Sixers battle back from late 20-point deficit to post a 119-110 victory over Pacers without Joel Embiid

INDIANAPOLIS — Just win!

That’s what Doc Rivers wanted to see his 76ers finally do this season without Joel Embiid while facing the Indiana Pacers on Sunday night.

“We haven’t even played well, forget the winning part,” Rivers said before the game.

Well, they corrected that in the fourth quarter. The Sixers outscored the Pacers, 31-6, in the final 8 minutes, 16 seconds to take a 119-110 victory at Bankers Life Fieldhouse.

Philly improved to 15-6 overall and 1-4 in games without Embiid. The three-time All-Star missed Sunday’s game with back tightness. But the win, enabled it to take a 2 ½-game lead over the second-place Brooklyn Nets in the Eastern Conference standings. The Pacers (11-9) dropped to fifth place.

But for a while, it looked like the Sixers were headed toward a defeat.

The Pacers led by as many as 16 points in the second quarter and extended their lead to 20 points in the third. They had a 16-point lead (104-88) with 8 minutes, 16 seconds to play. However, the Pacers struggled when the Sixers went to their “John Chaney matchup zone.”

“What we did was stop their movement,” Rivers said. “Their movement was killing us. They were attacking the paint. They were beating us off the dribble, then all of sudden we went zone and packed it in.”

The Pacers called a timeout with 6:38 left after the Sixers scored six straight points to pull within 10 points (104-94). The Sixers went to the zone coming off that timeout.

Matisse Thybulle started things off by blocking Malcolm Brogdon’s three-pointer. In all, Indiana missed eight of their final nine shots and committed three turnovers.

But the Sixers took a 109-106 lead on Furkan Korkmaz’s jumper with 1:59 left. That capped a 13-0 run.

After Myles Turner made a pair of foul shots to stop the Pacers’ scoring drought, Matisse Thybulle answered with a three-point play to put the Sixers up by four. Then Dwight Howard split a pair of foul shots to give them a 113-108 lead with 59.1 seconds left.

Seth Curry, Tobias Harris, and Korkmaz all added late foul shots to give the Sixers their nine-point win.

After the win, Rivers walked into the locker room with a box score in his hands, and told the players the “John Chaney matchup zone was amazing. We came to do what? Win the game. Let’s get the hell out of here. White Castle on me!”

A player near by then shouted, “Yeah, Dan” as assistant coach Dan Burke walked past Rivers. Burke, a former longtime Pacers assistant, runs the Sixers defense. He instructed them to go to their 2-3 zone.

So how much time did Sixers spend as a collective group talking about and practicing zone defense this season?

“Probably about five minutes, and I’m not exaggerating,” Harris said. “I’m being honest with you. It was one practice we looked over it a little bit. And it was really in preparation for another team that we were playing that played zone.”

Thybulle was the zone captain, finishing with 11 deflections while playing all but two seconds of the fourth quarter. That’s when he scored five of his eight points and recorded all four of his steals, and both of his blocks.

On this night, Harris and Ben Simmons had solid games.

Harris finished with season-high 27 points and eight rebounds. Ten of his points came in the fourth quarter on 4-for-5 shooting.

Simmons had a season-high 21 points on 9-for-12 shooting while attacking the basket. The Sixers’ “facilitator” also finished with six rebounds, seven assists, four steals, and two blocks.

Korkmaz had 17 points off the bench. Eleven of his point came while playing the entire fourth quarter. Howard added 11 points, 15 rebounds and two blocks.

Indiana point guard Malcolm Brogdon had 25 points.

“I think for a lot of reasons this was a big win,” Thybulle said. “To be down and come back, to win on the road and win without Joel, I think a lot of those reasons come together to make this a big win.”

Embiid also missed Monday’s road game at Detroit, the Jan. 9 home contest vs. Denver, and the Dec. 27 road game against Cleveland with back tightness. Embiid missed the Jan. 16 game at Memphis with right knee pain.

One of those losses without Embiid, a 12-point setback to the Nuggets, came when the Sixers had only seven available players. However, they lost to the Pistons and the Cavaliers by an average of 19.5 points. The Sixers suffered a two-point loss to the Grizzlies.

“Other than that, we haven’t played very well,” Rivers said before the game, of being without Embiid. “And we’re going to have to. There’s going to be games where Joel misses, where Ben misses. And we have to win these games. ...

“In some of those games are a little misguided, because we had more than Joel out. We can’t forget that. Seth was out. Mike [Scott] was out.”

Curry missed the losses to Denver and Memphis, while Scott missed those two games and the loss to Detroit.

Sunday marked the eighth consecutive game Scott missed with right knee soreness.

Tony Bradley started in Embiid’s place against the Pacers.

Embiid landed hard on his back after being fouled by LeBron James during Wednesday’s home victory over the Los Angeles Lakers. He played in Friday’s road contest against the Minnesota Timberwolves after being listed as questionable for the game.

Rivers was asked if Sunday’s absence had to do with Embiid taking a step backward with his back or just maintenance through a 72-game season.

“It’s not that he took a step backward,” Rivers said, “it’s just it’s still sore from the fall. He played through it the other night. So it’s not maintenance. But it’s not something that I see that is going to take a while.”

Embiid had 37 points and 11 rebounds against the Timberwolves despite sitting out the fourth quarter when the Sixers had a commanding lead.

He is averaging 28.3 points (fourth in the NBA), 11.1 rebounds, and 1.3 blocks.