The Philadelphia 76ers had a rough night in Tampa on Sunday when they fell for the Toronto Raptors 110-103 on a night when they just couldn’t buy a bucket. They hit only 38.3% of the ground and then 11 of 37 in the loss.
The great superstar Joel Embiid felt the pressure of the Raptors all night, as he finished with 25 points, but hit just 6 out of 20 on the night. It was a night when he gained a lot of beauty, but he didn’t fall.
“I just missed the shots I usually do,” said a somber Embiid. “As soon as I cross the half block, they send two or three guys over me and all night I made the right move. I shared the ball, passed it on to my teammates. We could have done more shots, many shots came and went. There are a lot of pictures I have been taking all season that I just lost. So, we have to do a better job. “
After scoring 50 points, his career record, in the victory over the Chicago Bulls on Friday, the big guy just couldn’t buy a bucket. It was really one of those nights and he even expressed it to Coach Doc Rivers.
“I thought about the third quarter, when he said going, ‘man, I was pretty tonight, the ball just wouldn’t go in’ and there are nights like that,” said Rivers. “I thought a lot of our guys were beautiful tonight. The problem is that they were not coming in and I thought, the failures started to increase as we were dealing with them, so we have to do a better job of dealing with the failures because it will happen again ”.
It wasn’t just Embiid either. The Sixers received many beautiful looks from guys who usually drop photos like Tobias Harris, for example. He hit only 6 out of 17 on the night and hit only 1 out of 9 from the depths. The ball advanced through the offensive side and Embiid made certain moves in the doubles, except that the kicks did not fall.
“Yes, unfortunately, it was,” said Harris. “For us, we look very good and we have to give them credit, they were able to do many looks that made us enter the half court instead of going out and running. We had good moves that we could make, they didn’t really fall for us tonight. “
Ben Simmons returned to the team and had an offensive success scoring 28 points from 9 of 11 shots, but even he acknowledged that things could have been better on the offensive side.
“I think we all have a lot of great looks in the attack that just don’t fall,” he explained. “If they fell, it would have been a completely different game, but that’s how the game works.”
Basketball is a game to hit or miss, and on Sunday, they just missed. They should now move on to Tuesday’s rematch with the Raptors.
This post originally appeared on Sixers Wire! Follow us on the Facebook!