Sixers beat “Cavs”, find… Orlando !!!

A pretty interesting end of the season and a late Easter surprise.

Sixers closed the year at 41-41 (.500) thanks to the final 110-111 OT W at Cleveland, against what I honestly can’t call an NBA team.

Same as last night’s Celtics (read the post below), say, minus Paul Pierce. Not sure what will happen when we’ll actually play a true team.

The funny thing, and the only one that counts, is that we will face ORLANDO and not Boston, because Bulls shockingly lost at home to the Raptors and fell to the 7th place.

The Cleveland game was enjoyable but not “real”, so I’ll keep the recap extremely short. 

Mike Brown evidently didn’t give a damn about tying Celtics’ 40-1 home record and (smartly, IMO) rested LeBron James, Mo Williams, Zydrunas Ilgauskas and Joe Smith.

Not ony that: Ben Wallace was out due to an injury, while Delonte West and Anderson Varejao played only in the first half: the fact that Sixers managed to find a way to close it down twelve (49-37) should tell us a lot about our far-from-memorable performance…

The win was nothing to be proud for, exactly: it took Sixers an exhausting 53 minutes to beat basically a bunch of unknown but spirited scrubs, led by Szczerbiak (…). Wally is just as mobile as a coffin but had his second consecutive season high in the last two games played against the Sixers: another thing to be ashamed for. 

Boobie Gibson had a career high 28, including two long treys in the last minute of regulation, the second one to tie the game at 98 with 0.6 seconds left. Great shots indeed but… you know… how about putting a hand on his face, just to make an example?

In overtime, Sixers continued making free throws (17 straight made, after going 8/14 in the first half) to take the lead. The remarkable – and unusual for our standards – streak was snapped by Andre Miller, that was 9/11 from the line and had scored all of them down the stretch in regulation. Miller missed two foul shots with 3.7 seconds left in OT, leaving Sixers up by only one (110-111).

But on the last play of the game, “Cavs” (I’m using commas because the real Cavs are something different) inbounded the ball to Gibson, who slipped on the floor and couldn’t get a shot off on time – also because Ivey was on him, see the pic.

Those uncharacteristic mistakes by the two best players on the court closed a weird game: not too glorious finish, despite the win. Deservingly, I would say.

So we’ll match up against the Magic, in a series that is going to start on Sunday 19 at Orlando.

After reminding we got swept 0-3 in the season series vs the Magic, I would like to add that Dalembert got injured last night, and didn’t play in the second half. Without him, the series is gonna be a massacre, I’m afraid.

Sixers on Twitter just said “Sammy Dalembert is listed as day-to-day with a right shoulder strain; team just watched film today, with full practice friday”.

More coverage about the upcoming series tomorrow, in the meantime may I suggest you to check  Ben’s Third Quarter Collapse, a Magic blog that happens to be one the the coolest sites on the web.

Actually I would have preferred to face the Celtics, for (many) reasons, to be disclosed later. I don’t have a good feeling.

SIXERS4GUIDOS’ BONUS STATS AND RANDOM THOUGHTS – Sasha Pavlovic airballed a free throw. I’ve seen some free throws resulting short, but never this short… f’n unbelievable – The good shape showed by Lou Williams and the full recover by Thaddeus Young are the best things to save from the Cleveland game – Sixers critics will underline that the franchise invested around 200 millions last summer to improve… one win (41 vs 40 of 2007/2008), LOL – Seeing LeBron’s shirt was the most shocking thing of the night… I think he has stolen it from Karl Malone… speechless: