Shorthanded Sixers pounded by Pistons
Maybe all of the 76ers' players should spend an hour talking to Billy Cunningham. The 73-year-old could teach them a lot about winning games and becoming a legend for the franchise. That's why they'll see a sculpture of the Hall of Famer whenever they walk into the team's practice facility at the Camden waterfront for now on.
Maybe all of the 76ers' players should spend an hour talking to Billy Cunningham.
The 73-year-old could teach them a lot about winning games and becoming a legend for the franchise. That's why they'll see a sculpture of the Hall of Famer whenever they walk into the team's practice facility at the Camden waterfront for now on.
The team unveiled the sculpture seven hours before the Detroit Pistons pounded the shorthanded Sixers, 136-106, Saturday night at the Wells Fargo Center. It was the most points scored against Sixers (23-39) this season. They had only nine available players as Jahlil Okafor, Joel Embiid, Ben Simmons, Gerald Henderson, Jerryd Bayless, and Tiago Splitter were sidelined.
Cunningham's sculpture was placed next to the one of Hal Greer that was unveiled on Feb. 11. The two were teammates on the Sixers' 1966-67 NBA championship team.
"To have a stature next to Hal Greer and maybe some other 76ers is so humbling, surprising," said Cunningham, who played nine seasons for the Sixers and later coached them to the 1983 NBA title.
"I appreciated it, probably more than anything, for my children and grandchildren to see this," he added. "It's just something you never expected.
"So it was a great day."
It wasn't for the current Sixers. The trailed by as many as 33 points with 35.4 seconds remaining.
The Sixers just couldn't make any defensive stops. The Pistons (30-32) shot 56.8 percent from the field and 43.5 percent on three-pointers. The Sixers weren't that bad offensively, making 48.9 percent of their shots even though the Pistons blocked a season-high 10 of them.
However, it's hard to make a comeback when you are alternating baskets while down by 20-plus points.
Kentavious Caldwell-Pope torched the Sixers for a game-high 26 points on 9-for-11 shooting. North Philly's Marcus Morris (22 points), Reggie Jackson (21), Tobias Harris (20), and Andre Drummond (14 points, 14 rebounds, four steals, three blocks) and former Sixer Ish Smith (11 points, game-high 13 assists) were the Pistons' other double-figure scorers.
"I want to congratulate the Pistons," Dario Saric said. "They played unbelievably good, and unbelievably fast. The kind of game they played today, I think they can beat everybody in the league so easy.
"They were so good today. But at some point, I think we let them [do what they wanted]. . . . We weren't contesting the shots, not protecting the paint."
Nik Stauskas paced the Sixers with a career-high 24 points. Saric finished with 19 points, eight assists and six rebounds.
Okafor missed the game because of right knee soreness. He was to be reevaluated after the game and again on Sunday for Monday's game against the Milwaukee Bucks.
Okafor woke up Saturday morning with some level of discomfort, according to Sixers coach Brett Brown. The second-year veteran finished with 12 points, eight rebounds and one block in 19 minutes, 51 seconds in Friday's 105-102 victory over the New York Knicks.
He has been dealing with knee soreness since having surgery on March 22, 2016 to repair the meniscus in the knee. The injury cost the NBA all-rookie selection the final 23 games of last season.
In his absence, Richaun Holmes (13 points, two steals) got the start despite battling right hamstring tightness. He even went into the locker room in the first half to get his hamstring examined.
Power forward Justin Harper (nine points, five rebounds), who signed a 10-day deal on Friday, was the backup center.
Embiid will miss the rest of the season with a meniscus tear and a bone bruise in his left knee. Simmons has been sidelined the entire season with a Jones fracture in his right foot. Bayless played only in three games because of torn ligaments in his left wrist. And Splitter, whom the Sixers acquired Feb. 22 from the Atlanta Hawks in a trade, is out with a right calf strain.
But this was a day Cunningham will long remember.
The four-time NBA all-star presented the game ball to one of the referees before the game. The Sixers honored Cunningham in the first half and played highlights of his playing and coaching careers throughout the game.
@PompeyOnSixers
