Ad Disclosure
Meh – Observations from Cavaliers 121, Sixers 112
Published:
I’ll keep it short since we don’t need to spend too much time talking about a putrid loss on a holiday weekend.
The Sixers weren’t ready to play. They didn’t have the energy or enthusiasm required to knock off a feisty team that wasn’t going to come to Philly and just roll over.
That lack of spirit, as Brett Brown put it, manifested itself in an alarming disparity on the glass, with Cleveland bruising the Sixers to the tune of 14 offensive rebounds. Combine that with the fact that the Cavs only turned the ball over nine times and we ended up with a 93-75 margin in total shots.
Advantage visitors.
They got second chance points, protected the ball, shot 52.7% overall, and hit 11 of their 22 three pointers. Credit to Cleveland for playing a really nice game.
That said, I honestly don’t think the Sixers were that bad. They shot 53.3% from the field and 36.4% from three while turning the ball over just 10 times. They shot and made more free throws than Cleveland. Four of the five starters scored more than 20 points and they turned those 75 shots into 112 points, which is pretty good.
They fought off the slow start, took a third quarter lead, and just couldn’t build upon it, ultimately falling apart at the end.
Anyway – two quotes stood out to me post game about the rebounding. First, Jimmy Butler explained that he felt like he and the other guards could have done a better job to help out Joel Embiid and Wilson Chandler and Mike Muscala. When the bigs are tangled up with guys like Tristan Thompson, who finished with eight offensive rebounds, the onus is on the back court to come in and sort of clean up those loose balls.
Embiid said something along the same lines:
“They’ve got two good offensive rebounders in Tristan [Thompson] and Larry [Nance Jr.] and they play so hard. They crash the ball every time. We needed to do a better job as far as tagging them and making sure that whoever was guarding, whoever was coming in to help and we didn’t do that good of a job.”
Case in point:
There were at least four times last night where Ben Simmons just completely failed to put a body on Thompson, who was able to squirt in and get some put backs and tip outs. Cleveland finished with 15 second chance points.
Right, so I said I wasn’t gonna spend a lot of time on this recap. They put up a clunker.
On to Brooklyn on Sunday night.
Enjoy your weekend.
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