LOS ANGELES, CA — Whenever it feels like the Sixers have reached rock bottom, they find a new low. On Friday night in Los Angeles, they sunk to 1-7, pitting them with the worst record in the entire NBA (tied with the Utah Jazz).
During the Sixers’ latest loss — a 116-106 defeat at the hands of the Los Angeles Lakers — head coach Nick Nurse tried every trick in the book, shaking up his rotation in several respects as he looked for a spark. In his third game of the season, Paul George made smarter decisions and took care of the ball, but could not buy a bucket.
• Nurse on his decision to remove Eric Gordon from the rotation and give significant minutes to rookie Jared McCain:
“First of all, I wanted to give Jared a good look. I felt early that we needed to try to balance some of our energy guys with some of the veteran guys. That was part of it… [McCain] gives you a little better spacing than having two slashing wings at the same time… That won’t be a permanent thing or anything, just trying to shake it up a little bit.”
• Nurse on whether or not he is comfortable using McCain as a point guard (McCain opened the fourth quarter against the Lakers as the team’s only guard), particularly as he tries to keep 38-year-old Kyle Lowry at a reasonable minutes total:
“Yeah. I’ll tell you why we did it tonight: I thought Kyle was playing a lot. We gave Reggie [Jackson] some minutes there. We were just trying to figure out another way to get some shooting out there. Let [George] handle the ball, and we’re running stuff for other people, but he was involved in some ‘combo’ actions… It’s looking at it and thinking what we can do to play a little bit better and keep some guys out there and not necessarily go with a traditional lineup and see if it works.”
• Nurse on the offensive performance of George, who scored just nine points and made only four of his 13 shot attempts:
“Well, he obviously had a tough night. I thought he got some decent looks, I thought he had some drives. I thought he got roughed around quite a bit. I don’t know if he shot a free throw — he shot two free throws — I thought he could have probably gotten to the line a few more times there. Passed the ball pretty good again, I think he does still create offense for other people. But I think he’s still a little rusty. I think he’d probably say that himself.”
• George, who had 10 turnovers across his first two games, on whether his eight-assist, zero-turnover performance is an indicator he is getting used to playing with a new group:
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Especially with [Tyrese Maxey] going out and just how teams are going to guard me, I mean, I know it’s gonna be a lot of loading up and traps and blitzes and that type of stuff. Tonight was the best I felt with just being myself. I felt back to normal in terms of rhythm. I know shots didn’t go down, but I’m not really too concerned on that. I think more so was getting in the right spots, being able to play-make, create, that’s really what I wanted to excel in. I know the shot-making will come. It was more so just getting back to handling the ball and creating [advantages] with my ball-handling. I thought tonight was a great showing for that. Now, [I’ll] start to take the next step of putting it all together and being back to isolation scoring and making big shots and getting to my spots.”
• At the end of this answer, George quips about a frustrating aspect of his return:
“I’m just trying to put it all together while being under minutes restrictions, [playing] in six-minute spurts. You know, it’s challenging. You get going and you get subbed out and you have to try to find it again. Just trying to put it all together.”
• Does George know when his minutes restrictions will be lifted?
“They’re going up as the games go. I probably won’t be at normal minutes for probably another couple games, but they’re going up.”
To end things on a lighter note…
• McCain, a California native, on an interaction he had with LeBron James during the game:
“He actually recognized my parents in the crowd. He was like, ‘I see them over there.’ He said, ‘Keep going.’ It’s just cool to see someone who — again, each game is like someone I’ve watched for so long. Especially him… I feel like I say it every single game: every game is like a dream come true. Obviously, we’re trying to win every game and every possession, we’re trying to get a stop. But when you really sit back and look back — five years ago, what would I have thought? It’s insane. I’m a Philadelphia 76er, I’m in the NBA, and I’m on a possession guarding LeBron James. If I would have told that to my freshman year of high school self, I wouldn’t have believed [myself].”
MORE: Lakers 116, Sixers 106
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