left them in. I’m proud of the way they played to try to continue to fight, and they cut that thing down to, I don’t know, I can’t remember, but it was probably around 10 with a couple minutes to go, and I don’t know, we were just in one or two or three of the games just like that, so anything could happen in this league.”
Anyway, on to the next one!
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com