Joel Embiid, Sixers run down list of things that went wrong late vs. Lakers
PHILADELPHIA–The Philadelphia 76ers looked to be in cruise control in the fourth quarter against the Los Angeles Lakers. They led by 18 in the fourth quarter, they were playing well, the ball was hopping, and it seemed as if this was going to be an easy win.
Instead, the Lakers stormed back. After James Harden scored to give Philadelphia a 113-97 lead with 4:05 left, the Lakers stormed back and they rallied to force overtime tied at 120. In a chaotic play where the ball bounced off Joel Embiid and into the hands of Anthony Davis, the star big man went to the line with LA trailing 120-119, looking to lead the Lakers to a shocking win, but he missed one of the two and it went to the extra session.
The Sixers then took care of business and they won the game 133-122 to end their 3-game skid. Afterward, Embiid and the Sixers listed what went wrong and how they were able to recover to win the game.
Embiid on the fourth quarter
“Just trying to figure out what the hell was going on. Honestly, I think we had a bunch of turnovers. We never should have never been in that position, but I’m glad we got another opportunity at it and we went to overtime and we closed it out.”
Tobias Harris on the win
“Sloppy, but good win for us so we’ll take it. Obviously, we didn’t want it to happen that way, but we gotta learn from it and figure it out in those moments. Especially, when teams are presenting that type of pressure. Just gotta take care of the basketball, make the right play, and a domino effect of turnovers toward the end. Obviously, we don’t like it, but it’s a good win for us. We’ll take any win in the NBA and we’ll just grow from it. That’s it.”
Coach Doc Rivers on the night
“Everything. Missed layups, turnovers. You could have—we’ll take the win, and one thing I will say, normally you give up a lead like that, to gather yourself and play well in the overtime is rare. So I told our guys, I’m very proud of that, but just the mistakes we made down the stretch, very similar to the Houston game in some ways. We have to fix that.”
Rivers on what's going through his mind with Davis at the line
“I just hope a miss. I felt like a football coach when a guy has a field goal. I hope he misses one of the field goals. He did, we got it to overtime, which is an amazing statement. Like really. That should never happen.”
Embiid on recovering to win in overtime
“I can’t speak for my teammates, but for me, it’s easy. It happened, we got lucky with a missed free throw by AD, it’s fine to go close it up. As far as my teammates, I felt like they also responded the same because we just played better we made that it wasn’t gonna happen again.”
James Harden on the turnovers
“I had a couple turnovers. They just amped up their pressure. They picked up the pressure a little bit and had us on our heels. We can’t allow that to happen, but I’m proud of the way how we didn’t hang our heads we went into overtime and we won the game.”
De'Anthony Melton on the overtime success
“It wasn’t too many adjustments. We understand how we ended the fourth wasn’t good. We should’ve been had this. We should’ve closed this out a couple minutes ago, but we just wanted to go into overtime just keep applying pressure and whoever gets more stops in this game was gonna win. I felt like in OT, we just locked in on that. We just stuck to the game plan and we kept defending and kept defending.”
