Trail Blazers at 76ers
The Philadelphia 76ers are surging up the standings and continue to redefine the organization's expectations for this season and the near future. The 76ers will try to match their longest winning streak of the season at three in a row and pick up their eighth victory in 10 games when they host the struggling Portland Trail Blazers on Friday.
Philadelphia spent the better part of the last four seasons in the NBA's basement, stockpiling draft picks and young players while adding up losses, but the debuts of Joel Embiid and Dario Saric and the acquisition of veterans like Ersan Ilyasova and Gerald Henderson are giving the 2016-17 team higher expectations. The 76ers aren't just picking off the teams with losing records on their schedule of late and graduated to wins against top-tier opponents when Embiid's 26 points led the way in a 94-89 triumph over the Toronto Raptors on Wednesday. "It's great. That gives us a lot of confidence," Embiid told reporters of beating the Atlantic Division-leading Raptors. "Coming into the game we had a lot of confidence and winning against the second-best team in the East, it's just amazing and we're going to keep on working." The Trail Blazers are going the other way with losses in three straight games and fell in the first two stops of the four-game road trip at Washington and Charlotte by a combined 41 points.
TV: 7 p.m. ET, CSN Northwest (Portland), CSN Philadelphia
ABOUT THE TRAIL BLAZERS (18-26): Portland allowed a combined 43 points off turnovers in the first two games of the trip and was outscored 28-13 in the fourth quarter at Charlotte on Wednesday after closing the third strong. "I don't think our effort has been a problem," star point guard Damian Lillard told reporters. "We have situations over the course of the game where you need to get sharper, you need to get tighter and you need to be better. And in those moments, we don't raise to the level that the other team is raising to all the time. ... I think that's the most frustrating part, that you're trying hard but the things you've got to be able to do in an NBA game and in certain moments in an NBA game we aren't doing it all the time. It's tough, it's hard to win that way." The Trail Blazers shot 35.1 percent in Wednesday's 107-85 setback.
ABOUT THE 76ERS (14-26): Embiid is the breakout star of Philadelphia's surging team and "The Process" scored 20 or more points in his 10th straight game with Wednesday's triumph. "I don't think it's a fluke," Embiid told reporters of the team's recent success. "We're competing. We're winning games. We're playing great defense. We've finally found what we've been looking for. At the beginning of the season everybody was trying to find themselves, especially me. That's only my 30th game of my career, so I've still got a lot to learn, and I'm willing to learn." Embiid has yet to play more than 30 minutes in a game and is sitting out back-to-backs as the team takes a cautious approach with its young star.
BUZZER BEATERS
1. 76ers SG Nik Stauskas is 5-of-22 from 3-point range in the last five games.
2. Trail Blazers SG C.J. McCollum averaged 15 points in the last two games after scoring 20 or more in each of the previous 10 contests.
3. Portland PF Ed Davis sat out Wednesday with an ankle injury and is day-to-day.