By Sean Kennedy (@PhillyFastBreak)
Toronto 96, Philadelphia 76 – Box Score
As if it wasn’t bad enough teams are routinely beating Philadelphia on the scoreboard, now they’re sending members of the 76ers to the hospital. While fighting for a rebound in the second half, Toronto point guard and Philadelphia native Kyle Lowry threw what looked like an intentional elbow toward Nerlens Noel. While Lowry did look apologetic when he realized how hard he connected (and would receive a technical), Noel suffered a left eye corneal abrasion and had to be taken to the hospital. It’s unknown yet whether he will be able to fly to Chicago for Monday night’s game.
Meanwhile, when the game wasn’t looking like a UFC fight, the Sixers were experiencing more of the same problems. The Raptors opened a big lead late in the first quarter behind the jumper of forward Luis Scola, who finished with 22 points on 10-14 shooting. Scola has haunted the Sixers this season, with two of his four games scoring 20+ points this season coming against Philadelphia.
Always the lurking monster in the shadows for the Sixers, turnovers were again a problem north of the border. Philadelphia committed 22 on the night, making it consecutive games with over 20 turnovers, after having briefly looked to mend their ways with just 12 and 10 giveaways in the two games prior.
More optimistically, Jahlil Okafor has shaken off his scoring slump the last few games, and finished with 23 points (albeit on 10-25 shooting) and 14 rebounds. He and Robert Covington (5 made threes for 15 points) helped the Sixers rally back in the second half. Philadelphia cut the Toronto lead to as low as six midway through the fourth quarter, before the mandatory fourth quarter dry spell kicked in, helped a bit by a Raptors former all-star.
After seeing their lead cut to six, Toronto went on a 15-3 run to put the game to bed, aided by 10 points from Demar DeRozan. DeRozan would finish with a game-high 25 points, including an excellent 13-14 performance from the foul line. I don’t think his game is very effective when he’s up against a disciplined defense, but DeRozan seems to always kill the Sixers because of how their young roster bites on all his fakes.
The Sixers are now 1-24 on the season, which looks like a typo because winning 4% of your games is unheard of at the professional level. Probably without Noel for tonight’s road game against a solid Chicago Bulls team, the misery doesn’t look as though it will be abating any time soon. Save us, Ben Simmons.
Other Game Notes:
- Not that T.J. McConnell played well, but it was curious that Brett Brown opted to give him just 12 minutes while playing Isaiah Canaan for 36. With Kendall Marshall limited to just 20 points (over which he played well, recording 5 assists), I would have thought Brown would want a pure point guard on the floor more of the time. Basically, I sound like a broken record, but any time with Canaan as the point guard continues to make me scratch my head.
- With Marshall and Tony Wroten still not playing on back-to-backs, Wroten sat out last night while Marshall will presumably do so tonight in Chicago. Again, I’ve mentioned this before, but I really can’t wait until they can both play on the same night without minutes restrictions. I might have brought this up, but Isaiah Canaan played 36 minutes.
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
