Paul George and Tyrese Maxey on Friday combined for 59 points as the Philadelphia 76ers snapped a seven-game losing streak with a 132-129 upset of the league-leading Cleveland Cavaliers.
George rattled in six three-pointers on his way to a 30-point haul, while point guard Maxey finished with 29 points to set up a badly needed victory for the struggling Sixers.
Philadelphia went into the game on the back of a run of defeats that had seen them tumble out of the playoff places in the Eastern Conference standings with a 15-27 record.
Photo: AP
The last of those recent losses was a brutal 144-109 pounding on the road against the Denver Nuggets on Tuesday.
“It’s a good bounce back,” Sixers head coach Nick Nurse said.
“Sometimes those games happen,” he added, referring to the mauling in Denver earlier in the week. “I said at the time I didn’t think it was an indication of how we were playing as a team. The players responded. They practiced good yesterday, they prepared great tonight and they played really well.”
Photo: AP
“Everybody contributed tonight [Friday] — all the guys that played made a contribution,” Nurse said.
A see-saw contest that saw the lead change hands 30 times appeared to have swung decisively in favor of the Sixers in the closing stages of the fourth quarter, with the home side taking an eight-point lead after a layup from George with 1 minute, 26 seconds remaining.
However, the Sixers threatened to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory after Cleveland closed the gap to a single point with 12 seconds remaining after a Ty Jerome three-pointer.
Photo: Bill Streicher / Imagn Images
Yet four free throws from Maxey helped the Sixers get over the line for a morale-boosting victory.
“Denver came out and punched us in the mouth, but we’d been playing well before that,” Maxey said after Friday’s win. “We just couldn’t close it out. Tonight we closed it out and that was good for us.”
Four other Sixers players also posted double-digit scoring tallies, with Kelly Oubre Jr finishing with 22 points, 13 rebounds and three steals, while Eric Gordon and Justin Edwards added five points each.
Donovan Mitchell led Cleveland’s scorers with 37 points, while Jerome finished with 33 points and Darius Garland 26.
In other NBA games on Friday, the Memphis Grizzlies thumped the New Orleans Pelicans 139-126 at home. The Grizzlies’ fifth straight win saw them improve to 30-15. In Charlotte, North Carolina, the Hornets were beaten 102-97 by the visiting Portland Trail Blazers.
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