Sixers add the Warriors game to list of regrets

I think that at the end of this season the 119-111 loss to Golden State will go down as one of the (many) games Sixers could, and should, have won.

And then, looking back at their year, players and coach will hopefully understand why we were always floating around .500 (34-33 now, .509) instead of making a run to 48-50 W, a record that seemed more-than-reachable before the start of the season, and that remained so through the months, despite all that happened in between (coach change, injuries, unbelievable losses etc).

This Sixers team has a lot of potential and is often fun to watch, but remains in mediocrity-territory because lacks consistency, and can’t put together full 48-min efforts, especially vs weaker opponents.

This time it was against Golden State, that btw was playing without Biedrins (injured) and Crawford (who had an argument with Nelson and asked to stay out of the game !!!).

How can you possibly win at LA with Bryant’s Lakers, and then get nearly blown out at Golden State, allowing Brandan Wright a career high (25 points on 10/13…), the whole Warriors team a season high in assists (35), some former D-league ‘stars’ (Morrow, Azubuike etc) repeteadly kill you etc. is pretty difficult to explain.

I don’t have the time to recap the whole game, and I don’t really want to do it: let’s just say I stayed up until 6 AM GT (guido time) to watch the game live, hoping for a nice win, and went to bad angry one more time, repeating to myself that it’s really not worth. Had Sixers my same consistency, they would be perennial title contenders (LOL).

Sixers lost the game in the third quarter, when they shot 9/27 from the field, while Golden State went 13/20: to make things even weirder in that crazy arena, vs that crazy team and in front of a (pretty unexplicable, when you think of it…) sell out crowd, in the same period there was also a power failure (67-64, 8.24 to play), with most of the lights going down.

After a short break, officials and both teams agreed to continue playing, and Warriors started the run that resulted decisive.

Be careful not to use this as an excuse: it’s true Sixers struggled to score after that, but they had already shot 38% in the first half (20/52), so it’s not like the “blackout” actually changed anything.

We didn’t defend a lick on the perimeter: add to Warriors’ 9/19 from three point land, that you can read on the boxscore by yourself, at least three “long two pointers”, with Morrow & co simply (and dumbly) stepping on the line, and another couple of threes that rimmed out. Most of those shots were completely uncontested.

During their 21-8 run in the third, we turned the game into a layup & dunk party (in the pic, Azubuike over Dalembert…), with no helps coming for the player that was getting beaten off the dribble, basic backdoor plays allowed, slow rotations or no rotations at all.

Sixers didn’t take advantage of the almost embarassing dominance under the boards and at the foul line (50-37 rebounding edge, with Dalembert pulling down a career high 23, 40 vs 17 free throws attempted !!), because they simply couldn’t make a shot.

Iguodala shot poorly all night, same for Thad (4/12 at halftime), and Williams: Lou was very effective in all other areas, to be honest. Dalembert missed his first five shots, Marshall had no impact this time, Willie Green had a good start, but after his 10 first quarter points, completely disappeared.

To our credit, in the fourth quarter we cut an early 18-point deficit – 97-79 with 10.22 left, that seemed to lead to a blowout – to six, but Williams missed a wide open three for the corner that could have set the score at 115-112 with 1.20 to play, and in our following possession, after Morrow committed an offensive foul, Iguodala inbounded the ball directly to Stephen Jackson (…), closing an awful night for our leader and his team.

Well deserved loss.

Our next opponent, the pitiful Sacramento Kings, got their first victory against an Eastern Conference team yesterday at New York. Let’s leave the Knicks the honour of remaining alone in this category.