Doc Rivers, Sixers praise Tobias Harris for his heroics in win over Jazz
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The Philadelphia 76ers received a big night from Joel Embiid in order to force overtime against the Utah Jazz on Wednesday, but in order to pull out the 131-123 victory, they needed help from the other guys.
Tobias Harris made his return to the floor after missing two games with a right knee contusion and he made a big impact late in the game. He only had 11 points through the first four quarters, but he then dropped 11 in overtime to finish with 22 for the game.
Harris was understandably out of rhythm after being missing from the team for a few games. He finally found it late, though, and the team really needed it.
“They were small,” said coach Doc Rivers. “They had (Bojan) Bogdanovic guarding Tobias is tough so we liked the match up before the game started. We tried to get to it a couple of times in the first half and Tobias missed two games so he didn’t have great rhythm, but once we felt like he had his rhythm going, we wanted to feed that and it came through for us.”
Once Embiid made the triple to force overtime, the Jazz turned their defensive attention to Gobert as they sent waves of defenders at him to get rid of the ball. That is where Harris came in.
“He was huge in overtime,” the big fella explained. “I had a great fourth quarter, but I knew as soon as we started overtime, I knew that Utah was gonna send double teams to me, especially with the Defensive Player of the Year on me. So he made the first one and that’s what we got to keep doing and I just created the second one and he made the third one. There’s nothing you can do about it. He was making shots. He’s hot and you gotta keep feeding that.”
The Sixers will now head into the All-Star break sitting atop the Eastern Conference and feeling really confident about themselves.
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