Sixers explain what went wrong in loss to Tyrese Haliburton, Pacers

PHILADELPHIA–The Philadelphia 76ers saw their 8-game winning streak come to an end on Tuesday night when they fell to the Indiana Pacers 132-126. Philadelphia drops to 1-1 now in group play in the in-season tournament with two more group games left before the quarterfinals.

Pacers star Tyrese Haliburton did most of the damage on the night. He had 33 points on 11-for-18 shooting with 15 assists and seven rebounds. He also shot 7-for-12 from deep as he had success in leading the Pacers to this important win for them. Obi Toppin added 27 points on 12-for-15 shooting with six rebounds and Myles Turner had 17.

Afterward, coach Nick Nurse and the rest of the Sixers explained what went wrong not only against Haliburton, but defensively overall in the loss:

“I’m probably most, I don’t know what it is, amazed at how many times we had them in difficult situations and they threw a wild pass and completed it somehow. We’d tip it. We’d knock it away and they’d end up with the ball. They only had 11 turnovers and it felt like we could have doubled that number just on some of the sequences, but it just wasn’t happening tonight for whatever reason. Like again, just some plays where the ball ended up back in their favor, but I thought we fought really hard. I thought we gave ourselves a chance there and then just didn’t quite play well enough down the stretch.”

“They’re tough to guard because they just run full speed. I think one of the main things about them is, obviously, they’re young, but they’re so unpredictable. You don’t know what they’re doing because they’re just always running 100 miles per hour. That’s what happens when you’re young and you have a team like that.”

“He was tough. I’m just certainly not–we tried a bunch of different guys on him. I thought we were doing OK on some of the things, but we just let him get going early by–he had five 3s in the first half where we either just miscommunicated coverage or we went under when we were supposed to be going over, and some of those things where we just let him have a couple clean looks early and then I think he was off to the races. I think Pat (Beverley) did a good job of turning his water off a little bit and he was struggling there for a while, then he made a couple of big plays down the stretch.”

“We kinda let him play free in the first half and when you let a guy like that play free, he’s good. Maybe it’s the name (he laughed), nah, but he’s good, man. He’s great. What he does for that team, the way he keeps the energy up, the way he fights as far as getting the ball and getting his teammates the ball, his teammates knocked down some shots for them as well today so they were solid.”

“He was excellent. He made a lot of tough shots. Whether it was step-backs, underhand, running hook, those were tough, but he’s an amazing player and he’s been doing a great job.”