Fellow guido Di Leo starts with a W

It was only the Wizards, exactly.

Sixers’ new coach – and fellow guido – Tony Di Leo couldn’t have asked for a weaker opponent to (re)start his coaching career (?).

The 104-89 win vs Washington was the logic end of an emotional night (10-14, . 417).

The Wizards are simply a bad team right now, so you can’t seriously take any indication from the game.

Even great players like Caron Butler and Antawn Jamison were playing an uninspired basketball, just as if their season is already wasted (and it actually is).

Sixers simply did what they were supposed to do in such a situation, in the first night with a new coach: play hard, play as a team,  play spirited. More than enough to beat the current Wizards. Not sure it will be the same in the following games.

Anyway the season high 27 points for Brand, the season high 12 assists for Andre Miller and 17 boards for a rejuvenated Sam Dalembert were good to see, same for the solid game by Lou Williams (I liked the 5 dimes more than the 15 points).

We saw some good circulation of the ball (finally), some nice extra passes, some increased intensity on defense, also with a couple of charges, some aggressivess in attacking the rim (35 fts).

But it was only the Wizards, remember. Don’t get carried away.

Tony Di Leo started well, and we are all happy for him, but there still a lot of work to do and a pile of question marks and riddles to solve.

We well cover them in the next days.

In the meantime, Mo bashers will enjoy this funny post I found on a Blazers blog about his Portland days. 

For more serious analysis, check this great article by Phil Sheridan on Cheeks’ firing.  He correctly says that Stefanski is now “the target”, and I like to underline a couple of his points.

In February, Cheeks received a contract extension from Stefanski for getting a young team to play aggressive defense, which led to an exciting fastbreak offense. Ten months later, Cheeks is gone because many of the same players aren’t responding.

And also

Based on that cold logic, Stefanski’s first year has been underwhelming. He extended Cheeks’ contract twice in seven months and then fired him three months later.

Finally:

Stefanski has played the fire-the-coach card issued to every general manager. Time will tell whether he played it well, but he doesn’t get another free pass. The Sixers spent years letting King change coaches with impunity. That can’t happen again.

I agree with all those points. Again, I would have waited another 8-10 games before firing Cheeks, that I was never a great fan of, and that was surely underachieving.

What leaves me doubtful is that the new road we took, is totally unproven. Di Leo is a fantastic talent evaluator, the key for many excellent Sixers’ picks and draft steals, but has ZERO experience as a NBA coach.

The good thing for him is that the pressure has shifted now. It’s on the players, and on the GM.

Let’s go Sixers, a lot of games left !!

SIXERS4GUIDOS’ THREE POINT BRICK COUNTER: good news for our buddies from Brew Hoop and all Milwaukee Bucks fans. After last night’s remarkable 2/12 from behind the arc (16.7%), Sixers’ three point shooting percentage “raised” to 11.7% over the last three games: 4/34, baby…. (1/10 + 1/12 + 2/12).

Like this, as I (easily) predicted in the last post, we moved to 29th in the League (29.9%), and I guess the 29.3% Kings will be a no match for us soon. Bottom of the ranking, we are coming !!!