More Mo ball

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

If Sixers players wanted to show they were happy that Mo Cheeks got a one year extention, they did it pretty well. And if this is how they will play until the end of this season and for the whole next one, Stefanski’s move was good.

Ok, we all know it’s not gonna be always like yesterday, but still the 124-84 thrashing of the Knicks (24-31, .436) was nice to watch for many reasons.

The NBA is fun, and its schedule puts teams in weird situations. This game was the second of the back-to-back for both Philadelphia and New York: Sixers were coming from the AWFUL loss vs the Timberwolves, one of the worst teams in the League, Knicks from an amazing win at Washington, where they set a franchise record for points scored in overtime (23).

Guess what, Sixers TOYED (I’m stealing this from Walt Frazier) with the Knicks for 48 minutes and the game was over after one quarter (37-17). I have really troubles trying to describe what happened last night. Basically Sixers outplayed the Knicks in every possible way, scoring a ton of points in transition and even knocking down threes. On the other side New York was throwing a sort of “turnover party”, getting killed under the glasses and on every hustle play.

GET THIS GUY ED, PLEASE !!!!!!

Sixers need to sign Josh Smith.

Sixers need to sign Josh Smith. Sixers need to sign Josh Smith, Sixers need to sign Josh Smith (repeat until they actually sign him).

Ok, save the “You are getting carried away after he had a good game” BS, because that’s - exactly - just a BS.

This guy is an “all around beast” (LOL).

I don’t know if it’s a coincidence that Josh Smith explodes every time he meets the Sixers (remember his first game vs us this year?), anyway I think Stefanski should do everything that is possible, and even the impossible, to get him this summer.

This recap comes some hours late so no need to revisit the whole game, the point is that there is only one reason to explain how a 20 point Sixers lead (12-32 in the first) turned into the final 96-91 loss in Atlanta (18-30, .375) and the reason is the guy in the picture. Just some flashes.

The FIRST QUARTER looked more like a “Sixers dunk & layup party” than a real game. Scores: 2-9, 8-24, 9-28, 12-32, until the final 14-32. All in a shootaround-like atmopshere. Sixers had a 23-5 rebounding edge (correct, twentythree-to-five), outscored the Hawks 15-0 on fastbreaks and shot 52% vs Atlanta’s 26%. Andre Miller had 9 and Thaddeus Young (starting, again) 7. Unreal.

A hectic end of 2007

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. 

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.

Tired legs or lack of killer instinct?

Maybe both. Probably both.

In the second game of a back-to-back Sixers squandered a 18 point third quarter lead to lose 94-92 in overtime to the well rested Nets. New Jersey snapped a 5 home games losing streak, and made Sixers fall to 5-11 (.313).

It was another tough loss. Tough to swollow and to explain. Sixers played very well in the first half, six players scored in an excellent first quarter (19-28), when Mo decided to play some trap defense that helped slowing down New Jersey’s offense: Nets turned the ball over five times and apparanetly struggled figuring out how to attack us.

In the second Sean Williams had a great impact defensively (4 blocks ! just like Brandan Haywood last night… damn, looks like these athletic young centers love to play us !) but the Nets continued to play like a (bad) jump shooting team. Korver and Lou Williams connected from three point and Sixers’ lead was quickly lifted to 29-46, to close the quarter at 35-51 on a couple of free throws by Iguodala.

At halftime Sixers shot 58% from the field (20/34), 9/11 from the line, and outrebounded the Nets 22-12. New Jersey was 13/34 (37%) including 2/13 from downtown.

It’s over at 35-47 (.427)

Yeah I know it’s too late for writing a post about the end of the eason, when it came like 8 days ago. But sometimes I also have to work, and unfortunately that moment came at the wrong time… so here we are with a recap of this crazy 2006-2007  (the first italian Sixers blog started on November 1st, day of the opener, remember?)….

