Subscribe
Follow Us
The Philadelphia 76ers ended their final West Coast trip of the season in the worst possible way. They got blown out by the Golden State Warriors despite having all three of their stars in the lineup, losing 139-105.
The Sixers never held a lead over the Warriors at any point in the game. Their defensive performance was the very worst of their season and the first time they allowed a team to eclipse 130 points. Joel Embiid was fine but not close to his best. Everyone else besides Guerschon Yabusele (and maybe Paul George on the offensive end) was closer to their worst.
Embiid lamented the 76ers' slow start, a poor performance that appeared to carry over from the last game. Embiid wasn’t available to play but the Sixers blowing a fourth-quarter lead to the Sacramento Kings took the wind out of their sails for the second night of a back-to-back.
“I think it’s just about, as a team we’ve just got to come out faster,” Embiid told reporters. “You know we came out, made a few mistakes. Offensively we went out, we didn’t establish ourselves, and then obviously they made shots and we were in the hole pretty early on and then we could never recover from it. So yeah, I mean, just being aggressive from the start probably will help. So we’ll do a better job.”
Joel Embiid returns for 76ers in blowout loss to Warriors
Nick Nurse admitted that the team needs to do a better job of establishing Embiid in the offense early on.
“Well, I think again, I’m not sure I like our, and I’m including myself in this, our establishing him early in the game,” the 76ers' head coach told reporters. “He was kind of out of the game in the first, even though he was in, he wasn't really involved in the game as much as we needed him to be. Then, obviously we started finding him and he started going to work, and I thought he was pretty aggressive, you know, took it inside, got to the free throw line quite a bit. I kind of liked how he played, but we probably should have involved him from the start.”
Embiid did get the ball a few times early in the game, assisting Tyrese Maxey on a jumper and committing a turnover, but he took a little while to get truly going. The Warriors, on the other hand, hit the ground running and never looked back. They led by 10 points after less than six minutes of game time and never led by fewer than 15 for the final 25 minutes of game time — a period that started right before halftime and extended until the end of the game.
The 76ers still have one more road game, a matchup with the Brooklyn Nets on Saturday, before beginning a new homestand.
