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.

Sixers & buzzer beaters, a (too long) story

What kind of Sixers fan are you?

If you are a half-empty tipe of fan (= born in Philly & burbs)

you will probably think that this

is only the last chapter of a season long story, that is apparently far from an end.

If you are a half full-type of fan (too lazy to re-post the picture, scroll up and look at the lower part of the glass, LOL), you would likely remember that Turkoglu’s shot, even if tough to swallow, came after this

and after this

…so that we are still up 2-1 in the “painful end” category, at least in the post season. That is when it actually counts, right?

So cheer up and look at Game 5 with some optimism !!

Short message to the NBA before Game 3

The first italian Sixers blog would like to send a special message to the NBA and its shitty mighty Int’l League Pass, that is blackouting Sixers’ Game 3 here in Italy (like Game 1, and like Game 2…):

This won’t stop me, as I’ll watch the game on another streaming.

“International League Pass: where stealing money to Sixers fans happens”

I just hope the 40 Euros I gave Stern as a gift (zero games watched on LP so far…) will be used to buy him drugs to cure his male menopause. 

Since I am a gentleman, I’ll send some regards also in my mothertongue language, to make sure the message is delivered:

Da Sixers4guidos, il più cordiale vaffanculo a tutto lo staff di League Pass, fottetevi voi e i 40 euro che mi avete rubato.

Ricky

Twitter4guidos

Sixers fans all over the world should feel better in hearing that Sixers4guidos, the first italian Sixers blog, is on Twitter.

Yeah, not only in Italy we have television, computers and even the Internet, we also use the social networks to show how up-to-date we are.

Follow late recaps and the best Sixers coverage you can find in Italy (LOL) at  http://twitter.com/Sixers4guidos.

Sixers4guidos, where advanced technology (?) happens.

Ricky = Sergio Olmos ???

Is it me or Temple Owl center Sergio Olmos looks very, very similar to my ugly guido ass face ????

 

I saw his picture for the first time a couple of hours ago (I don’t follow college bball), immediately emailed it to a group of friends, and immediately received warm (LOL) feedbacks, so I’m curious to have more opinions from people who don’t have a damn thing to do accidental readers.

Wifey agrees with me, just FYI, and had some good laughs looking at the two pics, so I decided to post them. For sure me and Sergio go to the same barber.

Btw that reminds me a lot of the notorious Ron Jeremy-Stan Van Gundy similarity I first came up with (in this case, I would be Ron Jeremy of course).

Lewis was ok, but Gortat ??????

(RETIRE MOSES MALONE’S #2 SIXERS JERSEY ! S4G PETITION – SIGN HERE)

It’s ok to lose on a late three by Rashard Lewis, like this I mean, but a dunk by Marcin Gortat ????

Sixers always find new ways to blow leads and lose close games down the stretch.

This time they picked the weirdest, leaving Magic’s back up center all alone in our mid court (see the pic, and please check where is the nearest Sixer…) after Iguodala had scored a free throw to pull Sixers within two with 17 seconds to go.

Turkoglu tossed the ball and the long inbound pass resulted into the decisive assist: the turkish-polish axis (?) said the final word in our 100-106 loss vs Orlando.

It was basically a FOURTH quarter collapse, that led to the third consecutive series sweep in Sixers’ last three games (29-29, .500). Unfortunately, this time we were the ones swept.

It looks like the Magic love to play the Sixers: not only they are 3-0 this season, but they also won eight of the last nine games vs us. Can you say “bad match up”? And I would have said they won 23 of the last 24 or something, because I can recall only losses against Orlando.

Too many offensive weapons, too many different ways to beat you, too many Sixers’ weaknesses constantly exposed.

This time, they trailed, and honestly played pretty poor basketball, for nearly 42 minutes, but in the last six everything turned good for them. 

The shots that weren’t falling before (4/20 from downtown in the 2nd and third !!) went down when it counted (5/7 in the fourth…).

Few things about tonight’s Jazz

Sixers meet the Jazz tonight (btw check SLC dunk), and apparently Utah will be again without Okur, Boozer AND Millsap, meaning the three top scorers.

Nothing to be happy for, anyway, because yesterday I’ve watched their 120-115 double OT loss to the Houston Rockets and they are the same tough team that traditionally loves to destroy us, and that won 17 of the last 19 matchups at Salt Lake City.

Few observations after that exciting game, that I enjoyed from tip off to the final horn.

The Jazz are still a very deep team, that will use nine men to keep the intensity high and play hard nosed basketball for 48 minutes – and even more if necessary.

Just as you would expect from a team coached by Jerry Sloan, they never give up, reguardless of what the scoreboard tells. Rockets had a 16 point lead and were up basically the whole game, but had Brewer made both free throws with 8 seconds left in the first OT, they would have probably lost the game.

If you laughed this summer hearing the names Kosta Koufos and Kyrylo Fesenko as part of their roster, you better stop it immediately, because these two guys can ball.

Apart from Fesenko’s terribly ukrainian looking-face, and his awful shooting form (a couple of memorable bricks from the line), he’s more than a big body to throw out there. He’s athletic, can run, jump, dunk, block shots, BOARD. He played some stretches of outstanding defense vs Yao Ming who, as you might know, is NOT Sam Dalembert.

