Showing their true colors

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Showing their true colors

Sunday, February 21. 2010

I have to thank the Sixers for so definitively clearing up any potential confusion on their basketball aptitude. If anybody was left wondering whether the team was "going uptown" by winning 6 of their previous 8, especially after a particularly impressive win over San Antonio the night before, that question has been answered.

In fairness, it has been answered repeatedly before, including the game immediately preceeding the spurs game, a 105-78 drubbing at the hands of the Heat. This is simply the latest reaffirmation.

Winning 6 of 8 hasn't changed who this team is, what their problems are, and what the future holds for this team. All it did was put a mask over the teams problems while hurting their chances for a top 5 pick.

Typically, this part of the post is reserved for "those crazy lineups Eddie Jordan through out", and "how badly the Sixers played defensively when Jrue and Dalembert got the short hook from Jordan". Last night that wasn't really the case. The game was lost in the second quarter, beginning while both Holiday and Dalembert were on the court. Did it get worse when Young was brought in for Dalembert? Yeah, but it was already snowballing at that point, and scoring 1 point over the final 4+ minutes of the second quarter is going to lose more ballgames than not. Also, in the world of crazy lineups, Holiday, Iverson, Iguodala, Young and Brand are one of Jordan's tamer ones.

To be honest, my desire to write lengthy game recaps is dwindling. How often can you nitpick at the same mistakes repeated over and over? As tedious as it probably gets for you to read, it's equally tedious for me to write. As such, expect post-game posts to be more of the bullet-point, quick thought variety than full recaps.

Thoughts:

  • Late in the first half, when the Bulls were in the middle of their 19-1 run to basically end the game, was one of the few times this year I've seen the "dear in a headlight" look from Jrue. He had absolutely no idea how to end the run (not that anybody else on the team, including the coach, did either).
  • I thought Jordan was basically conceding the game when he left Dalembert in the game with 5 fouls early in the 3rd quarter. Any coach thinking of making a run would have saved Dalembert for late in the game, just in case he was needed.
  • Lineups with Thaddeus Young and Marreese Speights as the power forward/center duo have only outscored their competition 2 of the previous 22 rotations used, losing 15 of 22. By contrast, Young/Brand have won 10 of their last 22 rotations (and only lost 9), and Brand/Dalembert has won 10 as well (losing only 6).
  • Taj Gibson's 20 points tied a career high. Go Sixers frontcourt.
  • Hakim Warrick always seems to kill the Sixers, when he gets the time. I still have nightmares about this game.
  • Chicago turned the ball over on 2.7% of their possessions. That's the lowest output by a Sixers opponent on the season. The best the Sixers have done was 6% against the Heat last week (which was about the only thing they did well that game).
  • The Sixers lost each one of the 4 factors last night. That's only 4th time they've reached that level of futility all year, twice in the last 4 games. They're 0-4 when that happens.
  • As bad as the Sixers defense has been this year, their initial defense hasn't been their biggest problems during the last 3 games. Offensively they've been struggling and they've given up far too many second chance points.
  • Speights with 7 rebounds? His rebounding rate (14.9%, 19.1% defensively) actually isn't as bad as I think it is while watching the game. It's about where Elton Brand is for his career (15.4% and 19%), and much better than Brand this year (12.5% and 15%).
  • You know what would be killer? If we had a defensive sub. Our players are largely redundant, with a lot of isolation heavy combo guards on the perimeter and offensive-oriented jumpshooting big men. Sure would be nice to have another tall defensive sub on the perimeter (that the coach will actually play, which knocks Carney off the list), and we DESPERATELY need a reserve big man that can block a shot and grab a defensive rebound. When the starters struggle defensively (like they did in the second quarter), there's no place to turn. (Not that Jordan would go with a defensive sub, anyway. But it's still a shortcoming of the roster).
  • Player of the game: Iguodala, although it's a reserved POTG. He settled for a lot of jumpers, and today they went in, but it's not likely to carry over, and his turnovers were a problem. That being said, in a game that featured a lot of duds, Iguodala stood the tallest. Young was the only other in contention.

Boxscore (with rotations).
Posted by Derek Bodner in Sixers Game Thoughts at 11:04 | Comments (8) | Trackbacks (0)
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In some ways the winning 6 of 8 bothers me more than the ugly losses. It shows they actually have some talent, but are generally completely lost out there. And it almost killed any shot they had at a top 5 pick.
Comments (2)
#1 tk76 on 2010-02-21 12:06 (Reply)
Most of the arguments about blowing up the team to improve it don't make any direct sense. Sure it is true that having a worse record leads to a better draft pick and having a better draft pick improves the odds of getting a good player, but it's less obvious that the expected difference in value between the two draft picks is great enough to outweigh the amount by which you worsen the team in order to get the better draft pick...lots of teams with bad records don't get one of the few "difference maker"s in any draft, and some of the supposed "difference makers" never make any positive difference in reality.

