Sixers outclass Bulls, 106-94, and extend lead over Nets to one game

CHICAGO — The 76ers successfully completed the second leg of a unique road trip. Now, they head back to Texas after extending their lead atop the Eastern Conference.

The Sixers defeated the Chicago Bulls, 106-94, on Monday at the United Center. Tobias Harris paced Philly’s balanced attack with 21 points on 10-for-13 shooting to go with nine rebounds. Seth Curry had another sharpshooting night. The shooting guard finished with 20 points on 7-for-10 shooting, making 3 of 5 three-pointers.

All five Sixers starters scored in double digits.

The unit’s effort was needed, because the reserves nearly blew a 20-point lead in the fourth quarter. That forced the Sixers to bring the starting lineup back in to close out the game.

“That’s two nights in a row that our bench has come in and kind of given up leads,” coach Doc Rivers said. “Some of that can be fixed. You know, they just didn’t play well, to be honest.

“I thought as bad as they were defensively, I thought it was on offense where they didn’t have a lot of movement.”

Rivers is confident that can be fixed.

» READ MORE: Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid’s rapport has been a pleasant surprise for Sixers coach Doc Rivers

Philly (44-21) now has a one-game lead over the conference’s second-place Brooklyn Nets with seven contests remaining. The Nets (43-22) face the third-place Milwaukee Bucks on Tuesday in the second game of a two-game series at Fiserv Forum.

The Sixers, meanwhile, will head to Houston on Tuesday for Wednesday night’s game against the Rockets at the Toyota Center. All this comes after the Sixers began their three-game road trip on Sunday against the San Antonio Spurs at the AT&T Center.

Rivers voiced his displeasure Sunday with having to travel from San Antonio to Chicago and then to Houston. He would have preferred to go from San Antonio to Houston, then to Chicago.

“We’re 45 minutes from Houston, and then we are going to fly to Chicago and play Chicago, and then fly back to Houston,” he said Sunday night. “It makes no sense, but it is what it is.”

The future Hall of Fame coach doubled down on his displeasure before Monday’s game.

“Honestly, it just didn’t make a lot of sense,” Rivers said. “But it is what it is, and we’ll be ready tonight.”

They sure were.

The Sixers starters played much better against the undermanned Bulls than they did versus the undermanned Spurs.

Sharing the ball, Danny Green (14 points, four steals), Ben Simmons (15 points, six rebounds, five assists), and Joel Embiid (13 points, 10 rebounds, three blocks) also had solid games.

“They were phenomenal,” Rivers said of his starting lineup. “I mean, when you look at the plus-minuses tonight, when you look at 20s for basically everybody and then all of the minuses for the second unit, it just tells you what they were doing, offensively.”

The Sixers shot 53.3% from the field thanks in large part to their starting lineup.

Embiid and Simmons were both at plus-29. Curry finished plus-27. Green was plus-26, while Harris was plus-17.

Meanwhile, Sixers reserves Shake Milton (minus-17), Matisse Thybulle (minus-16), Dwight Howard (minus-15) and Mike Scott (minus-13) all had double-digit minuses. Thybulle, who had three blocks and one steal, was a victim of being on the defenseless lineup.

But Philly’s starters erased memories of Sunday.

That’s when the Sixers stopped moving the ball and looked like a group of individuals trying to pad their statistics. Rivers commented about that after the 113-111 overtime victory against the Spurs. So one had to figure they wouldn’t make that mistake against Chicago.

The Bulls (26-39) were without All-Stars Zach LaVine and Nik Vucevic in addition to Troy Brown Jr. This marked the 11th consecutive game LaVine missed while the NBA’s COVID-19 health and safety protocol. Chicago is 4-7 in those games.

Meanwhile, Vucevic, a former Sixer, missed his second consecutive game with right adductor tightness. And Brown (left ankle sprain) missed his eighth consecutive game.

Without those three, the young Bulls couldn’t avoid extending their losing streak to four games.

Curry was hot in the first quarter for the second straight night. He had 11 points on 5-for-7 shooting, including 1 of 3 on three-pointers. His play helped the Sixers build a 34-20 lead after one quarter.

Philly went on to build a commanding a 23-point lead on four occasions in the third quarter. But with a Sixers all-reserve lineup in the game, the Bulls pulled within seven points with 8:17 remaining. That forced Rivers to bring Simmons and Harris back into the game. Curry and then Embiid back into the game a little later. Green joined them after the Bulls pulled within one point (88-87) with 7:01 to play.

The Sixers responded by closing out the game with an 18-7 run.

“We know obviously sometimes that happens,” Harris said of the Sixers squandering the lead. “We would have loved to get the blowout victory. But nonetheless, it was an opportunity for us to come back out in a game, lock in, get stops, and execute offensively.

“So there’s positives to take from the game. I thought we did a good job the last four, five minutes of the game locking in defensively getting stops.”

» READ MORE: The Sixers aren’t good enough to deviate from their ball-movement script | Keith Pompey

Furkan Korkmaz limped off the court with 8:02 left in the first half after committing a foul. He went straight to the locker room. He was ruled out for the rest of the game with a sprained right ankle. The same injury sidelined Korkmaz in the Sixers’ two contests against the Bucks on April 22 and April 24 in Milwaukee.