Dario Saric may have a second career as a boxer.
Just getting over injuries that a fighter might experience (elbow cellulitis, lacerated lip and a chipped front tooth), Saric found himself in yet another battle during Game 1 of the Sixers' best-of-seven series with the Heat.
"It was like a fistfight in the paint," Saric said after a 130-103 win (see observations).
Apparently the second-year forward has been working on his long-distance punch.
Saric scored 13 of his 20 points during the Sixers' huge second half, including three of his four three-pointers. His performance marked just the second time since 1963-64 that a Sixer reached the 20-point mark in his playoff debut (Allen Iverson, 30 points in 1999).
"We were struggling a little bit. We were in some kind of rush," Saric said of the team's first-half performance. "Maybe there was some kind of pressure for the playoff game. Teams have that experience, teams don't play the quickest in the playoffs. Second half, we went out like a group of guys, men."
They sure did, particularly the veterans with postseason experience such as JJ Redick, Marco Belinelli and Ersan Ilyasova.
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But that was to be expected. Those guys were a key reason the Sixers took the NBA's longest win streak ever to finish a regular season into the playoffs.
Saric, on the other hand, limped into his first postseason. He missed three games in April with the ailing elbow and lasted just 13 seconds in another after taking an elbow to the face. Saric only reached double-digit points in that massacre of Milwaukee in the finale.
Still, that wasn't going to prevent the Croatian from playing the style that saw him average 14.6 points, 6.7 rebounds and 2.6 assists over the course of 78 games in 2017-18.
"We have unbelievable shooters," said Saric, who added six rebounds and three assists to his point total. "We're trying to find guys open. … For us shooters, it's easy to play [this way]."
The scary part? Saric thinks the Sixers' attack will get even better.
"For now, we are playing unbelievable," he said. "Things are rolling. The team is playing right. We're waiting for Joel (Embiid) to put him in. I think with Joel our offense will look unstoppable."