I, Sixers will miss Andre Miller

(last post before my offseason break. I will be back at the end of August, hopefully with the new site up)

So after weeks of rumors, talks and non talks, Andre Miller signed with Portland.

I think this departure will make the Sixers worse. Possibly much worse. It’s a huge loss. Probably underrated by most analysts and fans.

If you followed this site you know I am a great fan of Andre Miller. I think he’s a really good player and was instrumental in getting us to the last two playoffs (short, I know) runs and making our kids better.

Portland did a nice move by signing him and expect Miller to have solid seasons there, it will be a great addition for the young Blazers core. I I will try to follow Portland closer next year and I wish Andre the best.

What will happen on Sixers side? I think we have to consider this move (?) from two standpoints.

But I have to be honest, overall I think Ed Stefanski and management blew this one.

Some little insights you might enjoy

Again, not many news on Sixers’ side, uh?

Yes, no blockbuster trades at the horizon, no all star signings, apparently.

Still I managed to get some info that I wanted to share with readers. 

No breaking news or anything shocking, I warn you.

But still it’s important to make some things 100% sure.

So here is what Sixers4guidos just learned:

NEGOTIATIONS WITH ANDRE MILLER

Few days ago Stefanski said that Sixers were in “sign-and-trade” mode.  No updates since, so that should give us an idea about the situation with Andre Miller and the likelihood of his return.

= no Andre Miller in 2009/2010 (not good news, to me).
 
COMPLETING THE ROSTER

The fact that Sixers are looking for three more players to round out the roster, and reach 14, is confirmed: Stefanski said “a guard, a swingman and two big men”. 

No direction about specific skills they are looking for in those players (off/def minded, young/vets, specialists etc), but Stefanski has a list of players at those positions he is keeping his eye on in regards to the team’s needs.

(I hope Calvin Booth didn’t make the list, same for Kevin Ollie)

MAKING THE SUMMER LEAGUE AND SPLITTING THE TEAM WITH THE NETS

Forget about Bibby, he’s staying in Atlanta

This is the link to the news reported by Atlanta JC, and this is the excerpt:

Free agent point guard Mike Bibby has agreed to a three-year deal worth an estimated $18 million to return to the Hawks, according to two people familiar with the situation.

What does this mean for the Sixers? GOOD NEWS. For Miller fans, I mean.

1) one less option for Sixers. Bibby, rumored to get interest by Stefanski, won’t come to Philly.

2) one less option for Miller. He won’t go to Atlanta.

3) setting a reasonable range for Miller’s new contract. Bibby is two years YOUNGER than Miller and will make 6 mill per year, for the next three. Same contract of Artest, btw, both for length and amount of $. Funny, uh?

(Six millions per year is also what Kapono will make until 2011, but I’m digressing…)

This deal means that the original request of 3 years at 10 mill per year made by Miller’s camp is out of the market. They will have to calm their arses down downsize it.

The 2 year-16 mill proposal I (nearly) randomly made here few posts ago looks even too generous now… maybe something in the 12-14 mill territory could be more realistic. And eventually get the job done.

Again, I am all for keeping Miller. For two years. At a fair price.

Time works in Sixers’ favor. Portland is perhaps the only (good) option left for Miller, but the TrailBlazers will probably make offers to other FAs, such as Lee, that won’t come for cheap.

Interesting situation here.

The Miller situation from a Miller fan perspective

Short recap.

Andre Miller, through his agent, says he wants to stay in Philly.

“Andre has a strong interest, a strong desire to come back”.

Ed Stefanski likes Andre Miller and thinks Sixers are a better team WITH him.

Ricky has always been a great fan of Andre Miller too and would like to have him back next year. And the year after.

In the meantime, the first day of free agency in the NBA was extremely interesting, with Pistons throwing crazy money at Ben Gordon & Villanueva (!), Clippers getting Q Rich for Zach Randolph (!!) – another proof that the “There must be a reason why they are GMs in the NBA and you are just a blogger” is wrong – and Portland reportedly close to make a huge offer to Turkoglu.

Rumors pile up, and since we are talking PGs, the three year offer ready for 36 y/o Kidd is the most shocking one to me, especially coming from a team in rebuilding mode like New York.

Back to Sixers’ PG situation, if the request of 30 millions for 3 years reported by Tom Moore is true, I would say ‘goodbye Andre’.

I assume the Dalembert+Green-for-McGrady trade will not go down, so Sixers have to mantain their flexibility for the summer of 2011, when with Dalembert, Green and newly acquired Kapono coming off the books they will have around 23 millions in expiring contracts.

