The Philadelphia 76ers were prepared to go into Orlando and get off on the right foot, but then they ran into the buzzsaw that is T.J. Warren and the Indiana Pacers.

Warren scored a ridiculous career-high 53 points and led Indiana to a 127-121 win over the Sixers to begin the season restart inside the bubble. The win moves the Pacers up to the 5 seed all by themself and they now have the upper hand on Philadelphia.

The Sixers primarily used their two elite defenders in Matisse Thybulle and Ben Simmons on Warren, but he shot 9-for-12 from deep and it was too easy for him. He had 29 points in the first half on his way to the win.

“I think that the space that we gave him was too generous,” said coach Brett Brown. “I think that when you have Matisse and Ben, you normally feel comfortable that those two can tag-team a player and he was great tonight. Maybe we could have double-teamed him sooner than we tried to. They have tremendous 3-point shooters behind the double team, so you try to pick your poison.”

Warren is a guy who came in averaging 18.7 points on the season, but he was averaging 23.7 points in the three previous games with the 76ers. He clearly is a guy that can put up big numbers and Philadelphia did not respect that on Saturday.

“Give him credit, he was hot,” said Tobias Harris. “Too many times we were guarding him like he wasn’t on fire. We gave him too much space. Just not enough credit for his ability to score and he punished us tonight from the beginning of the game on. We definitely could have done a better job as a whole for sure. He did make some tough shots though, give him credit.”

Warren is a guy who has scored at least 18 points per game over the last three seasons so it isn’t like he can’t score. The Sixers have got to be able to adjust from the beginning especially after he got off to such a hot start in this one.

“Defensively, T.J. Warren, we just got to do a better job as a team,” said Joel Embiid. “It’s not just on one guy. We’ve got to help each other, we’ve got to stop him. That can’t happen. We’re too good defensively and we have too many great defensive players, but we’ve got to do a better job of adjusting as the game goes on. He started hot and we need to do a better job of adjusting and making sure we contain our position.”

The Sixers will move on to face the San Antonio Spurs on Monday looking to bounce back from this poor defensive effort.