The Philadelphia 76ers were able to escape on Sunday with a 119-108 win over the Chicago Bulls that clinches the season series tiebreaker for Philadelphia over the Bulls, but the win did not come easy.
Despite Chicago missing both Lonzo Ball and Zach LaVine, the Bulls still had All-Star DeMar DeRozan and the veteran guard did everything in his power to try and will Chicago in this one.
DeRozan went off for 45 points on 18-for-30 shooting, he was 9-for-11 from the foul line, he had nine rebounds, and he had seven assists for the Bulls. The crazy part about it is he did not make a single 3-pointer in a league where the 3-point shot is king.
“He’s a pretty good player,” said Joel Embiid. “I’ve always thought that he was underrated. The way plays when you talk about what he’s able to do on the floor. Footwork kinda reminds me of just kinda Kobe (Bryant), just the footwork. The tough shots that he takes, all mid-range, being able to do like I said everything on the court, he’s definitely underrated and I’ve always been a fan.”
For Philadelphia, Embiid had 40 points and 10 rebounds and the Sixers needed all of his points in this one.
“Boy, DeRozan was tough,” said coach Doc Rivers. “He really was. We threw a lot of zones at him, traps, he’s tough. Anybody that says the in-between game is not important in this game, they have no clue what basketball is about. That guy, he was special tonight and we needed every point of Joel’s 40 to sustain it.”
The Sixers threw a bunch of different looks at DeRozan, but it didn’t matter. He was scoring over double teams, he found his shots in a zone defense, he was drawing fouls, the Sixers were just befuddled all day defending him.
“You can’t rush him and speed him up, which we were trying to do a couple times,” Rivers added. “He rejected a ton of the screens which we have to be better on. If you’re gonna double the team him, you can’t let him reject and he did that. He attacked the zone when we went there one-on-one. He’s just a very heady, smart, clever, scorer.”
DeRozan shot only 2-for-7 in the fourth quarter so that was where the Sixers had their most success, but they still had a tough time overall against him.
“Just make this looks hard,” added Tobias Harris. “He’s such a good player getting to the free-throw line, raising up and shooting, he had a lot of contested 2s, tough shots that went in as well. Some of those are you’ll live with. A lot of them could have been actually effort as well, especially on when I was guarding him.”
He is a quirky player to defend as he is not really looking for the 3-point shot–he only took two on Sunday–so that makes it tough to really figure out how to defend him and where to really send him towards help.
“He has a release point that’s high,” Harris added. “So when you do jump up there, if you get under his space, he’s got he’s gonna get those calls, but especially in the fourth quarter just kind of guard him tight enough where he has to pass the ball to somebody else to make a play. Tough one-on-one guy to guard for sure.”
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