So the third year, in any Miller deal, should be a TEAM option. Which of course the Millers (Andre & Andy, his agent) will be reluctant to accept.

Eddie Jordan blogger conference call: I was there

So this afternoon, at 3 PM guido time, meaning 9 AM in Philly, I had the privilege to take part to a blogger conference call with Eddie Jordan set up by Sixers’ PR department (thanks again for the opportunity).

Colleagues/friends that joined were Brian from Depressed fan, Derek from Real GM and Philly Arena, Dannie from Recliner GM, Chris & Anthony from Heard in the cheap seats, Jeff from Philadunkia (all links to their cool sites n the blogroll on the right).

Not sure why Jordan (the blogger…) from Liberty Ballers, Enrico from The 700 Level and other excellent Sixer bloggers did not take part, surely they will next time.

Your fav guido blogger is the last to have a post up, because Depressed Fan wrote this, Recliner GM has this, Philly Arena has this and fellow guidos the Iafolla bros have their own post up as well.

To my credit – like somebody cares… – I started a thread on the Sixers board of philly.com immediately after the end of the conference, to share some observations made in the call with posters there.

There is no podcast unfortunately this time (this will save you from hearing my terrible english) but Jeff was patient enough to transcript the whole conference so here is what we said in those 30 minutes. My comments following some of the coach’s answers are in …italics 🙂

Sixers season ends in embarassment

Ok, first let’s take the hat off to the Orlando Magic.

They played a great t-e-a-m game despite all the absences, won 89-114, and deservedly advanced to the second round, 4-2. End of the story.

Now let’s talk about the Sixers’ game. Horrible. Awful. Atrocious. Embarassing. I don’t know what to say.

We simply weren’t ready to play, we didn’t come out to play. Not “play hard”, play. We didn’t show up.

I won’t waste time recapping the game, analyzing this and that, breaking down individual performances. Sixers were outplayed, outrebounded, outhustled, outfucked by the Orlando Magic’s reserves in a 48 minute-butt whipping.

Forget the stats, while Bulls and Celtics were making history (third overtime just started as I’m typing this), Sixers pulled out a memorable choking act, losing all of the four periods, giving up 62 points and 57% from the field (23/40, including 6/9 from three) in the first half and trailing constantly in double digit until the final buzzer, with margins from eleven to the final twentyfive. 

I could mention at least four embarassing plays for each Sixer that was put on the floor: turnovers, airballs, dunks on, shots blocked etc. I won’t go on details as it could be very painful.

Gortat = a polish David Robinson. JJ Redick = Ray Allen part II. Rafer Alston = the new Dennis Johnson. It was that kind of night.

The truth is Sixers are far from being a good playoffs team, and many things have to be re-evaluated this summer, taking this crappy game into consideration.

The sad end of course doesn’t take anything from the good things that were done before, including the two wins versus Orlando, a team that was supposed to blow us, but it’s a clear sign that something is still lacking, especially in the players’ minds.

2008/2009 Sixers improved of only one game from the previous regular season (from 40 to 41 wins) and repeated the exact sequence of last year’s playoffs series, winning the first game on the road and going up 2-1, only to see the season end with three straight losses.

The season perhaps didn’t, but the final game surely deserved all the boos that the crowd rained on the team. A shameful finish indeed.

Let’s leave the main stage to the grown folks, we still have a lot of homework to do.

Birthday present needed: how about a Game 7?

Today is my 38th birthday. Wow. 

(Other celebrities that were born on the 30th of April: the mighty Isiah Thomas (…),  hottie actress Kirsten Dunst (in the pic) director Lars Von Trier, but mostly, porn actor T.T. Boy – LMAO)

I would like a nice present from my beloved Sixers, and extending the series to seven would be perfect.

There are the conditions, I guess. At home, no Howard, no Lee (+ no Nelson). I will be there, watching online and I’m expecting ALL of these:

KEYS FOR A GAME 6 WIN

1) attack the rim like crazy. Superman will be wearing a suit and I want Iguodala, Thad, Lou Williams etc to take it to the rack until exhaustion.

I’d expect some points in the paint even from Dalembert and Speights (he MUST play tonight !!): Gortat is big but not particularly athletic, the alley oops would be there.

Also, he and “El basto” Battie will basically be the only big men available, so putting what’s left of their frontcourt in foul trouble would give us an even bigger advantage.

