Skip to content
Sixers
Link copied to clipboard

76ers defeat NBA-best Spurs

There were plenty of adjectives attached to the 76ers' 77-71 win over the San Antonio Spurs on Friday night. Good. Great. Marvelous. Wonderful. Fun.

The Sixers held the Spurs to 71 points, their lowest total on the season. (Steven M. Falk/Staff Photographer)
The Sixers held the Spurs to 71 points, their lowest total on the season. (Steven M. Falk/Staff Photographer)Read more

There were plenty of adjectives attached to the 76ers' 77-71 win over the San Antonio Spurs on Friday night.

Good. Great. Marvelous. Wonderful. Fun.

Package those words together and add one more: statement.

The win over the NBA's best team was a statement victory for the Sixers.

The Spurs weren't missing their best player. They weren't playing poorly recently or otherwise handicapped before stepping onto the Wells Fargo Center floor.

Nope. The Spurs were the Spurs. The Sixers just happened to be better - at least for these 48 minutes.

The Sixers, who do not play at home again until after the all-star break, improved to 25-28. The Spurs are 44-9.

For a San Antonio team that was limited to 27 field goals on 33.3 percent shooting from the floor, Tim Duncan scored 16 points and pulled down 13 rebounds.

Unlike many of the Sixers' previous wins and losses, this game was not bipolar: Neither team held a lead of more than eight points. The Sixers simply played hard from start to finish, communicated on defense, and made their free throws at the end.

And they got a magnificent game from second-year point guard Jrue Holiday; add that to the list of appropriate adjectives: magnificent.

"We didn't talk about him much in the pregame," said Spurs guard Tony Parker, who scored only nine points on 3-for-10 shooting.

Parker said the team's scouting report focused more on power forward Elton Brand and swingman Andre Iguodala.

"We didn't expect walk-up threes and stuff like that," Parker said.

Only 36 seconds into the game, on a play designed for him, Holiday nailed a 19-foot jumper. Holiday scored 27 points, including the clinching free throws, on 9-for-14 shooting from the floor. He was 3 for 4 from beyond the arc and 6 for 6 from the free-throw line.

"I'm so, so happy for Jrue Holiday," Sixers coach Doug Collins said.

"We're playing, we're having fun, we're playing the way basketball is supposed to be played," Holiday said. "Coach says it to us all the time. He can see it; he can see it on our faces. Games that we win, we definitely play together, and we're definitely having fun."

On Wednesday night, the Sixers, who are 17-9 at home, lost a close home game to the Orlando Magic.

"Coach, after the Orlando loss, he said: 'Good job, we have the team with the best record in the NBA coming in, and we don't lose back-to-back games at home,' " Brand said. "He's that confident in us, he said that."

Entering the game, the Spurs were on the good side of a staggering statistic: 24-1 against teams with records worse than .500. By game's end, that record had slipped to 24-2.

But the reality is that although the Sixers are technically a sub-.500 team, they haven't been playing that way in quite some time.

Asked whether he thought his team was playing as its record might indicate, Holiday said: "No, definitely not."

"We're playing like we're supposed to be in the playoffs."