After struggling in return from foot injury, Sixers’ James Harden aims for reacclimation this week

HOUSTON — James Harden sat at his locker with his foot submerged in ice water for 25 minutes following Monday’s final — and later-than-expected — buzzer.

The star 76ers guard’s return from a monthlong absence with a strained foot tendon was a clunker as he went 4-of-19 from the floor (21 points) with seven turnovers in his team’s dismal 132-123 double-overtime loss to the lowly-yet-pesky Rockets. Yet now that Harden has trudged over that benchmark, he can focus on reintegration this week.

A positive: He and the Sixers (12-12) have been gifted with additional time, with no games until Friday’s matchup against the Los Angeles Lakers to begin a seven-game homestand before facing the New York Knicks on Christmas Day at Madison Square Garden.

“Working out by yourself for a month, without really live contact and people guarding you and all the basketball things that [are] necessary to translate to the game, it’s difficult,” Harden said. “The results weren’t what I wanted [Monday] — and, as a team, what we wanted — but we’ll continue to work.”

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Though Harden flashed a bit of what makes him a special scorer and facilitator against the Rockets, there were far more “rusty” moments.

He struggled to finish at the rim, an issue from last season when he lacked explosion while dealing with a hamstring injury. He lost his handle three times down the stretch of regulation and in the extra periods. He missed a go-ahead jumper with less than a minute remaining in regulation, got blocked on a three-point try with 5.4 seconds to play, and then misfired on what would have been the game-winning long ball just before the buzzer in overtime.

Physically, Harden said he felt “good” following Monday’s outing. Because of how the game unfolded, the 33-year-old acknowledged that he and the Sixers did not stick to their minutes-restriction script. He logged over 38 minutes, although he did sit for the beginning of the second overtime, when the Rockets buried two three-pointers to create the separation that held.

“I had to fight to stay on the court,” Harden said. “... Once you’re out there, as a competitor, you want to try and win.”

Harden, who is averaging 21.9 points, 9.7 assists, and 6.7 rebounds in 10 games, will use the next three days to continue rehabbing and conditioning. There is no substitution for live contact, he said, which he will likely experience during scheduled practices on Wednesday and Thursday.

“When the guy’s bumping you,” Harden said, “and you’ve got to make reads while you’re tired and you’ve still got to have lift on your shot when you’re tired, that all comes into [play].”

He also must reestablish timing, which was clear in moments Monday when a teammate was not ready to handle a pass or the ball was delivered slightly off-target.

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Dribbling around cones during solo recovery workouts “is not the same” as playing with and against humans, Harden said. Forward Tobias Harris — who went 7 of 8 from three-point range and finished with 27 points against the Rockets — believed there should have been more possessions Monday when the Sixers “hunted” shots from beyond the arc. All-NBA center Joel Embiid added that the Sixers “could have made a lot of better decisions” in crunch time.

“We’ve just got to get everybody back on track and on the same page,” Embiid said. “ … We practice a lot and we do a lot of stuff, but we just don’t execute it during a game. So we’ve got to be able to translate whatever we’re doing in practice [to] a game. I’ll be honest, we just haven’t been able to do so.”

When the Sixers won seven out of nine games before this three-game skid, Harris emphasized that they must continue to play stout defense (they entered Tuesday ranked fourth in the NBA with 109.5 points allowed per 100 possessions) and utilize an appropriate offensive pace to generate efficient shots. The Sixers were not sharp enough on either end against the Rockets, giving up too many straight-line drives and slogging through too many stagnant possessions.

Those miscues will make for a “great film-watching game,” coach Doc Rivers said. The coming days will also be about defining and establishing players’ roles, which the coach said he prefers to do in front of the whole team in order to avoid confusion.

The Sixers are still waiting to get fully healthy, with dynamic guard Tyrese Maxey expected to be sidelined for a couple of more weeks with a fractured foot. Once he returns, Rivers said, “we can start playing our season again. We’ve been in this holding pattern.”

Yet Harden’s return was an important step — even if he labored over that first benchmark.