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The season high fifth straight loss, a 111-104 decision at Toronto, came in the worst moment for the Sixers (40-40, .500), now tied at the 6th spot with the surging Bulls.

Iguodala’s face is the picture of  Sixers’ feelings.

Chicago is 40-40 as well but coming off four consecutive wins and with a better schedule (@ Detroit, currently 8th at 39-41, and vs the same Raptors).

Almost Everything is going wrong in Sixerland as of late. The most worrying part, to me, is that it seems we can’t put together a total team effort.

Nearly any given night a couple of our key players look MIA, so that the good, even excellent performances of single guys are eventually wasted.

The game vs the (lousy) Raptors, that snapped a four game losing streak (…) was another good example of these struggles. 

We ended up with five players in double figure, which is apparently contradicting what I just wrote. Unfortunately what could be seen as  “balanced offense” is more a “lack of reliable options” in crunch time.

Raptors built a fourteen point lead at mid fourth quarter (102-88), Sixers fought back and cut it to four (104-100 with 2.50 to play) but Toronto (smartly and) repeatedly went to the line and secured the win by knocking down seven of eight free throws before the horn.

I think it wasn’t a coincidence that in the two most important possessions down the stretch, Sixers turned it over badly.

With the score at 104-100, Andre Miller had an unnecessary offensive foul on Calderon, while when we were trailing by five but with a chance to stay in the game (109-104, 40 seconds left), Iguodala forced a drive, Marion stole him the ball and was fouled.

It was Iguodala’s TENTH turnover of the game (!). He threw away the ball in many ways: a behind-the-back pass to…  the first row at the end of the first quarter was perhaps the worst (he immediately apologized, to be honest, realizing the mistake), but he had many bad ones.

Andre Miller grabbed an offensive rebound but missed the (uncontested) putback under the basket after two minutes. He basically never recovered, finishing with an awful 2/14. I think he took good shots, they simply weren’t falling. Layups, short jumpers, drives, even a three: no way.

As you might guess, with the two Andres having subpar performances, Sixers have troubles in facing any team. What made me nuts yesterday, is that the most damage was actually made by Patrick O’Bryant, Joey Graham, and Quincy Douby (!!), three stiffs that combined for 26 points on 11/15 off the bench.

Yes, Toronto went on that run in the fourth with Calderon, Bargnani AND Bosh on the bench !! CB4 checked back in with 7.36 to play, but Toronto was already up seven (93-86). Bosh did his part immediately, adding two nice field goals. 

So what are we going to do vs Pierce-Allen-Garnett, or Lewis-Turkoglu-Howard, if we get killed by those (I’m sorry) scrubs?

Sixers had SOME reasons to be happy for last night, and I am going to mention them, in a desperate attempt to stay positive.

1) Sam Dalembert played a heck of a game, on both ends. He was very (re)active under the boards, catching some loose balls and converting them into baskets. Again, I honestly don’t get why he isn’t playing more, especially in the fourth (I can’t belive I’m typing this, but it’s sadly true). He avoided foul troubles and should have stayed in.

2) Lou Williams continued in his hot streak and was fantastic, by far Sixers’ most effective scorer. Forget the 0/5 from behind the arc, most of those misses came when the game was already closed.

He was simply unstoppable for every Raptor, drove to the rim countless times, always finishing with authority. The comination of 14 FTs attempted AND 6 dimes in 30 min of action is something to underline.

3) Royal Ivey had a once-in-a-lifetime streak of three consecutive treys in the second, carrying the Sixers to a 39-46 lead. Nevermind.

Few things left.

SIXERS4GUIDOS’ BONUS STATS AND RANDOM THOUGHTS – Sixers started the fourth with a dumb weird extra-super-small lineup of Royal Ivey, Lou Williams, Willie Green, Andre Iguodala, Marreese Speights (???!!). Guess that, it didn’t work = 6-o Raptors, LOL – We all love Marreese Speights, but the guy should cut the 17-footers, and play more in the paint – Roko Ukic is horrible, in every sense – Bargnani and Bosh combined for 28 points in the first half, closed with a tie at 53 – Andrea is credited with a career high 6 blocks, I think I didn’t see more than two…LOL

Here we are, blogging again after a well deserved 9 day vacation in the beatiful island of Zanzibar (Africa).

So what did I miss in the meantime? In chronological order:

1) Iguodala was officially signed to a 6 year-80 million extention (the pic shows that both him and Stefanski were happy for the deal…)

2) Sixers brought back Theo Ratliff, signed to a 1 year contract for the veteran minimum

3) Sixers’ GM Ed Stefanski made a conference call with a panel of selected bloggers.

