Tobias Harris says Sixers need mental toughness, better body language
PHILADELPHIA — The Philadelphia 76ers are continuing to unpack the 2021-22 season after a Game 6 loss to the Miami Heat on Thursday night that ended their season. The Sixers had a tumultuous season, but with Joel Embiid and James Harden, the expectation was that they would compete for a championship.
Instead, it was another Round 2 exit. It is the fourth time in five seasons that they were eliminated in the Eastern Conference semifinals and now they have to figure out what needs to be better for the future.
Tobias Harris, who has been the team’s vocal leader all season, had a suggestion for the team in order to improve for next season.
“Mental toughness,” said Harris. “I think so. It’s mental toughness. I think that part of it, I don’t think we have yet. Seeing the Milwaukee game yesterday (Wednesday), that’s a team that’s been through the fire being able to fight and just keep going. I think, at times, for our group, too many things just affected us as a whole. We drop our heads too much, our body language at times is crappy.”
Harris is right about that. There are too many times when the Sixers can be pushed around, which is what the Heat did in this series, and Philadelphia didn’t respond at all.
“We needed that to be better throughout this series and I think that hurt us in this series,” Harris continued. “Our mental toughness for sure hurt us vs. that group. They did a lot of things to challenge that. The hustle plays, the 50-50 basketballs, everything. The physicality by them as well. We need to be better as a collective group of holding our head and just fighting and going right back at it so I don’t think we did a great job of that.”
Fixing mental toughness isn’t easy. It isn’t like they can just get in the gym and work on being mentally tougher. It is more about being able to get in the right headspace and understanding what has to be done in order to win in this league. It’s not easy at all.
“It’s not simple to fix, but I think it just comes with the intent,” Harris finished. “Every man to himself, the intent that you come into the game with, the energy that you come in with, I think that’s a huge part of it, and that’s something I would say throughout this year, we’ve shown in many games how great we can be and we’ve shown when things are good how mentally tough we are and on the flip side of that, we didn’t do a great job of that when things weren’t going our way.”
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