3 biggest takeaways for Sixers following tough road loss to Celtics
· Yahoo Sports
BOSTON -- The Philadelphia 76ers fell short to the Boston Celtics by a score of 114-98 on Sunday night as they were unable to overcome the absence of Joel Embiid in this one. The Celtics won the rebounding battle 59-37 as they overwhelmed the Sixers and it was a tough night overall for Philadelphia.
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Tyrese Maxey had 33 points and six assists for Philadelphia while VJ Edgecombe had 23 points and five rebounds. The Sixers also received 10 points and 12 rebounds from Andre Drummond, 14 points and eight rebounds from Dominick Barlow, and Adem Bona added five and four rebounds.
Here are the three biggest takeaways following the loss:
Getting beat in the hustle stats
The Sixers were unable to do much in this area of the game. While Drummond tried his best, the Celtics were chasing down long rebounds in a strong effort as they came up with 30 second chance points compared to just 10 for Philadelphia. Of Boston's 59 rebounds, 19 were on the offensive glass, as the Sixers were just unable to chase down the long rebounds that Boston produced with the 3-pointers it put up on a regular basis.
Coach Nick Nurse stated after the loss:
Well, it's obviously one of the strengths that they have. We kind of had it as the key to the game, and it became absolutely the key to the game, one of the keys. I mean, I just didn't think we made enough shots on offense, either. We had, I thought really good looks and lots of lots of opportunities on offense, and for whatever reason, I just didn't think we made enough shots really. I think it probably would have juiced us up a little more if we hit some of the open shots we were getting. I was really happy with what we were generating. A lot of those rebounds were long ones. We just couldn't seem to check out or get out of the kind of--they were long rebounds to go chase them. It really hurt us.
Tough shooting night for Maxey
The 2-time All-Star had 33 points, but he shot just 12-for-34 on the night. He shot 4-for-11 from deep and missed some critical ones late when the Sixers did have a chance to steal one late on the road. With Philadelphia trailing 103-97 with less than 4:00 to go, Maxey missed an open 3 as well as a floater in the paint. Edgecombe then missed before Boston's Neemias Queta came up with a big bucket to push the lead back up to eight with 3:06 left which began a string of six straight points for Queta as the Celtics put the game away.
Nurse stated on Maxey's tough night:
I thought he was pretty free and clear most of the night. He had the ball a lot. He was coming off screens with a lot of space a lot. I mean, maybe down the lane, it seemed like he was taking some floaters from distance, but I think he made most of those, actually, but no. I think there's maybe only a couple the kind of hard driving ones where he gets bumped. There's maybe two or three of those, but other than that, I think they were pretty good. Just unfortunate. It's like, you need the ball to go in sometimes. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. I think we did a lot of other good things, right? And hung in the game and competed in the game. I thought it was going to be really interesting there down the stretch and just didn't turn out that way.
Issues with Queta
The Celtics received big nights from a number of players, but Queta had a career-high 27 points to go along with 17 rebounds. He shot 10-for-14 from the floor and 7-for-10 from the foul line as he was a problem that Philadelphia couldn't solve all night. Whether it was Drummond or Bona or Barlow, there was no answer for Queta in this one. The big man from Utah State really went to work and had himself a night as the Sixers weren't able to slow him down.
"Just seemed a little too quick and athletic for us tonight, or big or something," Nurse explained. "He just seemed like every time we'd make them miss, he seemed to be down there just reaching up above all the all the other hands and pulling it down and keeping it alive. He was really, really hard to handle tonight, for sure."
This article originally appeared on Sixers Wire: 3 biggest takeaways for Sixers following tough road loss to Celtics