Sixers blow another one in Charlotte

Forget the ‘furious comeback’ (from -20 in the second to +4 in the fourth), forget the BS about the “pride”, the “reaction” etc etc, the game in Charlotte will go down as a 101-98 LOSS, while it should have been a WIN. 

And forget the 4th seed also, with a 40-37 (.519) record, that spot is definitely out of reach, we’d rather think aboout making it to the 5th, because Miami is there with a 1/2 game advantage, and our schedule looks extremely tough: three of the five games left on the road, and the two at home versus Boston and Cleveland, that both have important goals to reach.

And then again, when you get blown out by the Nets and you lose to the Bobcats immediately after, you can’t expect nothing good vs stronger opponents.

How about this: Sixers’ record against New Jersey and Charlotte is 1-7 (!!). So there you already have the answer to the question “Why didn’t we get home court advantage in the playoffs ?” that you’ll ask yourself at the end of the regular season. 

As you might guess, I am SLIGHTLY disapponted after losing for the third time this season to Larry Brown’s team. But after all, there is a reason why Sixers are floating around .500 all year: they could never find any consistency.

So there you have the exciting Ws at LA Lakers, vs Spurs (in a blow out), at Portland, the sweep against the Rockets (yes, we did that. And they had Yao and TMG in both games), and then the Calvin Booth-ugly losses at Minnesota, at Golden State, at O-K-L-A-H-O-M-A f’n C-I-T-Y (+ the 1-7 aforementioned record) that leave you speechless… That’s immaturity in the best case, mediocrity in a more realistic analysis.

After watching the Charlotte game, I remembered what George Karl said after we let another W slip away, in Denver: “The thought that comes to my mind is, bad teams lose games they’re supposed to win, and good teams win games they’re supposed to lose” . Remember that game?

I mean, how can you possibly allow Charlotte, the third worst offense in the NBA (less than 94 PPG) to score 63 points in the first half ??? On 57% shooting (22/38)? And 5/11 from behind the arc ??

Or allow Raymond Felton (good player, nothing more) to score 21 at the break, 32 at the end, setting a new career high ???

Yes, Lou Williams played very well again, the third quarter comeback was nice, we saw a possessed Willie Green almost singlehandedly carrying the offense (13 pts in the quarter on 4/5, including three treys), but we couldn’t finish the job. One more time. Another wasted effort.

Finally a close W. It took Memphis, though

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It took a mediocre team, a great contribution from the bench and a couple of (nice) surprises, but still Sixers’ 105-110 W in Memphis is an encoraging one (30-30, .500).

Let’s recap what went wrong, and we will quickly remind the good things.

1) free throw shooting was awful, again.

63% and ELEVEN MISSES are really bad, especially in a close game (19 ties, 15 lead changes, biggest lead at 9 – Sixers). Sixers were 15/24 with the score at 93-92.

Miller, uncharacteristically, did the worst part, missing four, Marreese Speights, usually precise, added another surprising 1/3, Iguodala shot 66%.

2) defense was porous, Memphis shot 60% in the first half (!) and remained at that pctg also at the end of the third (34/57). We could get some defensive stops only down the stretch. and fortunately it was when it counted the most.

We could never protect the rim, allowing too many drives, and  couldn’t even foul them hardly/smartly, which led to many three point plays.

Conley (31) and Marc Gasol (30) both had career highs (…), something we shouldn’t be proud of. Duels in the low post between Gasol and Dalembert/Ratliff were an interesting thing to see though, a nice matchup to focus on.

But let’s move to what worked well.

1) perimeter defense, finally (I). Not that Memphis is a good three point shooting team (currently 28th out of 30 teams, with 33.9%, just above Washington and… ok, you got it…), but we denied them open looks.

Another rain of threes

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…this time resulting in a loss, 101-86 vs the Hornets, that pushes us below .500 again (21-22, .488).

I couldn’t watch the game last night and I will troubles also catching the upcoming one at Houston.

They both are blackouted on Int’l League Pass and the site that used to put online NBA replaying games was apparently shut down few days ago (…). That really sucks. 

Anyway I think/hope Sixerdave will cover the Houston game for us and I’ll have an interesting Q&A session with a cool Rockets blog before it, so stay tuned on S4G.

Sorry for the lack of coverage of the Hornets loss but from Mon to Fri it’s really tough for me to watch the games live and then go to work the day after, especially when Sixers play on the road vs Westen conference teams.

That would mean going to bed at around 4 AM, sleep less than four hours and then work from 9 to 7… not exactly the kind of rythm you can keep for a long time, especially if you would like to do both things (blogging & working, I mean) pretty well. 

As usual when I couldn’t catch the game, I watched highlights, scrutinezed the play-by-play page, I read a lot of (relieble) reports around so that I’ll stick to some actual facts that can be analyzed.

