Three wins and counting

Sixers simply took care of business last night and beat Oklahoma City 110-85, just the way they were supposed to (5-5, .500).

No offense, but the Thunder are just a bad basketball team right now, soft, unorganized, with too many weaknesses: playmaking, outside shooting, chemistry, lack of low post threats. When Swift, Collison and Petro are your frontcourt, you’ve gonna have many nights like this in the NBA, unfortunately.

Also, I wasn’t that impressed by Kevin Durant, who looked like a taller “Big Dog” Robinson last night, a shooter with a nice touch (even if the 6/18 would tell us the opposite) but with limited impact on his team. The new franchise will need at least two more very good players only in order to become decent.

That’s why you can’t get many serious indications from last night’s win. The good things were:

1) all Sixers scored, and no one played more than 31 minutes

2) Iguodala had finally a good shooting night and Miller finally distributed the ball like he should do on a daily basis

3) Dalembert pulled out the best game of his season, dominating under the boards and finally putting some points on his stat line. We need him like this, let’s hope he can go on now.

4) Thaddeus Young had another impressive game, and would have improved his career high 25 of the previous game vs Pacers had Cheeks left him in.

5) the other young stud, Marreese Speights, played very well, and showed also some range, knocking down a couple of jumpers. Good for his confidence.

6) Reggie Evans went 2/2 from the line (!) and grabbed seven rebounds in limited time: the good thing about Reggie is that he plays every game like it’s a playoffs game, and you couldn’t see any difference in him bewteen last night and the Detroit series, really.

7) we played solid defense when needed (especially in the third quarter): that put us in a condition to get many steals and score easy points in transition, the best way to make a run

So which are the areas where we still have to improve?

1) Lou Williams is playing like crap. He seems not focused, doesn’t make the team mates play but looks only for his shots. Those, by the way, are not falling (35% for the season…).

Why? He is basically using only one move: he takes a couple of dribbles, DOES NOT beat his man, takes a lateral step and throws a long jumper, just inside the three point line, always off the mark. The 1/4 from the line is another sign he is not mentally ready to play in this moment. How about leaving him on the bench for a game or two, and give Rush some extra minutes? 11/38 from the field over the last five games means something…. 

2) we need to knock down those shots from the perimeter. In the first half with Oklahoma we misfired on many wide open shots, and at the break we had only one three pointer made, out of four attempts.

SIXERS4GUIDOS BONUS STATS AND RANDOM THOUGHTS: Jeff Green looked good, he was 9/11 at a point – Petro (pretty unbelievably) was not called for a double dribble violation in the first half, and went back to defense smiling after hitting the jumper. Takling about a blooper for the refs – Miller’s nine dimes are a season high… – Robert Swift is horrible, in every sense of the word – After playing four games in five nights, Sixers will get some rest and play MInnesota on Wednesday, a team that is currently on a seven game losing streak – Check Twolves blog for complete coverage about our next opponent.