Bitter end for a fantastic Sixers season

(BRING THE OLD SIXERS UNIFORMS BACK ! S4G CAMPAIGN - SIGN HERE)

REGULAR season, I mean.

It ended with the 115-109 loss in Charlotte, the fourth straight, that kept us under .500 (40-42, .488).

Big deal? No, it was a fantastic run, and this young, exciting, athletic Sixers team probably overachieved, thanks mainly to the wonderful job done by Maurice Cheeks, a guy I bashed on these pages many times. Time to apologize again.

Some of you would perhaps remember I predicted 31 wins, but hundreds of ”colleagues” (in the category I put journalists, experts, bloggers, fans) were more around the 24-28 W range, with Sixers finishing from last to second last in the Eastern Conference.

So I won’t complain about these final four games, even if I would have preferred to take at least this last one, in order to avoid finishing with a losing record and to build some momentum before the playoffs (starting on Sunday at Detroit).

Cheeks rested most of his starters last night, with only Iguodala logging his usual minutes. Sixers were down 23 in the third (76-53, after a three pointer by Jason Richardson) but rallied back and closed the quarter 87-80 thanks to a 12-2 run with five consecutive points by an active Thaddeus Young and an alley oop dunk by Willie Green (season high 27 - in the picture, getting a rare S4G front page honour ) right at the buzzer.

Not the Big Three, but the threes

That’s what gave the f’n Celtics a 103-113 win at the Wachovia center, and made our record slide at 5-13 (.27 .

Sixers played a heck of a game for 40 minutes. Unfortunately games last more. Same old story. These guys always play hard, give 100% on the court, but their flaws in a 48 minutes games are exposed sooner or later. This time it was our porous perimeter defense again (10-22 from three point land for Boston) and some unexpected exploits by Celtics’ role players that we couldn’t guard.

It sucks containing the Big Three to a “standard” night and getting burned by the Eddie Houses, the Tony Allens and the James Poseys of this league. Not to take anything from them, they are very good players, and they showed it. And I’ve always been a big fan of Posey (well, I was…). It’s just that you don’t think you can lose a game because of them when you have to face Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen and Paul Pierce.

But this is what happens with a team with three proven all stars. They just play their standard basketball on a daily basis, and they open up spots for the others: it’s reserves’ job, then, to take advantage of the chances they are given. They did it versus the Sixers. Whatever…

The first game with Ed Stefanski as GM, after Billy King was fired, started with a wonderful surprise: Sixers wearing some damn cool retro uniforms (in the picture). Jeez, I love those. While we are “re-examinating everything, from the top to the bottom”, can we please sack also the current lame jerseys (especially the black ones), fire the modern logo (LOL) and go back to the old style unis, with our storied 76ers logo?

Santa Klaus came earlier this year

…and brought Sixers fan a nice gift: THE FIRING OF BILLY KING.

Yes, King got the axe in the late night in Philly, as David Aldridge and Phil Jasner reported.

I’ve read it this morning on the best Sixers blog, Passion & Pride, (congratulations guys), and could not believe it.

But it’s actually true. Ed Stefanski, former GM of the New Jersey Nets, replaces King, and a press conference is about to be held in Philly in few hours to introduce the new general manager.

I am happy. I never liked Billy King.

The second post of this blog, more than a year ago, was about his flaws. Since then, nothing changed.

I wanted him gone after the Iverson trade (a move that I liked, though), I confirmed that he doesn’t have a plan, that he sucks, and I repeated it few days ago.

To his credit, I liked the Hunter-Evans trade and I thanked him for not being Danny Ainge (LOL).  Damn, the Internet is nice…

The overall record of his 10 years tenure in Philadelphia speaks for itself: Sixers lack of accomplishments, current mess, cap hell situation is all on him.

Iguodala, please take note

…we want you to play like last night’s Josh Smith (in the picture) !

And not like a role player. Aren’t you supposed to be our franchise player, after all?

The high flying Josh Smith scored the first two points of the game on a (high flying, right) dunk a couple of seconds after the tip off, and never stopped, in an impressive display of athleticism, efficiency and all around dominant presence, to lead the Lue-less (LOL) Hawks to a 79-88 road win, the first one in Philadelphia after nearly 4 years (!). Sixers’ record is 5-12 (.294) now.

The game was pretty sloppy on our side, Hawks took an early advantage (13-19) and maintened it for the first quarter thanks to many offensive rebounds. A three by Josh Smith at the buzzer closed it at 17-24, with Sixers shooting 3/8 from the line and Andre Miller having 6 points.

In the second quarter Willie Green put on a show (yes, Willie Green was BY FAR out best player last night… enough said), scoring 16 points and giving us the first lead at 44-43. Al Horford showed all his talent on the other half, hitting some mid range shots and low post moves (= exactly what we lack…). The half ended with a 46-45 Sixers lead.

By halftime Sixers shot a remarkable 51% (19/37) but were 6/13 from the line, and it was 4/11 at one time. Green paced us with 19 points on 8/10 (!!), Miller had 8 + 6 assists (he had ZERO in the second half) but the most notable line was Iguodala’s: 2 points on 1/3 FG.

There is another GM named Billy that sucks

I just finished watching Hawks-Wizards, which means few things:

a) my other options for this sunday evening weren’t exactly exciting

b) I am a NBA junkie

c) in every NBA game, and I mean every, you can find at least a dozen things that it’s worth watching: players, plays, facts to analyze

Here are some of the things that came to my mind following this game

1) dear old Randy “juicy face” Ayers (in the picture) is still around, and he’s the assistant to Eddie Jordan. He must be a nice guy and a good assistant.