Quicky:

1) we allowed the second consecutive barrage from three point land. After Knicks went 15/32, Hornets followed with their own 14/31. Make it 29/63 (46%) in the last two games.

Pedja Stojakovic had a streak of FIVE threes knocked down in the fourth (!), scoring all of New Orleans’s initial fifteen points, and the game looked pretty much over (81-66). To our credit, we had a great effort after that, and were able to cut the lead to only seven in the final (89-82) but Paul with a jumper and Posey with another three closed the game

Lakers too much to handle

Simple as that.

It was 36 minutes of purple and gold, down to the final 102-114 loss that puts us three games under .500 again (8-11, .421).

Sixers got off to a good start, 17-7, but then serbian hero (?) Radmanovic started making shots (all of his 11 points coming in the first quarter, with 4/5 and three threes…) and Lakers went on a 24-6 run that turned the game. It was 25-31 at the end of the first, with an answered last second prayer by Andre Iguodala.

That deficit that was extended up to 19 in the third (64-83, with Bryant’s three with 1.57 to go) and that Sixers cut to seven in the fourth (97-104, 2.50 left). Nevermind, because Kobe put on a show with eight straight points, scoring in many ways: tough fallaway jumpers, even tougher drives, knocking down shots from the line. 

Just if Kobe wasn’t enough, Lakers big men were simply unstoppable in the paint: Gasol and Bynum combined for 15/23, with countless dunks and three point plays. Ariza and Farmar gave a good contribution also, with hustle plays and some key baskets while the starters were resting.

Sixers, Sam, Lou bounce back immediately

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You see how it’s nice to knock down those effin’ free throws.

A perfect 4/4 from the foul line by Andre Iguodala in the last 22 seconds of the game gave Sixers a key 91-87 win against New Jersey, lifting our record at .500 again (35-35).

It was one of the ugliest and most boring close games I’ve ever seen (LOL). All I wrote on my paper for the first two quarters was “airball”: Harris started, Carney followed, Nachbar continued. All of them on wide open jumpers.

You see, it wasn’t exactly an exciting show, but still Sixers held a seven point lead at halftime (49-42). The “best” part came in the first quarter, when a motivated Dalembert had eight points, and fellow serbian Nenad Krstic replied with three long jumpers, showing he has range.

The worst part for the Sixers was yet to come: at the beginning of the third quarter Iguodala had an exciting alley oop dunk that seemed to spark a possible Sixers run (51-42) but, instead, Nets went on their own, reaching a 58-66 lead with 4.5 left on a basket by Josh Boone that capped a 13-0 spurt.

Sixers win fifth wire-to-wire, see playoffs

At 23-30 (.434) your Philadelpha Seventy-Sixers today are tied with the New Jersey Nets for the 8th seed in the Eastern Conference. Yes, that record here means playoffs.

Please try to forget that on the other coast one team between Houston, Golden State and Denver WOULD NOT make it to the post season, even being 32-20 (.615). This is today’s NBA, like it or not.

The main point of the 102-88 home win versus the Grizzlies is that Sixers have a serious (…) shot at the postseason.

Good? I would say “sad” for a NBA fan, but anyway. Since my suggestions to tank the season clearly weren’t listened (LOL) I’m enjoying the pleasure of a nice winning streak, that yesterday reached five.

Yes, many of the teams we met in this perfect homestand were below .500 but so were are the Sixers. Yes, many of them were either injury plagued or tired, some both, and most of them suck overall. But when you lose in those conditions and you try to remember these truths, others (rightfully) reply “excuses”. 

Christmas comes at the buzzer

Andre Iguodala did his best Santa Klaus impersonation and sank the Grizzlies with a tough fallaway shot at the buzzer over Mike Miller, giving Sixers a 99-97 win in Memphis and all fans a happy Christmas (11-16, .407).

Iguodala’s last second 18 footer (in the picture !) capped a fantastic fourth quarter, in which he shot 7/9 from the field and scored 17 points, after going 2/12 with 6 points in the previous three.

That’s exactly what a franchise player is supposed to do. I wrote this several times and I am happy to see him playing like this. The point is he can do it almost on a daily basis, but he rarely does (did?). Let’s hope that the first buzzer beater of his NBA career becomes a turning point of his, and Sixers’, season.

The sweet end of the game – and the red uniforms – could make us forget all the things that happened before, good and bad ones, but I think it’s fair to remind them all.

Serbian symbol reunites Kobe & Shaq

(Thought this could be funny..) 

If you think they didn’t/don’t get along, you are wrong.

Kobe Bryant & Shaquille O’Neal actually found something in common, the passion for lovely Serbia and one of its traditional national symbols, “tri prsta” (=three fingers):

Here is proof n.1:

Serbia is U19 World Champ after kicking US team’s asses

(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 !).

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.