Manute Bol/Charles Barkley funny video

NEVER UNDERESTIMATE GUIDOS !

Seriously.

I just received this email, subject “Sixers 4 guidos”:

I love it.
I run a world basketball blog (I cover FIBA, Australia, Israel, Japan, and even a little NBA), and I live in the Philadelphia suburbs.
Knowing how Italian-American Philly is, I just assumed you guys were from South Philly.  Consider my shock when I saw you’re both Genovese.
I’m adding you guys to my blog roll.  And if you guys can get over the fact that I’m a Celtic fan (Irish by heritage), and support Lazio in Serie A, I’d love to be added to your blog roll.

My site is worldhoopsblog.com.

Keep up the good work.

And Go Sixers.

Thanks Paul, love your site, added to my blogroll as well.

Yeah, I am from Genova (Genoa in english), you see how the love for the Sixers gathers fans from all over the world.

Gotta love the guido-irish interaction, with the Sixers in common 🙂

BONUS VIDEO: it’s not a coincidence that I put Manute Bol in the banner up here, beside Wilt, he’s my fav Sixer EVER. Via Pistons Nation I received a funny video featuring him, Barkely and another former Sixer (and Piston) I used to like…

Enjoy these 30 seconds of fun:

That was pure gold, thanks Jesse for sharing it with S4G readers !

More Mo ball (2)

One more year, exactly, since Sixers agreed in principle to another extention with coach Maurice Cheeks, after the first one he got in February.

My quick thought: good move again.

I have to be honest, I was a big critic of Cheeks in his first years. I used to like Jim O’Brian and I wouldn’t have fired him, just for the record.

I didn’t like Cheeks’ decisions, and God knows how many he made (example: leaving your best shotblocker on the bench for the last play of the game and lose it for a last second-lay up, it happened twice two years ago…).

Last season, I didn’t like how he started, leaving our young guys on the bench or giving them few playing time when the team’s record was already negative and it SEEMED TO ME we were out of playoffs contention. But clearly after newly arrived GM Stefanski “suggested” him to change his rotations, he did a wonderful job: I was wrong.

How much is left in Ratliff’s tank?

According to Jesse from Pistons Nation, enough to justify his signing.

Enjoy this quick Q & A session I made with the blogger from ‘the D’, following what already done with Kareem Rush and Royal Ivey.

Sixers4guidos’ readers loved those posts and I can understand why: it’s always good to get a fair and unbiased opinion by a knowledgeable ‘colleague’ that watched the player closely over the past season.

Here we go:

1) do you think you will miss Theo Ratliff or he was just a filler in your roster? 

I like, and have always like the “Rattler”.  He’s always been a defense first big man that gets after it when he’s out there.  He a good rebounder and challenges every shot possible. He was filler, but not just regular filler.  In the playoffs you need big bodies off the pine to eat fouls and neutralize size.  We’ve had “that guy” since this current Pistons’ run began.  It was Elden Campbell and Dale Davis before Theo.
 
2) how much is left in Ratliff’s tank? What could Sixers fans realistically expect from him? 

Of course he’s not Theo Ratliff circa Y2K, but he still gets after it.  I can see him giving the Sixers 10-12 good minutes a night.  He’ll be a good guy to spell the other Sixer bigs and also mentor guys.

Donyell Marshall at Amundson’s spot

Yeah, that’s right: the end of the bench.

Phil Jasner is informing us that the 35 y/o forward will join the Sixers for the veteran minimum of 1.2 million.

Marshall should be known to every Sixers fan because of a memorable game of March 2005 in which he dropped TWELVE THREES on our team, then coached by Jim O’ Brien, to tie a NBA record and lead the Raptors to a 128-110 win. Enjoy our tough defense that night (click here if the video below doesn’t work):

Of course the current Donyell Marshall is far from being that effective (not to mention he won’t find similar horrid defenses…) but I think this is a good move. We didn’t have any real SF to back up Thaddeus Young (a solution there would have been switching Iguodala at the three, with Rush, Green or Williams at the two): Marshall can smoke weed hit a three, has playoffs experience and after all will barely play.

In such a young team some good veterans will have to play a role of teaching the game to their team mates, being a presence in the locker room and in practice, and being ready when there will be need.

Right now Sixer’s roster is set like this:

PG: Andre Miller/Louis Williams/Royal Ivey

SG: Andre Iguodala/Kareem Rush/Willie Green

SF: Thaddeus Young/Donyell Marshall

PF: Elton Brand/Reggie Evans, Marreese Speights

C: Sam Dalembert/Theo Ratliff + Jason Smith

That is a total of 14 players under contract: Jason Smith is out indefinitely so it’s more like 13 guys. Only twelve can dress up for a game, and this could mean that Cheeks will have to keep one of the aforementioned out. I think at the beginning of the season it could be Ivey or Speights to wear a suit instead of the Sixers uniform.

I am not worried at all for this, and if you think that last year we had Kevin Ollie, Calvin “His uglyness”  Booth and Louis Amundson in the spots now covered by Ivey, Theo and Marshall, you should realize how big of an improvement Sixers made also at the end of the bench.

Welcome Donyell, let’s see how many threes you can hit playing FOR the Sixers !