INDIANAPOLIS — The old timers always said that it was a four quarter game and you’ve got to play every bit of it to win. Well…on Sunday night the Indiana Pacers played three and got ran up on by the 76ers in the fourth. When the horn blew Philly was walking out of the joint with a 119-110 win. They’d trailed by at least 16 points in the fourth. However, Doc Rivers pulled a rabbit out of his hat with a zone defense to confuse and shut the Indiana offense down in the final period.
The Sixers held the Pacers to a mere 15 points in the final period as a result of the zone.
“We were calling it our John Chaney matchup zone and it was great,” Rivers said in the post-game. “What it did was stop their movement. You miss a couple 3s early in a zone in the NBA and it becomes tough all of a sudden.”
And it worked like a charm. The Pacers were ballin’ getting anything they wanted for three quarters. They were up by 20 late in the third. Then Rivers went to the play book and found his rabbit.
Philly outscored Indiana 31-6 in the final eight minutes of the game to get their sixth win in seven games. The most amazing part about it was that they clipped the Pacers without their All-Star big, Joel Emiid, who was out with a sore back.
Tobias Harris led Philly with 27 points and 8 rebounds. Ben Simmons came through with 21 points, assists and 6 rebounds. Furkan Korkmaz came off of the bench and dropped off 17 on his way to Big Momma’s house.
Malcolm Brogdon led the Pacers with 25 points while Domantas Sabonis chipped in 21 as Aaron Holiday had 17 off of the bench.
Philly shot the lights out of the gym in the fourth quarter nailing 54 percent of their shots from the field as Indiana could only find the basketball 29 percent of the time.
Indiana hosts Memphis on Tuesday.