Sixers, Sam, Lou bounce back immediately

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

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.