Clippers wish us a happy new year

First off happy 2009 to all Sixers fans and loyal Sixers4guidos readers worldwide !!

Despite our beloved team’s recent struggles, the first italian Sixers blog is having a good success and saw a significant traffic increase in 2008, to the point that I’m thinking about upgrading it.

It will take a while (months rather than weeks) but it’s something I will definitely do in this new year, together with “technical” partners that I will have to find. So stay tuned and you’ll hopefully get better services and features in the upcoming future. 

Back to the Sixers, I couldn’t catch the 92-100 victory over the LA Clippers because it wasn’t broadcasted in Italy on League Pass. So, like always in these cases, let’s rely on sure facts, such as the standings (13-18, .419), the boxscore, the play-by-play page and the highlights I watched.

It was a close game for 48 minutes (highest lead for both teams was eight points), but the good thing is that Sixers finished it strong, outscoring the Clippers 14-6 in the final 3.30 minutes, after Thornton tied it at 86 with a couple of foul shots.

The decisive basket was a fantastic alley oop dunk by Thaddeus Young off a pass from behind midcourt by Andre Miller: it was 86-92 and Clippers didn’t recover after that. Ratliff (very good contribution off the bench) blocked a shot by Thornton that could have pulled LA within three, the Clipper forward got a tech and Iguodala finally put the game on ice.

Sixers passed through a long draught at the beginning of the third, and didn’t score for the first four minutes: that’s how Clippers turned the three point deficit at the half (47-50) into a eight point lead (58-50). Anyway Thaddeus Young had eight consecutive points in the period.

We had another awful shooting night from three point land (1/9, 11%…) but were good at the line, finally. Iguodala’s 14/17 on free throw shooting capped an excellent night for him: seven rebounds and seven dimes are other signs of an excellent all around game (deserving the first S4G pic of 2009).

I also liked the 26 assists, with Willie Green contributing five (!). We took care of the ball better than usual, limiting the turnovers to an acceptable eleven.

“It was only the Clippers”, remember. The better partner to snap a four game losing streak, heading into the next tough games: Dallas on Friday 2nd, then San Antonio on Saturday.

In the meantime, the stat about the three point scoring reached this embarassing level: in the last five games it’s Sixers 21 – Opponents 120 (-99 !!!).

As for the pctgs, it’s now Sixers 14.2% (7/49…), Opponents 41.2% (40/97). I’ll leave the comments to you guys.

SIXERS4GUIDOS’ BONUS STATS AND RANDOM THOUGHTS: looking at those nice Clippers uniforms makes the pain of watching our horrible black jerseys even more unsustainable: if you haven’t done it already, please sign my Bring the old Sixers uniforms back ! petition and we will hopefully get rid of that crap in 2009 – My buddy Steve from Clips Nation is on holiday but “supac” took his place and that’s his recap about the game. The site is great and always worth a visit – A couple of days ago, I watched Minnesota-Memphis and had sightings of Kevin Ollie and Rodney Carney: the old bum is somehow still serviceable and went 6/6 from the line in OT to help T’Wolves get the W, while Carney is the same old ‘young’ and useless stiff that stands around the three point line and does nothing helfpful, finishing scoreless in nearly 16 minutes, with 0/2. We don’t miss you guys… – That (interesting) game snapped a nine game losing streak for Minnesota at home. If you can guess which was the last team that T’Wolves beated on their court before Memphis, you’ll get a special Louis Amundson wig signed by S4G…