Three reasons the Sixers beat the Los Angeles Lakers, 107-106

The 76ers came out hot, withstood a few Los Angeles Lakers comeback runs, and put the defending champs away in the fourth quarter of Wednesday’s 107-106 win at the Wells Fargo Center.

In giving the Lakers their first road loss of the season, the Sixers improved to 13-6. Here are three reasons they won.

The Sixers took advantage of a defensive mismatch to score the game-winning points on Tobias Harris’ 15-foot jumper with three seconds left. Trailing by 106-105, the 6-foot-8 Harris got the ball on a switch and was being defended by 6-4 Alex Caruso.

Notice that LeBron James, who was guarding Seth Curry, attempted to help on Harris, but he faded away on the shot and James couldn’t get there in time.

Harris has been successful during his Sixers tenure at shooting off the dribble against smaller defenders, and that’s what happened on this play.

What made the play more impressive is that after the game, coach Doc Rivers said the first option was to go to Joel Embiid low. Since the Lakers took that away, Danny Green inbounded to Curry, who fed Harris. Taking his time, Harris had plenty of room to operate against Caruso.

Harris is playing with a lot of confidence, and he reveled in taking and making the big shot. He had a team-high seven points in the fourth quarter.

Simmons was back in attack mode. He scored the Sixers’ first four points on drives to set the tone. In this third-quarter clip, Simmons picked up the loose ball and took it strong to the basket against one of the league’s top defensive players, Anthony Davis.

Simmons had two of his baskets while driving on Davis and another two on LeBron James, including an emphatic early-game dunk. He recorded his 31st career triple-double: 17 points, 11 rebounds and 10 assists.

As usual, Embiid was a key factor with 28 points, but an underrated performer was Furkan Korkmaz off the bench.

The Sixers starters played heavy minutes. Each starter played at least 30 minutes, with four playing 36 or more minutes.

That cut the time of the reserves, including Korkmaz, who played just 10 minutes and 37 seconds. It was his fewest game minutes of the season.

Korkmaz made the most of the time, scoring eight points on 3-for-5 shooting, including 2 of 3 from three-point range.

He hit a big fourth-quarter three-pointer that extended the Sixers’ lead to 89-81. Korkmaz ended the game with a plus-4 rating.