Zach LaVine’s heave that fell wide to secure the Sixers 113-111 win over the Sacramento Kings could only bring more feelings of relief than joy. Despite it feeling prophesied that the Sixers must take every game down to the wire, they were 10-point favorites in this one. They were taking on a lottery team with a chance to win their second home game in a row for the first time in over a month.
Despite all that, they were getting booed off the floor as they took a timeout with eight minutes left in the game,
trailing by eight. Thanks to 77 combined points from Tyrese Maxey and Joel Embiid they were able to lock in, erasing that deficit and getting the win off a Maxey layup that put them in front with just 1.3 seconds remaining.
Head coach Nick Nurse was worried about the possibility of taking this one too lightly, and felt like his guys got away with one.
“Kind of what you fear a little bit going into this game happens,” Nurse said. “I think we’re pretty lucky, to be honest with you, that we got out of there with a W.”
Even after a brilliant individual performance, one where he dropped 40 points, including the game-winner on an insane 66.7% field goal percentage, Maxey was able to acknowledge it wasn’t the group’s best effort.
“I feel like sometimes, you gotta be lucky” Maxey said. “We didn’t play great by no stretch of the imagination, but we’re gonna take the W. I’d rather win the game and learn lessons after than lose it.”
Of course he and his teammates don’t want to be winning games that way. As always he talked about looking back at film and using practice to get better. Both Maxey and Dominick Barlow both seemed to identify something after the game though.
Winning ugly isn’t something the Sixers have done a ton of recently, and seeing them actually be able to do that will be a big boost moving forward.
“Some nights look better than others, but I thought the stretch maybe two, three weeks ago, if that was tonight’s game, we would have ended up losing that game,” Barlow said. “I think we took a step winning those ugly games that matter that affect the standings and all that.”
Games like the Jan. 16 loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers or the overtime losses on Jan. 11 to the Toronto Raptors and Jan. 5 to the Denver Nuggets stand out here. Philly was up on Cleveland the whole game until the fourth quarter. In Toronto, they had crucial turnovers at the end of regulation to choke it away. They took a hospital version of the Nuggets too lightly and were never able to slow them down.
“That’s really an improvement for us, honestly. There’s been times when we just let those games slip out of our hands and we just lose it, and we don’t feel good,” Maxey said. “I think that was, as bad as it was in the third and the early fourth, for us to be resilient, buckle down, get stops, and win the game like that, I was proud of us.”
With how prone this team is to make every game a clutch scenario, it’s likely they’ll be in this situation again and soon. They only hope that their experience continues to make them better prepared for it.