First it would be fair to admit that that my 43 wins prediction was way off.  I could say that the prediction was made for the team with Iverson and Webber, but I would sound even dumber than I am since our final record after the Iverson trade is 30-29, and after Webber’s buyout is even better, 26-21. Yeah, we were 5-18 when we traded our franchise player (the embarassing 121-94 loss @ Bulls on December 7th was his last game as a Sixer) and 9-26 before getting rid of the Detroit native. Uh !

Good news before the break

Ok we have some good news, just before the All Star Game (that, by the way, has won the “Most boring sports event ever” prize).

The first is that Sixers went back to red uniforms, which is something I was really waiting for. Hey, each of us has some fetish passions, right? Well, mine are uniforms and logos (besides foot fetish, I mean… but I’m digressing)… so my opinion about the new unis is: not bad, but not great either. The good thing is that the colour is close to the one we should ALWAYS use, the bad thing is that our current logo still suck. Now if we could only go back to the 1978-1997 logo… but I’m confident we will.

The (four) readers of this Sixers blog perhapes noticed we changed our main colour to red too… and this BEFORE the team uniforms… it’s clear Billy King is an avid reader of Sixers4guidos…

The last cool uniforms we had were actually during Iverson’s rookie year. You can take a loot at them by the picture of Clarence “Ricky believed in you” Weatherspoon below. Then, the influence of the hip-hop culture made our marketing jeniuses switch to black (!!??), and even an unbelievable electric blue. I will write again about unis for sure, but right now I’m pretty happy. Still a step in the right direction.

Other good news are the following.

“With the Sixers’ luck…”

We won four of the last six games, including yesterday’s 89-78 win at Oklahoma City vs Hornets, for a 15-32 (.319) record, “only” third worst overall, and we keep hearing this BS on the Sixers board.

Negadelphians always complain, and the current reasoning more or less is this: “if we win too many games, we’ll have less chances to get Oden , Durant, Noah” etc at the lottery. It’s mathematics, I know.

But it’s the comment I put on the title that irks me the most. People say that Sixers had no luck in the lottery, so next one will be the same, we’ll get the #15 pick etc etc.

Well, I made a little research, take a look at this:

For a LB coming, there’s a CW leaving

Overall, not bad.

As much as we dislike our new (?) “executive vicepresident” (?????? WTF an executive vice president does, exactly? only in the US…) Larry Brown, seems that we are moving in the right direction.

Last move? Buying Chris Webber out.  He is apparently giving back 5 millions out of the 43 that Sixers would owe him until june 2008 to become immediately a free agent. This, on the other side, allow Sixers to get some cap space, and luxury tax relief.

Honestly, as fans, we don’t give a damn about the waste of money, because it’s not ours. But what does this (good) move tell us? That Snider and Billy King are on the same page about totally being in a rebuilding process now. That we don’t care about trying to win games this year (assuming that THIS Webber would have helped us in winning more games). That we realized that clearing cap space and give this team to the young players is the only way to resurrect.

Now what’s left to do? Our opinion:

Good trade Billy King. Now you can go

So it’s Andre Miller, Joe Smith and two first round picks. That’s what Billy King managed to obtain from the Nuggets for Allen Iverson . Great? So-and-so? Bad? We say ok, good trade.

A solid player, who was an all star some years ago and can give us a nice contribution immediately and in the two years remaining on his contract, Smith’s 7 millions expiring next summer and two (late, probably) more picks in what it’s supposed to be one of the best, deepest drafts ever, in which the Sixers will likely have three calls.

We say “likely” because today nobody thinks that we will make the playoffs, even if Boston, currently pacing the Sad-lantic Division at 10-13 (.435) , is only five games ahead of our poor 5-18 (.217). And just to complete the outlook, keep in mind also that the last spot for the postseason today would belong to Miami, ranked 8th at 11-13 (.45 while we are writing this. That’s a 5.5 games distance, with 59 games to play !!!