Brian/Depressed fan has the links to all posts of other sites, Sixers.com has the transcript of the conference, Recliner GM has the podcast.

I had the privilege to get the invitation to the conference from Micheal Preston, Sixers’ PR director (thanks again), but unfortunately couldn’t join it because I was out. I will surely be part of the next one, scheduled… well, they don’t know yet, but it will be before the season starts.

Anyway it’s great to see that Sixers keep us bloggers/fans in such high consideration, and that a GM takes some of his time to talk directly to us. This is something new in the NBA, as far as I know, and hopefully it becomes a trend and eventually a standard for every team. Hats off to Stefanski and the Sixers’ public relations dept for setting up this.

4) Sixers brought back Jeff Ruland also, this time as an assistant coach

5) USA Team won the gold medal at the Olympics in China, beating Spain after a fantastic game. 

My quick takes on the aforementioned subjects are:

1) good move overall, but with some further thoughts. It’s great to have Iguodala locked for so long, but the amount of money seems really too high, considering Iguodala’s poor playoffs and almost the fact that NO OTHER TEAM was able to make him a big offer - that we eventually couldn’t match, I mean.

So if it was Billy King doing it, I’d definitely say he overpaid Andre, but since it was Stefanski… well, he probably knew what he was doing !

2) great move. We needed a veteran back up C, especially after the bad injury occured to Jason Smith shortened the big men rotation. Theo will provide what we need, quality minutes of (still) intimidating presence, rebounding, playoffs experience, hard working attitude. Also he’s a good guy, fans still love him and he comes for cheap… what else would you want ???

3) great stuff. I also love what Stefanski said about Iguodala, Thaddeus Young and Willie Green, read carefully.

4) I don’t know, honestly. Ruland basically replaces Henry Bibby, it has to be determined what happened between him and Cheeks, assuming there was something wrong, of course. Ruland’s resume as a coach is nothing to be excited for, actually, so we’ll just have to wait and see.

5) the final game between USA and Spain was something that will remain in the books, but I think USA team was poorly selected and poorly coached, despite the plethora of bball “minds” working at the project. So I will not follow the chorus of enthusiastic, in some cases pathetically celebrative, reports I’m reading. More to come about this soon.

The more I think about the upcoming season, the more I am pumped about this new Sixers team.

(on a side note, former Sixer Gordan Giricek went to Turkey, where he will play for Fenerbahce… sretan put, Gordane, neces nam nedostajati !)

You can’t take some days off for a little vacation around New year’s day, because that’s what happens… In chronological order: 

1) taking advantage of Ricky’s absence, Sixers traded Kyle Korver (in the picture) for Gordan Giricek and a first round pick

2) Sixers lost at Portland 72-97 (13-17, .433) “thanks” to a memorable fourth quarter collapse

3) Sixers won at Seattle 98-90 (14-17, .452) after a far-from-memorable game

After having spent the whole New Year’s evening reading all the news and watching the two games, I have to say the level of interest of those three facts is just reverse:

3) The Seattle game was simply bad. To me it showed few things, that I want to  mention very quickly.

* we have to work on our killer instict. We let a Sonics team without Durant, Wilcox and Ridnour (!!! and they weren’t good even with them…) stay in the game too long. Seattle cut the deficit to three twice in the fourth, (86-83 and 89-86) both on jumpers by Delonte West, and the same West misfired on an open three that could have made it a two point game with 2.16 to play… we should have closed it earlier and with a larger margin… to sum it up, there were all the conditions for a blow out, basically. 

* Lou Williams is amazing at the offensive end (13 points with 11/12 from the line in the fourth) just as much as irritating in the defensive end… he let Earl Watson AND Delonte West score repeatedly over him, and could NEVER defend a pick and roll… at times, it seemed the Knicks game all over again, when Jamaal Crawford scored 16 consecutive points on him… it looks like Lou can turn any opponent into an offensive threat (LOL): I expect Eric Snow dropping threes on us or Dan Dickau exploding for a career high soon… but he really helped us win this game so I’ll give it a cut

* Iguodala scored two terrific baskets when we needed it the most, one off an alley oop pass from Andre Miller (spectacular dunk + foul: 89-83, 3.29 to go), the other on a tough jumper to basically win the game (95-88, 26 seconds left): his confidence is rising and rising and rising… add also a nice three pointer at the 3rd quarter buzzer for the 73-62.

