Sixers discuss how they slowed down Luka Doncic in win over Mavs
PHILADELPHIA–The Philadelphia 76ers knew they had to center their focus on one certain guy in order to knock off the Dallas Mavericks the way they did on Friday in a 111-101 win.
That guy was Mavericks star Luka Doncic who entered Friday’s contest averaging 28.2 points, 9.3 rebounds, and 8.6 assists. In Dallas’ win over the Sixers back on February, he scored 33 points on 13-for-28 shooting with 15 assists and 13 rebounds.
Things were much different on Friday as Doncic finished with just 17 points on 5-for-20 shooting and he had 10 assists, seven rebounds, and six turnovers as Philadelphia threw a bunch of different defenses at him.
Starting in a zone
The Sixers started in a zone defense–as did Dallas–and that seemed to throw Doncic’s rhythm off a bit. Of course, that allowed Jalen Brunson to get going for Dallas, but slowing down Doncic was a big priority.
“The zone was great,” said coach Doc Rivers. “We’ve been doing it more and more over the last five or six games. We like it. We think we have pretty high IQ guys, it throws a team off rhythm, we stay in if it’s effective, just like teams do against us, so it’s been good. It’s been great tonight for us.”
The Sixers did mix it up on the defensive end as it wasn’t just a zone, but the zone did seem to throw Doncic off a bit.
“I don’t know,” said Rivers. “What it did tonight, they had no pace anymore. It was like my old high school coach used to say. You should run the first play of the game, whatever the other team ran, because it has to work in practice or else they wouldn’t be running it. That was his whole theory.”
To Rivers’ point, once the Mavs went zone, it was time for the Sixers to run zone.
“They’re a great zone team,” he added. “We ran zone against Miami and almost came back and they’re a great zone team so maybe it works in practice. That’s where they’re zoning and that’s what we did tonight.”
Having Harden defend Doncic
As mentioned, the Sixers did end up throwing a bunch of different looks towards Doncic and the Mavericks. Philadelphia mixed it up with a man defense along with the zone and they even put James Harden on Doncic for a team there.
“James, even when you talk about defense, James taking on that challenge of guarding Luka, he did an amazing job on Luka,” said Joel Embiid.
Harden being active against him
There isn’t a lot that Doncic hasn’t seen out there in terms of defense. He is still a young guy, obviously, but he has been playing professional basketball for a long time. Harden and the Sixers just wanted to make life tougher on him than usual.
“We just did a great job of mixing it up,” he said. “They’re a really great offensive team and it’s geared by him so we wanted to mix it up, show a little bit of zone, show man, be aggressive with him, and I’m sure he’s seen a lot of different defenses every night. Night in and night out so try to be aggressive, be active with our hands, and make his shots tough.”
Running the zone defense
Rivers mentioned that the Sixers have been working on the zone often. They ran it a lot on Friday in order to throw Dallas off and help the Sixers get it done in a win they really needed.
“I think there’s things you go over in practice that sometimes don’t work in practice and you wonder ‘Is this ever going to work in a game?’ and when it does, you’re like ‘Alright, these coaches know what they’re talking about’,” said Georges Niang. “I think we’re happy that it worked. It’s just another defense that you can throw at a team to slow them down and when we got going on offense, it helped us down the stretch.”
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