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76ers lose momentum and fall to Cavs

There are ways to paint this pretty.

Jrue Holiday scored 29 points against the Cavaliers on Friday night. (Steven M. Falk / Staff Photographer)
Jrue Holiday scored 29 points against the Cavaliers on Friday night. (Steven M. Falk / Staff Photographer)Read more

There are ways to paint this pretty.

You could point to youthful mistakes, to the pride of the never-say-die attitude, to the unfairness of injury, to the valiance of the comeback.

But all of that would form just another transparent layer, beneath which resides the easily visible truth: This was just another empty night at the Wells Fargo Center.

At a mostly empty arena, 10,589 people watched the Cleveland Cavaliers defeat the 76ers, 123-116, on Friday night.

The Sixers dropped to 1-5. The Cavaliers, led by Anderson Varejao with 23 points and 12 rebounds, improved to 2-3.

"It's the hardest thing to teach a team, is how to win," Sixers coach Doug Collins said. "Not how to get close, but how to win."

The Sixers, using a hodgepodge lineup, played some of their best basketball of the season while turning a 19-point deficit into an eight-point lead. The team's solid play gobbled up a large chunk of the game in the second and third quarters, and even much of the fourth.

With 5 minutes, 9 seconds remaining in the game, the Sixers were ahead, 102-95.

Victory seemed minutes away, just a few more possessions of hustle and scrappy rebounding.

But as the clock ticked down, the Cavaliers began to score again.

And as the game neared its conclusion, Cleveland had raced past the Sixers to the finish line, scoring 28 points in the final 4:42.

"We had the lead," said Sixers power forward Elton Brand, who finished with 20 points. "We're supposed to hold on to the lead and feel good after this."

But when it was over, there were only more blank stares and head-shaking.

"It was the first time Coach got after us after a game," Brand said. "He's been working with us and accepting what was going on because of youth and excuses, but today he really laid it into us."

The easiest excuse Friday was the injury to swingman Andre Iguodala, who did not play in the second half because of a strained right Achilles tendon. The injury, which he initially suffered against Indiana on Wednesday, is not thought to be serious.

Without Iguodala, and with the benching of center Spencer Hawes, Collins started a second-half lineup of Jrue Holiday (29 points, eight assists), Evan Turner, Andres Nocioni, Brand, and center Tony Battie.

Something needed to be changed after the team's starters trailed first by 8-0 and then by 23-6.

"I was mixing and matching," Collins said. "I went to every grab-bag thing I'd ever learned."

Midway through the second quarter, with the Sixers trailing, 50-31, Collins emptied his bench in search of someone who would play defense or rebound, or - possibly - do both.

"We weren't sharp," said guard Lou Williams, who scored 16 points off the bench. "I think our effort was the reason we were able to get back in the game and have our opportunities to close the door, but from the jump we weren't sharp. It caught back up with us."

Friday night's game was framed with poor play: too little rebounding, too many turnovers, and no defense.

You could choose to look only at the middle chapters, but that wouldn't tell the whole story.