I’ll take the W + some other good things – Dalembert’s six blocks, Giricek’s solid debut, Andre Miller’s long three !! -  and forget the rest (starting from the 9/19 from the line we had at a point…)

2) The Portland game was another one to remember. It seems like these two teams can’t play “normal” games when they meet. You saw by yourself that we got outscored 35-9 in the fourth, that Blazers went on a 21-0 run, that we were up 11 at the beginning of the third (47-36) bla bla bla, so I would add only few considerations:

* we played a poor first quarter, giving up four threes and shooting 7/21 from the fiield. It’s no coincidence that Andre Miller was horrible offensively, 0/6 including a couple of lay ups and many “easy” mid range jumpers

* our second quarter was simply perfect, and again it’s no coincidence that Miller was very good in the period (11 points)… I have only some doubts about the “three point guards” line up that Cheeks used for a while, with Miller, Williams and Ollie on the floor at the same time (??!!)

* to me the key in the third (and perhaps in the game) were Brandon Roy’s three “and one” plays that gave the Trail Blazers new life and ignited the crowd

* the fourth quarter disaster is simply unexcusable, just as much as the 4 technical fouls we collected in the stretch (Cheeks, Williams, Dalembert, Miller)… how about taking care of the ball and slowing the tempo down instead of trying idiotic alley oops or rushed shots when the other team is clearly on fire ??? How about knocking down shots (0/7 to start, 2/14 at a point) instead of getting blocked and/or bitching with the refs ??

1) I have mixed feelings about the Korver trade (you perhaps remember I’ve been a great Korver fan since he came here… I will go on following and rooting for him, by the way) . I think it would be also stupid to judge it now, since it’s clearly a move to free cap space.

From a purely technical point of view, we could even not miss much with Giricek: the croatian is a great shooter too, maybe just not as deadly as Kyle is behind the arc, but close. Giricek is four years older but a little bit more athletic and slightly stronger, while defensively they are more or less at the same level, below average (Korver) vs garbage (Giricek).

The loss of Korver will mean more minutes for Young (finally !!) and Carney (…) in the rotation, something I definitely like. I don’t expect Giricek getting more than 8-10 minutes per game, and no one does, I think.

Gordan’s most appreciated “skill” is his expiring contract, though, be sure of that.

That’s why I think that we will have to wait this summer to weight Stefanski’s first move (it didn’t take him that long to pull the trigger for the first time, uh ?): right now Sixers are the franchise with more money to spend in the free agent market (insert drooling smiley here…), being 10 millions UNDER the cap, according to the same GM.

Whom we will sign will tell us if this trade (these trades?) worked. If losing my boy Korver is the price to land a Josh Smith, a Jose Calderon, an Elton Brand  in few months, well, Kyle, it will mean that you did great playing with us just as much as you did leaving us.

We will have more chances to analyze this over the next days/weeks, right now we have a trip West to finish (2-1 the current record, three tough games to go) and our buddy Kyle to meet, this time as a Utah Jazz (uh ! Doesn’t that sound weird?).

Happy 2008 again, it’s gonna be a wonderful Sixers year !!

(Small break from Sixers related topics) 

Serbia is new Under 19 basketball world champ, having defeated US team in the final game of the World Championship played in Novi Sad (Serbia).

Serbian guys won the final 74-69, with Mladen Jeremic scoring 24 points and Milan Macvan 19 (+ 10 rebounds).

For the US team the best scorer was Deon Thompson with 16 while Patrick Beverley had 15 points + 8 rebounds.

Milan Macvan was named MVP of the championship.

Take a look at the roster of the new champs: there is also a 2.21 m (7′4) 19 y/o center…

This might be no big news for many of you guys but I hope that real knowledgeable hoops fans care: it basically means that a new generation of serbian players is going to come soon and hopefully some of these guys make it to the NBA. So you better start to get used to their names quickly (Billy King please take note !).

Last time it happened, it was 1987, but it was Jugoslavija (still one country, with Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia etc united). That 1987 team, who won the gold medal in the Under 19 World Championship played in Bormio (Italy), included guys such as Toni Kukoc, Vlade Divac, Dino Radja etc etc

In a famous game vs US junior team, my boy Kukoc scored 37 points going 11/12 from 3 pt land (it’s not a typo, eleven-out-of-twelve three pointers…).

I hope that Sixers take a serbian player soon and/or that in the next drafts we can pick someone better than notorius (bosnian) bust Edin Bavcic…

Serbian B 92 site has a nice coverage of the event, if you can read serbian you will find many news starting from here.

Napred Srbija !!!

(Back to Sixers related topics soon)