Shocking: old Sixers bums are still around

Guys, I’m finally (?) back at FBP (full blogging potential).

After a long summer in which I changed job, moved to another town (Milan), got a new house, after a couple of months that saw me leaving for some long business trips, this week I finally got my brand new super-cool fast Internet connection at home, that finally allows me to update this blog just as frequently as it used to be.

So what’s the first post after this break about? Preseason games recaps? Predictions? World Series (Phillies up 1-0, but I don’t follow baseball, I’m sorry…)? No. In pure Sixers4guidos’ style, we’ll talk about something that other sites don’t consider: former Sixers stiffs. I mean, they are still stiffs, but at least they are no more Sixers. Ok, you got it. 

TRIVIA QUESTION for Sixers fans: name a team that this year has THREE former Sixers that LAST year were playing in Philly. 

Ok, even the most knowledgeable fan would say: “Wait, this can’t be right, it could be Minnesota but they have only two, they got Carney and Booth this summer…”.

WRONG !!!!!

Not only that, but the Timberwolves signed K-E-V-I-N frikkin’ O-L-L-I-E !!!! He retired was a free agent, and they picked him up (see him in the pic, sporting one of the cool, old Sixers uniforms I’ve been pushing for) !!!

Admit it, you had my same thought when reading this page: there must be a mistake or something, Kevin Ollie hung them up last summer, he must be with his family, still counting all the money he stole from NBA franchises in his (too) long career !

So I decided to email College Wolf, the finest blogger covering Minnesota, and here is our exchange of thoughts about Ollie and the other two bums players.

A nice guidos/Manute story, a W and a 50 W prediction

I am still f’n busy, out on a two week business trip, and it will be like that for few more days.

But some facts made me find the time to write this. In order of importance:

1) this F-A-N-T-A-S-T-I-C Manute Bol/guidos story, that follows the video posted below.

So I received this email:

Go Sixers!  It is so awesome to know there are Sixers fans all over the world.  It’s hard enough to find “real” Sixers fans here in Philly.

Just wanted to share a cool guido / Manute Bol story with you real quick…

I must have been about 11 years old.  I had just started playing CYO basketball for a church in my neighborhood.  My coach was a real South Philly Guido for sure (just to give you an idea of how much of a
South Philly Guido he was, he was a bookie and he’d be on his cell phone checking the lines and taking bets on NFL games during our games).

He was particularly proud of myself and a few other players after a big win one game and decided he was gonna take us all to a Sixers game.  We were super pumped!  Since he was a South Philly guido, he “had a connect” at the Spectrum.  He got us snuck in a service entrance and we got some seats up in the nosebleeds and we wanted MANUTE!

All damn game we were chanting “WE WANT MANUTE!  WE WANT MANUTE!”  To no avail…  Jimmy Lynam would not put Manute in the damn game!  WTF?

We were deep in the fourth quarter of a close game when we finally couldn’t take it anymore.  We went all around our section recruiting other fans to join the chant.  “WE WANT MANUTE !  WE WANT MANUTE !”  It
started with us, then our whole section, then the whole upper deck, then…  The entire Spectrum!  “WE WANT MANUTE !  WE WANT MANUTE !  WE WANT MANUTE !”

It got so loud that Jimmy Lynam had to take a time out to put him in the game!  Manute stepped on the court they passed him the ball, he cranked his long arms over his back and threw up one of his signature catapult slingshot 3 pointers and SWISH !!!  The god damn crowd went crazy!

It was just the spark the Sixers needed to take the game away.  After that, the Sixers ran away with the game, never looking back and we won.  That is not only my favorite Manute Bol memory, but one of my favorite sports moments in my life.  Had to share it with you.

Thanks! GO SIXERS!

We have to thank S4G reader Jesse for this, he gave me the permission to post it on this site. 

More.

Manute Bol/Charles Barkley funny video

NEVER UNDERESTIMATE GUIDOS !

Seriously.

I just received this email, subject “Sixers 4 guidos”:

I love it.
I run a world basketball blog (I cover FIBA, Australia, Israel, Japan, and even a little NBA), and I live in the Philadelphia suburbs.
Knowing how Italian-American Philly is, I just assumed you guys were from South Philly.  Consider my shock when I saw you’re both Genovese.
I’m adding you guys to my blog roll.  And if you guys can get over the fact that I’m a Celtic fan (Irish by heritage), and support Lazio in Serie A, I’d love to be added to your blog roll.

My site is worldhoopsblog.com.

Keep up the good work.

And Go Sixers.

Thanks Paul, love your site, added to my blogroll as well.

Yeah, I am from Genova (Genoa in english), you see how the love for the Sixers gathers fans from all over the world.

Gotta love the guido-irish interaction, with the Sixers in common 🙂

BONUS VIDEO: it’s not a coincidence that I put Manute Bol in the banner up here, beside Wilt, he’s my fav Sixer EVER. Via Pistons Nation I received a funny video featuring him, Barkely and another former Sixer (and Piston) I used to like…

Enjoy these 30 seconds of fun:

That was pure gold, thanks Jesse for sharing it with S4G readers !