PHILADELPHIA–The Philadelphia 76ers have won five in a row as they appear to have begun to figure everything out on the floor in order to succeed. They have gotten James Harden and Joel Embiid on the same page and Tobias Harris has excelled as a spot-up 3-point shooter.
Once Philadelphia welcomes Tyrese Maxey back into the fold from his injury, one has to assume that’s when the Sixers will really take off. They have gotten terrific play out of Georges Niang, De’Anthony Melton, PJ Tucker, Danuel House Jr., and others on the roster as well. This is what coach Doc Rivers envisioned when the season began.
“Our team’s better,” Rivers said on Monday. “We have more players is one. I think Joel has taken his game from last year we started playing him on the elbow more and now he’s comfortable there. He’s developed a shot down the stretch that he feels comfortable with.”
Then there is the fact that Harden was able to have a training camp with the team and build chemistry with his teammates.
“Tyrese was playing unbelievable and then James had a training camp with us,” Rivers added. “Clearly, we’re starting to fit and do the things that we want to do to be a good team. There’s a lot of growth.”
Even in Monday’s win over the Toronto Raptors. The negative is that Philadelphia let a 14-point lead slip away, but the positive is that even though the Raptors built a 7-point lead late, the Sixers were able to battle back and win the game.
That is something that doesn’t happen earlier in the season.
“This is a game early in the year that we lose because we just wasn’t ready and we just hung in there,” Rivers added. “You can see early with the lead, no one was comfortable with us because you saw, we weren’t making shots. The fouling, we still got to get away from some of the fouls that we’re committing, ushering them to the line, but we just hung in there enough.”
At the end of the day, the Sixers are now 17-12 and they are beginning to play the way they want to out on the floor.
“James said afterwards, we just had a winning attitude,” Rivers finished. “We won the game.”
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Story originally appeared on Sixers Wire