Nick Nurse scolds 76ers for ‘soft approach’ in brutal loss to Pelicans

PHILADELPHIA — Nick Nurse was not pleased with the way the Philadelphia 76ers played to start their Friday night matchup with the New Orleans Pelicans. The loss featured the best and the worst of the Hospital Sixers and the latter is what’s sticking in Nurse’s mind.

“You’re certainly not very proud of the way the team came out and played the 1st half. And then you’re pretty proud of the way they fought back in it,” Nurse said. “They actually almost gave themselves a chance. One or two more breaks down the stretch and maybe another two minutes on the clock we might have had a shot, right?”

After going down 63-34 at halftime, the 76ers outscored the Pelicans in the second half 61-40. Cutting a 35-point deficit down to five was impressive. But being in such a big hole in the first place underscores how bad Philly can be without its stars. A drop-off can be expected; the Sixers were in total freefall for at least half the game.

Being without Joel Embiid, Tyrese Maxey and other key role players made things hard on the 76ers. But as is typical with Nurse, moral victories are no victories at all.

Rather than be pleased simply with the second-half effort, Nurse will focus on how to get that level of play from the jump in the 76ers’ next game, a Sunday showdown against the New York Knicks in Madison Square Garden. In this assessment of what his team needs to do, Nurse laid out how frustrating the first half against the Pelicans was.

“We came into the game with what I would consider a soft approach because we took six or seven threes out of our first eight possessions,” Nurse said. “Now, a couple of them were wide open…But there was a bunch of dribble-up ones that we were at least moderately to [heavily] contested — and that’s not good enough. Like, you gotta play tougher than that. You gotta put your nose in there and drive it in the paint and try to get to the foul line or draw some defense and kick it out to somebody that’s open, et cetera. So I thought both things started. We had a soft mentality on offense — we tried to jumpshoot our way to a lead early and you can’t count on that — and then we didn’t execute the defensive schemes. Not a very good combination.”

The Pelicans starting the game with a spectacular display of shooting (that was in part the case of the 76ers’ defensive issues) made the Sixers’ poor execution stand out even worse. Phily heard loud boos at various points in the first half as New Orleans only ran its lead up into the 30s. Kelly Oubre Jr., who previously sounded off on the team disappointing fans after their previous loss, admitted that he and his teammates internalized the disappointment from the crowd.

“Listen man, I was very adamant. I haven’t been booed here yet, Godspeed. And it was just like, ‘Bro, if we don’t pick it up, they gonna boo us out the gym, maybe out the city.’ So it was just a message, honestly, that was straightforward,” Oubre said, adding that it was a message that everyone on the team felt.

Philly fans are never afraid to resort to booing their team. The lone remedy, athletes who embrace the city’s unity and passion come to learn, is its lone remedy. The 76ers did just that in the second half, igniting a dormant crowd on their mad dash to get even on the scoreboard. They came up short, which only entrenches them deeper in play-in-game territory, but proved Oubre’s point that the message was received.

Nurse said that, when a team has its back against the wall, the messaging becomes a two-part refocusing on the schemes that need to be adjusted and the mental and physical willpower that are required to implement them. “You either quit or you tighten up your shoes and you get out there and you start fighting,” Nurse said. “And at least they tightened up the shoes and started fighting.”

In the end, the biggest takeaway was that the job proved to be too difficult for the 76ers to finish. Especially as Embiid and Maxey continue to recover, the Sixers have to focus on the examples they set for themselves of what to do and what to never, ever do again.