2) dominate the boards, of course. Orlando outrebounded us in Game 5, that CANNOT HAPPEN again, particularly tonight. I expect a double digit edge in rebouding. Also we can’t allow to.. allow them more than 4-5 offensive boards. The paint should be Sixers territory.

3) strong defense on the perimeter. STICK TO YOUR MAN !!! Overall we are doing a great job in these games, tonight we will have one more reason NOT to double team in the low post. We can’t give Lewis, Turkoglu, Alston and mainly JJ Redick & Pietrus (that will share Lee’s minutes) open looks.

Things turn “normal”, Orlando wins

Game 5 went exactly how everybody thought Game 1, 2, 3 and 4 would have gone.

Needless to say, the Magic won, 91-78, gaining the 3-2 lead in the series and some momentum.

Sixers fought well, showed their nice pride one more time, and should be praised for the effort, but fell short in the fourth, for the reasons that I’ll try to explain.

1) our leaders worn out.

DiLeo again played Iguodala & Miller WAY too much, 46 and 44 minutes respectively.

This is short-sighted, if not plain stupid, as I already pointed out after Game 4, when they both got 45 min. Imagine how fresh their legs & their minds were at the end of Game 5… bad decision definitely.

Consider that Dwight Howard,that is 23 y/o and is a beast, logged in “just” 37 minutes, with no particular foul troubles.

And Magic depend on him just as much as we do on the Andres, if not more (you might want to check his stat line…).

2) ZERO contribution from the bench.

Of course the initial assumption should be that ‘in order to contribute you first have to play’, which is correct, but anyway this time Lou & co. didn’t do a damn thing worth mentioning.

In fact Marcin effin’ Gortat alone scored as many points as our whole bench, which should tell you everything you need to know. The second unit combined for a miserable six points, eight rebounds and five assists – all by Williams.

It’s the first time that our bench is outscored – and outplayed – by Orlando’s, and this is pretty worrying. Also because Magic backups are nothing special, and I’m being kind.

Scary: Billy King wants to return !!!

Now relax, he wants to run ANOTHER TEAM…

We don’t have to worry, LOL.

Former Sixers GM talked to Mark Kram in a nice interview, and I would like to add some comments.

Overall he says some interesting things and at the end of the reading you have the impression he has matured, and he realized SOME of his mistakes, he is aware of them.

So I’ll give him some credit for that, at least he’s not acting like a complete jackass.

But, being the “politician” that he is, he doesn’t get much into a deeper analysis of his job as Sixers’ GM (trades, signings, relationship with coaches, players etc), admitting his (dozens of) boneheaded moves, and is more focusing about showcasing himself for a future job. Smart, uh?

The most interesting excerpts to me are:

(about giving the team to Randy “juicy face” Ayers, in the summer of 2003)

“I think it was unfair to give him Allen, Derrick Coleman and Glenn Robinson to coach,” King said. “I think a veteran coach would have had a hard time managing these three difficult personalities. So it was unfair to ask a rookie coach in the league to work with them.”

Who could have said it? LOL. By that time Paul Silas was available, coming off good seasons in Charlotte, just to name one. Instead, we got Juicy Face, a mediocre coach, that was put at the helm of a disfunctional team, and eventually fired. Ayers was replaced by Chris Ford (…).

And (about starting to entertain offers for Iverson):

Payback time for Turkoglu & the Magic

Well, perfect way to end a shitty bad day. A last second loss.

Hedo Turkoglu hit a tough three with one second left (in the Getty Images pic) to give Orlando a 81-84 W at the Wachovia center, and tie the series at 2-2.

We saw Turkoglu countless times on You Tube in these days, reviewing the game winner that Iguodala scored on him in Game 1 over and over. Now the Magic forward will be on the right side of some footage soon. Payback time.

Hedo hit a lot of game winners in his career, building himself a reputation of being a clutch player: maybe this is the most important shot, as it avoided an overtime that could have easily put his team into a 1-3 hole. Not to mention he was having a crappy series so far (11 PPG on 23% from the floor !!) so this play was huge, unfortunately.

Sixers came only close to another memorable comeback: trailing by ten with 4.32 to go in the fourth (69-79), and honestly looking in a slump, they went on a  stunning 12-2 run and tied the game at 81 on a dunk by Dalembert, off a nice feed by Iguodala when there were 14 seconds to play.

But Orlando had the last possession and Turkoglu made sure it was the decisive one, knocking down a contested three over Thaddeus Young. You can only tip your hat off to him, we couldn’t play better defense. Iguodala’s desperation shot at the buzzer hit only the side of the rim. Series even.