Looking like a team. A hot team.

The last time we met the Blazers at home, it ended like this. One of the most exciting and incredible comebacks I ever saw.

Last night, it was a larger, encouraging win, 100-79, our fifth consecutive (18-20, .474), a season high – just like the ELEVEN THREES SCORED. And the 21 point margin marks the worst loss of the season for Portland.

Those are all good signs.

Evidences of a team that has (hopefully) turned a corner in its season, that is starting to play with confidence, as a unit, having added some new weapons and having re-discovered other, older, ones, that looked lost just some weeks ago.

Since Di Leo gave his players “the green light” to take more threes – an apparently idiotic move for the franchise that has been dead last in the NBA for months in this category, at 30% and even below that mark – shots suddenly started to fall.

The guido Sixers’ coach stated he would have liked to score five threes a game, and his players knocked down EIGHT on seventeen in the first half alone vs Portland. The score said 55-33 by then. That’s + 22, baby. 

But that fantastic, and even shocking, half time lead wasn’t built only on threes. It was the defense, the deflections, the steals, the ability to run whenever there was the chance, the usual lift provided by the guys off the bench (Williams, Evans, Speights…), the intensity, the unselfishness by everyone. 

Donyell Marshall at Amundson’s spot

Yeah, that’s right: the end of the bench.

Phil Jasner is informing us that the 35 y/o forward will join the Sixers for the veteran minimum of 1.2 million.

Marshall should be known to every Sixers fan because of a memorable game of March 2005 in which he dropped TWELVE THREES on our team, then coached by Jim O’ Brien, to tie a NBA record and lead the Raptors to a 128-110 win. Enjoy our tough defense that night (click here if the video below doesn’t work):

Of course the current Donyell Marshall is far from being that effective (not to mention he won’t find similar horrid defenses…) but I think this is a good move. We didn’t have any real SF to back up Thaddeus Young (a solution there would have been switching Iguodala at the three, with Rush, Green or Williams at the two): Marshall can smoke weed hit a three, has playoffs experience and after all will barely play.

In such a young team some good veterans will have to play a role of teaching the game to their team mates, being a presence in the locker room and in practice, and being ready when there will be need.

Right now Sixer’s roster is set like this:

PG: Andre Miller/Louis Williams/Royal Ivey

SG: Andre Iguodala/Kareem Rush/Willie Green

SF: Thaddeus Young/Donyell Marshall

PF: Elton Brand/Reggie Evans, Marreese Speights

C: Sam Dalembert/Theo Ratliff + Jason Smith

That is a total of 14 players under contract: Jason Smith is out indefinitely so it’s more like 13 guys. Only twelve can dress up for a game, and this could mean that Cheeks will have to keep one of the aforementioned out. I think at the beginning of the season it could be Ivey or Speights to wear a suit instead of the Sixers uniform.

I am not worried at all for this, and if you think that last year we had Kevin Ollie, Calvin “His uglyness”  Booth and Louis Amundson in the spots now covered by Ivey, Theo and Marshall, you should realize how big of an improvement Sixers made also at the end of the bench.

Welcome Donyell, let’s see how many threes you can hit playing FOR the Sixers !

Sixers wind blowing (Pistons 1, Sixers 2)

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I don’t know if there are Reggie Evans groupies yet. If not, time to create a group of them.

Evans, a reborn Dalembert and Andre Miller were – in this order, to me – our key players in the 95-75 unexpected thrashing of the Pistons in game 3.

This means few things:

1) my 4-1 Pistons prediction is already off the mark (and I love it, of course…)

2) young Sixers are psychologically more solid and mature than we all thought, bouncing back from the blow out of game 2 and answering it with another blow out. This against a veteran team that was supposed to regain the lead of the series, also mentally I mean, after the “distraction” of game 1. It didn’t happen, I see.

3) Pistons might still win the series, of course, but after these three games they are actually closer to a memorable collapse than to a “routine” advancement to the second round. Some signs (looks, faces, body language etc) should worry a lil bit their hot fans.

Bitter end for a fantastic Sixers season

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REGULAR season, I mean.

It ended with the 115-109 loss in Charlotte, the fourth straight, that kept us under .500 (40-42, .488).

Big deal? No, it was a fantastic run, and this young, exciting, athletic Sixers team probably overachieved, thanks mainly to the wonderful job done by Maurice Cheeks, a guy I bashed on these pages many times. Time to apologize again.

Some of you would perhaps remember I predicted 31 wins, but hundreds of “colleagues” (in the category I put journalists, experts, bloggers, fans) were more around the 24-28 W range, with Sixers finishing from last to second last in the Eastern Conference.

So I won’t complain about these final four games, even if I would have preferred to take at least this last one, in order to avoid finishing with a losing record and to build some momentum before the playoffs (starting on Sunday at Detroit).

Cheeks rested most of his starters last night, with only Iguodala logging his usual minutes. Sixers were down 23 in the third (76-53, after a three pointer by Jason Richardson) but rallied back and closed the quarter 87-80 thanks to a 12-2 run with five consecutive points by an active Thaddeus Young and an alley oop dunk by Willie Green (season high 27 – in the picture, getting a rare S4G front page honour ) right at the buzzer.

Magically ripped

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Sixers played ten minutes of embarassing basketball, had a nice reaction that lasted around four minutes, which was followed by thirtyfour, painful minutes of garbage time.

That’s the short story of the 113-95 loss at Orlando, that put us at 34-35 (.493). Call it “reality check”, “awakening”, “step back” etc etc, that’s it.

And don’t get fooled by the boxscore, the game was NOT that ‘close’ (LOL).

Sixers were completely outplayed basically from start to finish and in every possible way.

It started 4-0 with two dunks by Dwight Howard, both off Nelson’s assists, then 12-4 with Magic hitting all of their first five shots, then 20-6, then 25-8 when Evans (it was Maurice, don’t worry…) knocked down the fifth three pointer out of five attempts for the Magic, in your typical “pick your poison” situation.

Either Howard was getting a dunk or an easy basket (see the picture) or one of Orlando perimeter players was draining an open jumper.

S4G rates for the season (IV): front court

Time to finish my rates with our big men

I am writing these BS.. pardon, lines, while waiting for the lottery draft, let’s hope the first italian Sixers blog brings some good luck, and that we can land another quality big man, God knows how much we need him. So:

SAM DALEMBERT

As soon as I was about to quit on our starting center (here pictured in a funny mismatch), he started playing really good.

So much for my basketball knowledge…

He really had a nice season, and finally showed some real improvements. Impressive the one from the free throw line, where he ended with an excellent 74% . Better than, say, Willie Green’s 66%…

Sam finished with 11 + 9 + 2, with 54% FG. Also reduced his fouls (!). Started being consistent, built a nice jumper from middle range. Put a strong, rebounding PF beside him and we’re ok for the next 2-3 years.