After dropping their first-round opener at the Garden, the 76ers know they have to bounce back Monday and rebound — literally and figuratively.
That means being more physical.
It means boxing out, playing angles and playing tougher.
And it means playing better, with coach Nick Nurse citing disappointing outings from the likes of Buddy Hield, Kelly Oubre Jr. and Paul Reed.
The Sixers’ bench was dominated, and they got hammered on the boards, beaten 23-9 on the offensive glass and humbled 26-8 in second-chance points.
The problem was easy to pinpoint.
“Rebound,” said Nicolas Batum, adding of the Knicks’ offensive boards: “In a playoff game, that’s way too much.”
The Knicks led the league in offensive rebounding.
But after watching Mitchell Robinson’s seven nearly match their total single-handedly on the offensive glass, rewatching the tape reiterated the need to shore up their shoddy work on the glass.
“A lot of things got confirmed from what we all saw live,” Nurse said. “Listen, we did a couple things really, really well, as far as schematically and what we were trying to do. We didn’t do one thing very well. … We let them play to one of their strengths, like, absolutely to the max.”
And the Sixers didn’t play to theirs.
Philadelphia’s bench was outscored, 42-7. Hield is an elite shooter but was a scoreless 0-for-2 in his first-ever playoff game.
“Buddy didn’t get much of a chance. … He did have a couple of plays there. He didn’t play good,” Nurse said. “It’s a game where you can’t extend minutes when a guy has three or four mistakes. But I do say this: He’ll be a factor in the series.
“I think Kelly can play a lot better too, right? I don’t think he was nearly the athlete he needed to be. … But he understands that, too.”
Another backup who’ll need to bounce back is Reed.
Despite being a minus-21 largely in relief of Joel Embiid, Nurse said he’s going to play the pair together more to help with rebounding. But Reed has to play under control.
“He was out of position a lot,” Nurse said. “I thought he went for a lot of blocked shots that he didn’t need to and he didn’t get them and they ended up sticking them back in because he left, got off his man. But we’ll show him that.
“I think he’s got an opportunity. He plays hard. He wants to — I think he played a little bit almost too aggressively. He was going too early to help when it wasn’t needed and it ended up hurting us and stuff like that. But we’ll show it to him and [he’ll] understand.”