I mean, he even looks like an assistant coach, you see him and you realize it’s like he was born to do that. Actually someone named Randy Ayers HEAD coach of a NBA franchise one time, but I’m digressing…

2) Josh Smith is a great athlete but his shot selection makes Antoine Walker look like John Stockton

3) you think your favorite team (whatever it is) is disfunctional? Take a look at the Hawks roster. Today they played basically the whole fourth quarter with this line up: Joe Johnson, Josh Childress, Josh Smith, Marvin Williams, Al Horford.

This means a SG as point guard, a SF at shooting guard, two forwards (you pick who is the small and who is the power one, I honestly have no clue) and a PF as center.

Sixers get Reggie Evans, ship Hunter

A trade !!!

And again with the Nuggets. And again with one of my favourite role players involved. Yes, I like this trade because basically I like Reggie Evans, while I will NOT miss Stephen Hunter (who will ?).

We all knew we would have had issues rebounding the ball, and in Evans we get a MONSTER rebounder, considering his production-per-minute (7 in 17 minutes last season, 7.2 per 19.9 for the career !).

He’s in the Jeff Foster-category of boarding specialists, and I’m puposely bringing up another player I’ve always liked and pushed for.

Evans is probably a little overpaid and his contract is pretty long, but he’s still young (27) and he’s the kind of player that coaches and GMs like. Tradeable, I mean.  Hard worker, aware of his limits, he knows his role and does what you ask him to do.

What do we lose by trading Hunter? Well you tell me, because other than his (nice) shotblocking skills, I don’t see anything worth mentioning. Good riddance.

Billy King is no Danny Ainge (thank God…)

I apologize, mr King. Time to give you some props. 

Ok, if you are one of the four usual readers of this blog, you know I am a LONG TIME BIG critic of Billy King. I think he is a bad GM and he’s the main guy to blame for the poor situation Sixers are in.

But we have to give him this: at least he never pulled a Danny Ainge.

This is my comment after the Garnett trade became official. I debated this all day in the Sixers board of philly.com and I want to confirm it here.

In a nutshell my point is: no doubt acquiring Garnett and pairing him with Ray Allen and Paul Pierce makes Boston significantly better. But no way Celtics are title contenders now and not even Eastern Conference Finals bound. At the end of the day if I was Boston’s GM, I wouldn’t have done the trade. Let’s see why.

1) they gave up way too much:

Sixers4guidos translation for BK’s sentence

Sixers beat writer and fellow guido Marc Narducci just wrote:

‘In a phone interview Saturday, Sixers president and general manager Billy King said his team would use discipline in the free-agent market. Oddly enough, he cited the team that beat the Sixers out for Smith.

“Look at what a good job Chicago has done” King said. “They had the discipline not to overspend, and last year they were able to have the cap room to sign Ben Wallace”. Link for the whole story

SIXERS4GUIDOS TRANSLATION:

“I am an HOF idiot.

I couldn’t do what Bulls and many savy GMs did (= have the discipline not to overspend).

I overpaid big time for average to bad players, giving them 5-6 yrs deals like they were candies and now Sixers can’t play any role in the free agent market.

Look at Chicago, they can so they stole us players we would have liked to keep or sign.

Thanks God guido journalists in Philadelphia don’t have the balls to bash me like I would deserve”.

But the first italian Sixers blog has.

And Billy King’s plan is….?????

Let me make this clear immediately: I AM NOT - I repeat, I AM NOT - a college basketball expert. I don’t follow NCAA. Ok?

I don’t know shlt about college players except when I (occasionally) watch some game. It happened like 3-4 times this year, so that you know it.

That’s why I won’t break down Sixers’ draft picks, first because in my blogroll you have dozens of sites that do it remarkably, second because I wouldn’t be credible. And as a Sixers blogger I want to be credible.

Let’s stick to FACTS and things that are SURE. 

Fact #1 is this: “The draft concluded with the Sixers eventually acquiring Georgia Tech forward Thaddeus Young (in the picture), Colorado State 7-footer Jason Smith, Vanderbilt forward Derrick Byars and Providence forward/center Herbert Hill“.

All I read about these guys is: Young could be a terrific player but CAN NOT play PF, Jason Smith is a good big man with serious upside (…) but an average rebounder, Byars is a SG/SF, Hill doesn’t count, I guess…

Fact #2 is: Sixers desperately needed (well, actually need) a REBOUNDING PF. They didn’t get any player to solve this problem, that to me was THE priority.

Fact #3 is: we didnt’ manage to trade up, even if we had a lot of assets to do so, such as 4 picks a really good playmaker like Andre Miller + some role players that could be used, Carney, Hunter, Green etc. Billy King’s explaination for failing to trade up is this. Some significant excerpts:

So it’s #12. Let’s have fun, then

I really enjoyed following the lottery live yesterday night, chatting with my friend Sixerguy on Yahoo messenger. It was pretty fun, first the long awaiting, between endless commercials and stupid interviews, then the quick conclusion.

At the end of the day we will pick at 12th, not exactly surprising, since we had like the 93% of possibilities to end up there…

So what are my feelings? First one is the “I knew it” phase, the typical italian-smart-ass-attitude, well backed up by mathematical possibilities this time.

Second came the “Holy shit” phase, since I realized that Seattle got the #2 overall pick (= Kevin Durant) after losing only 4 games more than Sixers.

Here I went back to the “I knew it” phase, because I wrote several times that with a SMART - not dirty - tanking we could have had more ping pong balls, and this without losing our dignity *** COUGH *** unlike Boston… ** COUGH ***.

I mean, it wasn’t that difficult to lose another 4-5 games at the end of the regular season, but Mo Cheeks & co thought the opposite, so we’re stuck at #12. Whatever.