PHILADELPHIA — The 76ers were down two stars on Monday — and it didn’t show against the Miami Heat.
The undermanned squad pulled off its biggest win of the season, beating the Eastern Conference’s first-place Heat, 113-106, at the Wells Fargo Center.
Joel Embiid and James Harden both rested on the tail end of the back-to-back. The thought was the move would leave Tobias Harris and Tyrese Maxey with little help.
However, Maxey, who scored a game-high 28 points, got much-needed help from Shake Milton and Furkan Korkmaz. Milton and Korkmaz scored 20 points and 18, respectively, off the bench.
The victory improved the Sixers to 44-27 and dropped the Heat to 47-25.
During pregame, coach Doc Rivers was asked it provided an opportunity to evaluate players like Charles Bassey and Paul Reed, who typically don’t play.
“Listen, this is their careers,” Rivers said. “Like every night they play. They’re trying to prove they should play more minutes and try to earn some minutes. They want to be pros like everybody. This is not fun and games for these guys. This is serious stuff. We want them to be good players.”
The thing is rookie center Bassey and second-year post player Reed played just one minute. But Milton and Korkmaz took advantage of Embiid missing the game with back tightness and Harden having the night off for left-hamstring injury recovery.
Korkmaz shot 7-for-12 while Milton made 9 of 18 shots to go with six assists and five rebounds.
Former Sixer Jimmy Butler finished with 27 points.
The Sixers avoided their second straight loss and third in their last five by playing great team ball. They led 101-99 on Korkmaz’s three-pointer with 4 minutes, 13 seconds left. Then Harris’ six-foot jumper on the next possession game the Sixers a four-point cushion.
Shortly afterward, Maxey took the game over with a personal 9-0 run.
The Sixers led 106-101 after Maxey’s three-point play with 2:18 left. And Maxey’s three with 1:33 left put the Sixers up eight. He responded with another three-pointer to make it an 11-point game. Maxey also had a key block on Caleb Martin’s layup attempt with 21 seconds remaining.
Rivers paired normal starters Matisse Thybulle, Harris, and Maxey with undersized center Paul Millsap and power forward Georges Niang.
This marked Millsap’s first appearance since playing nine minutes in a reserve role in a 99-82 road loss to the Heat on March 5. Meanwhile, this was Niang’s seventh start of the season.
The Sixers were overmatched from the start as Miami had a lineup featuring six-time All-Stars Butler and Kyle Lowry and one-time All-Star Bam Adebayo to go with the sharpshooting Duncan Robinson and hard nosed P.J. Tucker.
For Butler, this was just his third game in Philadelphia since being traded to the Heat on July 6, 2019.
The duo’s absence enabled Korkmaz to play his first meaning minutes since March 10. His only other appearance since then was mop-up duty against the Dallas Mavericks on Friday.
Shake’s performance
Milton shot 4-for-15 and had scored a combined 10 points in the last eight games heading into Monday. He didn’t score a point in four of the last five games of that stretch. But he didn’t attempt a shot in the last three games and attempted one shot in each of the previous two games.
But he came back to life on Monday with the extended minutes and went back to a scorer’s role.
He scored seven points on 3-for-5 shooting in the first quarter. He added two more points in the second quarter. Milton struggled a little bit in the third quarter, missing three of four shots. But he got things going early in the fourth quarter for the Sixers, scoring eight points.
A Korkmaz sighting
Meanwhile, Korkmaz looked like he benefited from being out of the rotation. The swingman had 10 points on 4-for-4 shooting, including two threes, to go with three rebounds and two assists in the first half. The fifth-year veteran looks comfortable while doing a solid job of executing the offense.
He missed his first attempt, a corner three-pointer, with 3 minutes, 52 seconds left in the third quarter.