But suppose the argument was changed to be about the fact that the current team doesn't have any true leaders on the floor (not to mention on the bench)? Perhaps it is a better argument that the team needs to build around a potential leader.
Comments (3)
#2 Josh Stern on 2010-02-21 21:10 (Reply)
Josh, the argument to blow it up is not about getting a better draft pick this year. It is about addressing the teams cap/tax problems that will prevent them from adding anything major to the roster for another 3+ years.

Unless you believe this current core + minor additions can contend, then you either will have to blow it up now, or blow it up in 3.5 years, when Brand's contract expires.

As for this years draft, they should focus on "player development." That means a marginalized role for Green and AI. The problem is, that both Ed's feel they need to squeeze out every possible win to save their jobs. While (aside from the Knicks) the 7 teams with similarly bad records are not trying to desperately win every game like the Sixers.

A couple of wins separates a top 5 lottery pick from pick #10. And right now the Sixers only hope for a rapid turn around is to draft a future star. And getting a top 5 pick makes that MUCH more likely.
Comments (2)
#2.1 tk76 on 2010-02-22 10:03 (Reply)
IMO, the argument to "blow it up" in order to clear cap space to sign FA's is even worse than the theory about getting better draft picks. The Sixers have basically never had a successful big FA signing in the salary cap era. Their big signings of non-roster players when they had cap space were Scott Williams, Matt Geiger, and Brand. Unless there is some special situation where a FA prefers the Sixers to other teams, the Sixers would have to outbid other offers for any FA who would even agree to come here. As you know, the Sixers even routinely wildly overpay to keep their own FAs. Hopefully they can do better in the future. But the general rule is that the Sixers typically need to overpay to sign any FAs.

I read (but don't post on) RealGM and the crazy schemes people write about there to clear cap space make me laugh. I can picture a Simpson's episode where Homer is a Sixer fan who says "I want dump all our players for cap space so we can overpay for new players and I can spend my retirement figuring out how to dump their contracts!"
Comments (3)
#2.1.1 Josh Stern on 2010-02-22 10:28 (Reply)
Is this in response to anything I posted?

I've been saying for months that I would not shed a talent like Iguodala for the rumored packages, so clearly I'm also not going to simply get rid of Iguodala for nothing just to lose games intentionally. In the past I laid out what I would do if given the keys to the Sixers.

Now, if it came from the part of my post about being happy that they won, that I'll defend. That's a drastically different statement than what you're arguing against, though.
Comments (3)
#2.2 Derek Bodner (Homepage) on 2010-02-22 19:51 (Reply)
Two things I wrote about what I would do:
http://www.phillyarena.com/archives/2010-01-31/What-would-you-do

http://www.phillyarena.com/archives/2010-01-02/Free-Agency-How-not-to-build-a-winner
Comments (3)
#2.2.1 Derek Bodner (Homepage) on 2010-02-22 19:53 (Reply)
The point of my first comment above was sort of playing devil's advocate to something we both agreed on. We agree - I think - that the much discussed ideas for using the rumored AI2 trades that "blow up" the franchise didn't make much sense as concrete, rational plans based on improving the overall talent level of the team over, say, a 5 year window. But I'm trying to add another consideration to the mix that I haven't seen widely discussed. That is, perhaps the team has a toxic floor leadership void that can't be filled without blowing up the team even if the result, even years from now, is worse overall talent. I mean, let's accept that there is no possible plan to make the Sixers championship contenders 5 years from now, and that what we are talking about is how to make them into a competitive team that plays to its talent level, perhaps a poor man's version of the Sidney Moncrief Bucks teams the Sixers used to meet and usually beat in the 1980s (unless it was the Celtics meeting and beating them). AI2 is probably better than Paul Pressey was - and Pressey was a nice player - but Pressey was kind of 3rd fiddle to Moncrief and Terry Cummings.
Comments (3)
#2.2.2 Josh Stern on 2010-02-22 23:29 (Reply)
Gotcha. I was just curious whether the response came from something I said, because it seemed to be something I generally agree with.

The question about leadership is a good one, and probably worthy of much longer posts and attention, probably exacerbated by the lack of leadership coming from the sidelines.
Comments (3)
#2.2.2.1 Derek Bodner (Homepage) on 2010-02-23 01:05 (Reply)

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