Philadelphia 76ers: Losing Game 2 to Miami Heat will help in long run

As frustrating as it was for the Philadelphia 76ers to lose Game 2 to the Miami Heat, this should be viewed as a major wakeup call for Brett Brown’s team.

Heading into the playoffs, the Philadelphia 76ers were viewed as one of those teams that nobody wanted to play when seeing how they closed out the regular season by winning each of their final 16 games. So when the Sixers came out with a bang in Game 1 of the first round against the Miami Heat on Saturday with a 27-point win to extend their winning streak to 17 games, nobody was really all that surprised.

With that being said, Game 2 was the complete opposite for Philadelphia, as the team struggled from 3-point range along with keeping Dwyane Wade in check that resulted in a 113-103 loss against Miami. When looking at his playoff experience throughout his career, the Sixers knew Wade was capable of taking off at any given time, but seeing the veteran lead the way for the Heat by dropping 28 points in Game 2 shows they need to take a better approach for Thursday’s Game 3.

All of a sudden, Miami faces less pressure heading home since they were able to steal at least one of the first two games in Philadelphia. Not to mention, from an experience perspective, the Heat are loaded with players that have been in this position before of taking part in this time of year, while a majority of the Sixers are participating in the playoffs for the first time.

Losing the way they did was obviously a tough pill for Philadelphia swallow when looking at how much they were dominating opponents for the most part during their 17-game winning streak, but also this could still help them in the long run. As impressive as the winning streak was for the Sixers, a loss like this should be viewed as a wakeup call that defeating the Heat in this series is going to be anything but easy.

Hopefully, Philadelphia can look at the mistakes made in Game 2, which should include defending Wade better, to make sure they don’t happen again on Thursday. Not to mention, if Joel Embiid finally makes his return after missing the first two games of the series, this could provide the Sixers with a much-needed boost on both offense and defense.

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Losing a key game at home in the playoffs can be frustrating, but Philadelphia knows this series was going to be a marathon and not a sprint. If all goes according to plan, the Sixers will use some of the factors from Game 2 to improve moving forward to give them a better chance of taking down the Heat.