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Despite winning their first playoff game against the Brooklyn Nets, Philadelphia 76ers forward PJ Tucker did not hold back while criticizing the Sixers’ defense, believing there’s room to improve on that front.
“Our defense was (expletive) (Saturday),” Tucker said, per Ky Carlin of Sixers Wire. “We gotta get better. We scored the ball pretty easy. We played well on offense. We picked it up the second half. I think that’s what got us to win, but we got to be a lot better.”
Tucker added the specifics of what the Nets did to beat the Sixers’ defense.
“I think it was more of they made a lot of the downhill drives. 2-on-2 pick-and-rolls in the middle of the floor, they did a good job of attacking the guys in the pick-and-roll and making shots off that early on,” Tucker said. “I think that was a big deal in the first half. We gotta be more aggressive.”
PJ Tucker Calls Joel Embiid ‘Best Player in the League’
While talking about Game 1, Tucker said that the Sixers feed off Joel Embiid, who Tucker claimed is the best player in the NBA.
“We got the best player in the league on our team,” Tucker said. “So everybody being able to eat off that. We just take whatever they give us. Nobody can guard him one-on-one. So being able to space and be able to attack out of the double teams, being able to read where they’re doubling from and how we can be aggressive going against it.”
The Nets routinely doubled Embiid during Game 1, leading up to the Sixers’ perimeter players like Tucker to shoot wide-open three-pointers. Tucker hit two of the Sixers’ 21 threes on the night.
Joel Embiid and Doc Rivers Single Out Mikal Bridges
Nets wing Mikal Bridges scored 30 points in Game 1 against the Sixers, with most of them coming in the first half, where he put up 21.
Following his performance, Embiid singled out Bridges, explaining how he managed to get where he was and how the Sixers adjusted.
“We let him get comfortable,” Embiid said during his postgame press conference on NBA.com. “Everything he was getting, he was getting downhill. He was getting a bunch of pull-up jumpers. It’s not easy being the star, being the main guy. So, once we saw that, we just doubled him, got the ball out of his hands, and it worked out pretty well for us.”
Head coach Doc Rivers, too, shouted out Bridges for the performance he had while also praising the Sixers’ defense for the adjustments they made while defending him in the second half.
“He had the highway in the first half. In the second half, it was a traffic jam, and that’s how he has to play. He’s too good. He’s too long, that’s the other thing…when you’re helping off of Bridges and you get back, he doesn’t even see you. He’s too long. You have to get under him and make him put the ball on the floor and I thought we did better with that,” Rivers said during his postgame press conference.
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