CAMDEN, N.J.–The Philadelphia 76ers get set to host the Denver Nuggets on Saturday in a matinee and the NBA world will focus on the two prime MVP candidates in Joel Embiid and Nikola Jokic. The two of them are the premier players in the league and one figures that the two of them will put on a show.
However, the Sixers are keeping their focus on beating the Nuggets. Not the Embiid vs. Jokic matchup.
The Sixers have won 19 of their last 23 games in order to move into the No. 2 seed in the Eastern Conference and the Nuggets are the No. 1 seed in the West having won 10 of their last 12. Both teams are playing some terrific basketball and it should be a very entertaining matchup in South Philadelphia.
“It’ll be fun,” said Tyrese Maxey at practice on Friday. “I think the Nuggets vs. Sixers matchup will be a good matchup. It’s two really good teams right now. Two teams at the top of their conference so it’s gonna be fun.”
Coach Doc Rivers, who played with Dominique Wilkins while with the Atlanta Hawks, would be involved in the Wilkins vs. Larry Bird matchups during his days. He doesn’t want the Sixers to be involved in Embiid vs. Jokic. He just wants them to win the games.
“Not really, but you want your player to do better than their player,” said Rivers. “It does become a team thing. When it manifests itself into a team thing, it’s a really good thing, but I mean, it’s natural. Last year, I think that second game. Joel and Joker both played well. You want to win the game, number one, but I do remember the Dominique-Birds, he didn’t go into the game with that.”
With the Sixers coming off an emotional game on Wednesday against the Brooklyn Nets where the focus was on Embiid and Ben Simmons, the team got caught up in the emotions of the game. They were called for three technical fouls and the Sixers don’t want to get caught up in that in the future.
“Those two are the best centers of the game so yeah, I would say that’s a huge matchup,” added Georges Niang. “I don’t know if Doc said it, but he kind of preached to us today (Friday), don’t get too emotional about these things. Just play the game.”
The Sixers have been playing some terrific basketball since the second week of December and they need to keep their focus on that and not on any emotions of it.
“Last game, we got kind of got caught up in that and that almost cost us the game,” Niang added. “So I think today was just a day of just being focused on what we can do as a team to maintain focus and continue to win games and be focused on that.”
