PHILADELPHIA _ No excuse will be good enough to explain what happened at the Wells Fargo Center on Friday night.
The 76ers went into the night with the NBA's best home court advantage, the only team undefeated this season at their home arena, and the Cleveland Cavaliers, the league's worst team, walked away with a win, beating the Sixers, 121-112.
The basement-dwelling Cavaliers improved to 3-14 on the season, and it was Collin Sexton and Rodney Hood leading the charge, hitting tough, contested, and wipe-open shots, combining for 48 points on the night.
Maybe it was too much tryptophan, maybe it was the distractions of the last week with Markelle Fultz's saga continuing, maybe it was just that the Sixers underestimated the Cleveland squad, but whatever the reason, the Sixers were off from the very beginning.
Scoreless for the first three minutes of the game, the Sixers were down by as many as 14 points to the lowly Cavaliers and needed a flurry of 3-pointers from across the roster to pull themselves back into contention.
A steal and fast break score from Ben Simmons seemed to change the tone near the end of the first quarter, but the Cavs kept pushing.
Jimmy Butler's 22 points, Joel Embiid's 24, JJ Redick's 23, and Simmons' 22 weren't enough to keep the home crowd from booing the Sixers after the Cavs pulled away in the fourth quarter.
Each shot that Hood or Jordan Clarkson hit in the fourth punctuated the Sixers' lacking performance as the fans streamed out of the arena. Hood finished with a team-high 25 points while Clarkson added 19 off the bench.
There were moments when it seemed like the game was about to shift, that the Sixers were going to wake up from their Thanksgiving hangover, but it never materialized into anything more than a five-point lead for the Sixers, who were thwarted in every attempt to turn the tides of the game.
The Sixers fell to 13-8 on the season in their first regular-season home loss since March 13 when the Indiana Pacers beat the Sixers, 101-98.
