Sixers ready to bring the fight to Raptors in Game 6 in closeout game
TORONTO — The Philadelphia 76ers will attempt for the third straight game to close out the Toronto Raptors on Thursday after once being up 3-0 in the series. The Raptors have mucked the game and made Philadelphia play their style of basketball, which has slowed the Sixers considerably.
As the series shifts back to Canada for a Game 6 that not a lot of people saw coming, the Sixers are prepared to bring the fight to the Raptors in contrast to the previous two games.
“I think bringing the fight to them is essentially what we need to do,” said Georges Niang at shootaround on Thursday. “Game 5, we didn’t do a great job. We let them get confidence early and they ran with it and they executed their game plan. We gotta continue to execute ours.”
It could just be human nature for a team to just relax a bit when going up 3-0 the way Philadelphia did. Especially after the way they won Game 3 thanks to the heroics of Joel Embiid, but Niang isn’t buying that.
“Toronto’s a good team,” he said. “You can’t sit here and say ‘Oh, we got overconfident and that’s the reason why they won’. They’re a good team and they’ve been fighting this whole year, so I wouldn’t expect anything less.”
Niang then used the Golden State Warriors as an example of how they closed out their series with the Denver Nuggets Wednesday in a close one.
“If you guys watched the game last night with Steph (Curry) or Steve Kerr, the punch-out game is the toughest game,” he explained. “That’s the game we’re struggling on so like I said, we gotta bring the fight to them and take it. They’re not just gonna give it to us.”
The previous two games showed that it is incredibly hard to close a team out. Especially a team like the Raptors who just go out there and continue to fight no matter the situation. The Sixers will have to bring their best to this matchup as they look to finally move on to the second round.
“Fight,” said Tyrese Maxey. “That’s it. It’s a fight tonight. That’s all I gotta say.”
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