PHILADELPHIA–The Philadelphia 76ers will need James Harden to be a scorer in order for them to go far and deep into the playoffs, but they will certainly take nights like Saturday as well to help them on their title quest.
Harden only shot 6-for-17, but he did end up scoring 22 points and he had 14 assists in a Game 1 win over the Toronto Raptors to open the playoffs. Harden also had one particular highlight pass that will be plastered all over SportsCenter for the next few days.
Harden threw a very long bounce pass to Tyrese Maxey who finished it on the other end and the Sixers were able to build an 88-70 lead off of it.
“I’m not fast at all,” Harden laughed. “He is so I’ve been trying to do a better job of just getting the ball, advancing the ball, and pushing our pace a little bit more with the advanced pass, and we did a good job. Something we talk about as far as rebounding, we did a great job of that, and he’s running. You gotta reward him. He’s a great finisher and he makes the right play so just try to keep him going.”
The Sixers are a team that likes to push the pace so the fact that they were able to do so in this one was big. They were able to take advantage of some bad Raptors possessions and on this particular one, they were able to get an easy look out of it.
“I just tried to get the ball to him however I could,” Harden said. “He was running so fast and we had an opportunity to capitalize in the transition. We do a really good job of getting stops and getting the rebound and pushing the ball in transition when we got opportunities. We gotta take advantage of them and that was one of those cases.”
The Sixers will look to keep this going now as they prepare for Game 2 with the Raptors on Monday.
This post originally appeared on Sixers Wire! Follow us on Facebook!
