Nick Nurse's Mindset Behind Replacing Reed With Bamba vs. Hawks

A hot start against the Atlanta Hawks stalled last Friday night for the Philadelphia 76ers. Putting on a 35-23 showing in the first 12 minutes of action, the Sixers lost the momentum and were destroyed defensively by Atlanta’s attack.

Allowing the Hawks to hit on 53 percent of their shots, with nearly 50 percent of their threes getting knocked down, the Sixers didn’t have an answer for a shorthanded team that’s still searching for its identity in the second quarter of Friday’s game.

Once on pace for an easy victory, the Sixers dropped the ball as the Hawks nearly hung 50 points on them before heading into halftime with a six-point lead.

“I just didn’t like the second quarter start,” Sixers head coach Nick Nurse explained after the game. “I don’t like any of the second quarter actually.”

As Nurse and the Sixers are still searching for a consistent rotation, nobody is glued to the bench. And with the head coach being eager to make adjustments when necessary, Nurse isn’t hesitant to make a change on the fly, which tends to stun the viewers.

On Friday night, the second-half absence of Joel Embiid’s primary backup, Paul Reed, was the move that generated some conversation about Nurse’s in-game adjustments. After Reed collected his typical six-minute shift in the second quarter, his second-half minutes were issued to Mo Bamba.

“I’m not gonna sit here and say I knew I was gonna play, but I kind of felt the flow of the game, and I know what we needed and just wanted to prepare myself for the game,” Mo Bamba said after the game. “…I was just watching the game, feeling the flow. I think we’re 20-something games in — twenty games in — I know kind of like the ins and outs and the pattern of how things are going, and I just wanted to be ready.”

Bamba checked in for five minutes in the second half as Embiid took on his usual break before closing things out. During that time, Bamba collected three rebounds and was a solid defensive presence in the paint.

“I thought what I saw in the second was they just put their head down, went to the front of the rim, boom, boom, boom six-straight times, and I thought maybe we needed a little more appearance of some rim-protection,” Nick Nurse explained.

“He did a good job,” the head coach continued. “He was into it. Give him a lot of credit, he’s really stayed positive and he’s really stayed ready. He’s really worked hard, and that’s not easy to come in in kind of a funky game. He produced pretty good for a good stretch.”

Despite a second-quarter collapse, the Sixers controlled the second half. Outscoring the Hawks 63-46 and winning the turnover battle 10-3, Philadelphia eventually cruised past Atlanta with a 125-114 victory.

While Bamba is unlikely to replace Reed in the rotation moving forward, the former first-round pick stated a decent case for himself to be an easy option for Nurse to turn to if things aren’t going well at the five once again in the future.