Was the Sixers’ win over the Cavs a signature moment? ‘It lets us know that we can beat any team’

CLEVELAND — Before Monday’s matchup between the 76ers and Cavaliers, one coach described a road game when his team was missing four starters — including an MVP contender — yet still clinched a shorthanded, “signature” victory that ignited a surge up the standings.

It was Cleveland coach JB Bickerstaff fondly recalling a Dec. 23 win at the Chicago Bulls, when Donovan Mitchell, Evan Mobley, Darius Garland, and Caris LeVert were all out. The Cavaliers’ collective ball movement and sense of togetherness drew praise from their opponent that night, Bickerstaff said, and became an “aha!” moment of realization that they could figure things out no matter who was on the floor.

Perhaps Sixers coach Nick Nurse will one day view his team’s down-to-the-wire 123-121 victory in Cleveland — which the Sixers played without four starters, including reigning NBA Most Valuable Player Joel Embiid — in a similar fashion. Though it would be unwise to immediately overvalue one win (or loss) during the regular season’s 82-game gauntlet, Monday’s result provided a positive jolt to what has largely been a dreadful couple of weeks for the Sixers heading into the All-Star break.

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“Take out all the basketball stuff,” said All-Star guard Tyrese Maxey, who finished with 22 points and nine assists. “[It’s about] just going out there and being competitive. Going and getting every rebound. Going and [getting] every stop, and then having fun out there.

“Guys have an opportunity that they may not have in a different situation, so you go out there and play your tail off.”

Entering Monday, the Sixers (32-21) had lost eight of their previous 10 games while slogging through the immediate aftermath of Embiid’s knee surgery as part of a seemingly endless barrage of injuries and illnesses. The Cavaliers, meanwhile, had won 18 of their previous 19 games, creating a near pristine start to 2024. And unfortunate health popped up again for the Sixers upon arrival at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse when standout forward Tobias Harris was ruled out with a sore hip.

That propelled KJ Martin — who did not know he would make his first start as a Sixer until he saw his name on the locker room’s whiteboard following his pregame warmup — to use his strength to guard the tall-yet-lanky Mobley and size to guard the All-Star Mitchell, while totaling 10 points on 5-of-5 shooting and eight rebounds. And put undrafted rookie Ricky Council IV (eight points, five rebounds) in position to sink two free throws in the final seconds with what Nurse called “a lot of courage, a lot of confidence.” And allowed trade deadline acquisition Buddy Hield to take some backcourt pressure off Maxey, with a burst of 24 points and eight assists. And to push Mo Bamba to play through knee soreness, before fellow big man Paul Reed (13 points, eight rebounds) blocked Mitchell in the final seconds to help seal the Sixers’ win.

Those high-energy contributions were a drastic shift from last week’s three consecutive lopsided home losses to the Brooklyn Nets, Dallas Mavericks, and Golden State Warriors, when Maxey lamented that “we had a great game plan. We just didn’t go out there and play hard.” That assessment aligned with Golden State coach Steve Kerr’s general belief that, before any schematic or personnel tweaks, the first step while navigating extended absences to megastars such as Embiid or the Warriors’ Stephen Curry is “getting everybody to recognize that you’ve got to fight your way out.”

“When a group gets its chance,” Kerr said before Wednesday’s game in Philly, “… and some of them don’t normally play, the energy and the intensity is really overwhelming. And that’s what you have to try to inspire your team to be when you’re shorthanded.”

Still, Nurse’s reputation for tactical creativity and experimentation is also expected to be valuable in the coming weeks without Embiid.

President of basketball operations Daryl Morey last week called Nurse “uniquely” qualified to handle this roster upheaval because of the coach’s experience in the G League and overseas, where personnel can fluctuate daily. Yet Nurse acknowledged the Sixers’ recent depletion is the second-worst situation he has faced in the NBA — only surpassed by the December 2021 COVID-19 omicron variant surge, when his Toronto Raptors traveled to (coincidentally) Cleveland with only four players. The coach then met four more, who were G League call-ups or 10-day hardship signees, upon arrival before getting blasted, 144-95.

