PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — While Joel Embiid remains sidelined with an injury, Sixers head coach Doc Rivers said 33-year-old backup center DeAndre Jordan will continue starting instead of second-year big man Paul Reed.
“We like DJ,” Rivers said after Monday’s 106-92 Game 1 loss to the Miami Heat in the second round of the playoffs. “We’re gonna keep starting him whether you like it or not. … Our guys believe in him.”
Jordan, a vet who played for Rivers during his All-Star days as a Los Angeles Clipper, was not part of the Sixers rotation during their six-game series against the Toronto Raptors. Twenty-two-year-old Reed got to be the backup big man for a few minutes. But with Embiid sidelined due to a right orbital fracture and a mild concussion, Rivers inserted Jordan into the starting lineup and continued to bring Reed off the bench.
“We talked to our guys,” said Rivers. “They wanted the big guy, a big roller.”
Jordan’s plus-minus for the game — sometimes a deceiving stat — was minus 22. In other words, while he was in the game for his 17 minutes, the Heat beat the Sixers by 22 points. When Reed played for 13 minutes, he was a minus 3 but grabbed nine rebounds and five on the offensive glass. Jordan only had two rebounds.
Rivers also kept Jordan in with the starters to begin the second half, when the Sixers grew a one-point lead to five in the early minutes of the third quarter — before the Heat steamrolled them.
“I thought in the second half, that’s how [Jordan] has to play every night — those first four or five minutes were great,” Rivers added.
Despite the energy and younger legs Reed brings, he gets into foul trouble easily. Reed had five fouls Monday night.
“We also love Paul,” Rivers continued. “But we don’t need Paul in foul trouble, and that’s why you don’t want to start him.”
“Man, it’s hard,” Reed admitted of his tendency to foul at a high rate. “I’m an aggressive player, so I go out there, I give 125% and sometimes it just don’t work out for me like tonight.
“One thing I gotta learn is to sometimes let that shot, let them score, but it’s hard. … I don’t want to be letting nobody score, so that’s one thing I got to do better next game.”
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The Heat scored a combined 40 points off of offensive rebounds and Sixers turnovers in Game 1. If the 76ers fix that for Game 2, they’ll give themselves a better chance of winning.
“We can definitely beat this team,” Reed said. “I think we go out there, we be more physical than them and play more aggressive, keep them on their heels — they’re gonna fold.”
Do the Sixers need more from James Harden?
With Embiid out, you’d think it’d be prime-time for James Harden to revert back to his Houston Rockets days, taking tons of shots and scoring the ball a lot.
With the Sixers — playing alongside Embiid, most notably, as well as Tyrese Maxey and Tobias Harris — Harden has become more of a facilitator, which is what he continued to do for a large part of Game 1.
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He only scored 16 points on 5-of-13 from the floor. He scored just four points in the second half and only attempted four shots.
“It’s not about James, it’s about all of them,” Rivers countered. “We’re a team and we just have to play as a team. … It’s not one guy that’s just gonna take up the slack from Joel.”
“I think I can be a little more aggressive,” Harden admitted. “They did a really good job with just boxes and elbows, showing their bodies and crowding the ball when ball screens came.”
Harden only took four free throws. When asked what Miami did schematically to prevent him from going to the foul line, he replied, “next question.”
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