Joel Embiid, Tobias Harris Explain Sixers’ Upset Loss to Spurs

The Sixers came up short against the Spurs on Saturday night.

Coming off of two-straight losses, falling short to Eastern Conference contenders such as the Boston Celtics and the Milwaukee Bucks, the Philadelphia 76ers had an excellent opportunity to get themselves in the win column on Saturday night.

With the rebuilding San Antonio Spurs in town, the Sixers were the better team on paper going into the matchup. On Saturday morning, Sixers guard De’Anthony Melton made it clear that just because the Sixers were heavily favored to win Saturday’s game doesn’t mean they were going to take the Spurs lightly.

“That’s an NBA team with... I think they are 2-0? Something like that,” Melton said of the 1-1 Spurs before tip-off. “We know they are going to come out there and play hard as they should. So, we should do the same thing and match their energy and have a dogfight out there no matter what.”

The Sixers got off to a decent start on Saturday. In the first quarter of action, they outscored the Spurs 25-19. However, a young Spurs team put up a dogfight, as Melton speculated. In the second quarter, San Antonio outscored Philadelphia 35-26 and went into halftime with the lead.

“[We had a] lack of defensive effort,” said Sixers forward Tobias Harris. “We do have to give them credit because they made tough shots, but I mean, on our part, that’s not the standard of defense that we hold ourselves to. Second quarter, thirty-five points for them. The third quarter? Thirty-one. Our standard is twenty-five and less.”

The Sixers drained over 50 percent of their shots in the third quarter, but as Doc Rivers stated, whenever the team began to establish an offensive rhythm, they immediately broke down on the defensive end.

“We started out in the third quarter where we got a little bit of pace,” said Rivers. “We got the ball in Tyrese’s hands more where he got up the floor. I thought James even pushed it up more in the second half. Our pace is bad, and we’re always up against the clock offensively, which we shouldn’t be with what we have. Defensively, right now, I said it in the Boston game — even when we make a run — we can’t get a stop. Typically, you make a run, and we did that by going zone a little bit, and that helped, but then they ran off five points in a row.”

Going into the fourth quarter, the Sixers trailed 85-77. Unlike their Thursday night matchup against Milwaukee, Philadelphia never found its rhythm in crunch time, and they struggled to climb back into the game before it was too late.

“We just got to play better, and we just got to be better,” said Sixers center Joel Embiid. “Slow starts, but it’s nothing to be concerned about. We’re a fairly new team, and we will find a way.”

The Sixers wrapped up Saturday’s matchup by falling short to the Spurs 114-105. With that loss, they drop to 0-3 on the year. While the Sixers aren’t ready to hit the panic button just yet, as it’s way too early in the year, they are well aware of the fact that they are playing far from their standard. 

Justin Grasso covers the Philadelphia 76ers for All76ers, a Sports Illustrated channel. You can follow him for live updates on Twitter: @JGrasso_.