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“I have the utmost confidence he’ll have the game plan,” Morey said of Nurse on Friday, during his news conference following the trade deadline. “He’ll put the work in. Honestly, [general manager Elton Brand] and I — because [Nurse] preps so hard and takes the losses so hard — it’s like, ‘Let’s keep him positive.’ He doesn’t take losing well. None of our players do. No one does.

“But I feel like [Nurse] takes it especially hard, because he goes in every night saying, ‘You give me the troops. I’ll make it work.’ ”

Nurse said many such ideas are “kicking around in my head for a little while” before he brings them to a coaches’ meeting for candid feedback and discussion. If they conclude that the pros outweigh the cons, they will take the concept to the floor to try it out with players. Those players, in return, need to exude a willingness to try — and sometimes fail.

“I feel like certain coaches are too scared to mess up,” Martin said. “But messing up is part of the process, just seeing if it works or not. You’ll never know if it works or not unless you try it. Sometimes, obviously, we think, ‘Why are we doing that?’ or whatever. But there will be stuff that we do on the court where [Nurse] probably does the same, like, ‘What’d you do that for?’

“It’s kind of coming to a fine line in the middle, where you have trust in each other. Whatever you give us to do, if it works, it works. And if it doesn’t, it’s fine.”

The Sixers, though, have recently had limited on-court time in between games, following a five-game road trip West and the time surrounding the trade deadline.

Monday included the Sixers’ first full shootaround with Hield and fellow newcomer Cameron Payne, although elements of that game plan went kaput when Harris became an unexpectedly late scratch.

The coach then considered using a four-guard lineup — with Payne alongside Maxey, Hield and Kelly Oubre Jr. (24 points on 10-of-14 shooting) — before instead opting to go with the “veteran” Martin against the Cavaliers’ size. Still, Hield has been immediately impressed with how Nurse runs plays that help teammates get to their strong hand or preferred spots to take shots. Bamba also highlighted the variety of defenses they can run, which helped him “dominate the coverages” while matching up against Mobley and center Jarrett Allen and “play a little bit of cat and mouse.”

“Not letting rollers get behind me,” said Bamba, who totaled seven points and eight rebounds Monday. “Kind of forcing them into those in-between floaters, mid-range jump shots, and then just trying to rebound as much as possible.”

» READ MORE: Sixers welcome Kyle Lowry’s arrival: ‘He’s been through it’

Nurse could nitpick the ways the Sixers faltered down the stretch Monday. He took the hobbled Bamba off the floor so they could switch more defensively, but then lost the center’s interior rebounding that led to five Cleveland offensive boards. The Sixers were disorganized on out-of-bounds plays, which the coach attributed to personnel groupings that “certainly have not practiced” end-of-game scenarios together.

“If the game is close and there’s 30 seconds left, it feels like forever,” Martin added. “You just have to make sure you get the ball in. We’re just trying to get the ball to Tyrese, making sure he’s not in the corner where they can trap him and maybe cause a turnover.

“Those are the toughest parts of the game.”

Hield, though, trusts that he and his teammates will become more poised and comfortable in such situations with more time. But even amid the crunch-time chaos, Reed suddenly noticed Mitchell “coming straight downhill as fast as hell” on the Cavaliers’ final possession.

“And I was like, ‘Oh, I’ve got to go step up. I’ve got to do something,’ ” Reed recalled to The Inquirer. “So I just stepped over, jumped straight up, arms straight up. … He tried to shoot it, and I guess my hand was already right there.”

That swat, and a missed corner three-pointer by Garland, sealed the Sixers’ victory. Time will tell if this win against a previously surging opponent becomes the shorthanded Sixers’ signature moment.

Yet when Reed jumped in celebration following the final buzzer, it felt like it could be.

“It just gives us a lot of confidence,” he said. “It let us know that we can beat any team out there. It doesn’t matter how good they’re doing. We can take anybody down, and I think everybody feels that.”