Our Sixers took an loss last night against the Charlotte Bobcats 115-109, bringing the regular season to a slumping close. The vitals:
- 40-42 record
- Advanced to the playoffs as the 7th seed
- Finished the season on a 4-game losing streak
I consider that a pretty satisfying season considering the preseason expectations for the Sixers. The question I ask is do you really care the team lost last night and didn’t finish the season with a .500 record? The reason I ask is because leading up to the the Charlotte game many bloggers and writers were making a big deal about this game like it had some sort of “real” importance in the grand scheme of things. The arguments: gain momentum, end the season at .500 and avoid the rust factor. I was on the side of caution. Winning 1 game against a non-playoff caliber team hardly constitutes momentum in my book. The NBA is more about positioning then record. And the 76ers’ playoff position was locked in after the Cleveland game. Rust factor? Having played basketball all my life I can say you don’t get rusty after 4 days off.
I best thing to do would be rest your starters who have played every game this season and logged significant minutes so they are fresh going into the Detroit series. Let those minor, pain-in-the-ass aches and pains fully heal with the extra day of rest and rehab, and get ready to beat up on the PIstons.
Mo Cheeks actually agreed with that line of thinking, as evidenced by his pre-game comments.
“I am going to give Andre and Andre and Sam some rest and I don’t want anything to happen to them,” Cheeks said.
Mo then went on to contradict those statements by playing Andre Iguodala and Willie Green 36 minutes. I don’t get that. Iggy clearly has not been 100% since the lower left leg bruise, although he has played well in spurts. So of all the starters why play him the most minutes? That just bugs me a little bit.
Luckily the Sixers got the benefit of late scheduling, and their playoff series will begin Sunday night at 6:00 p.m. Let’s hope they are healthy and fully focused on making it back-to-back 1 vs 8 upsets in the first round. Are we feeling optimistic?
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
uhm, I would have preferred to take the W in Charlotte honestly… anyway…
so what’s your take about the Detroit series Dannie? I say Pistons in five and I hope it will be wrong just like the 31 W prediction I made before the reg season !!
Can’t wait for Sunday, I hope I will be able to watch live from Guidoland
Go Sixerssssssssssss
Nice new layout, man. Took me a while to re-link to the site but we’re all good now.
I think the Sixers are this year’s highlighted underdog — last year’s was Golden State. How can you not root for the Sixers?
I’m not too optimistic about their first-round match-up though. The Pistons usually “turn it on” right about now…
the sixers are the sleepers in the east. though the pistons clearly have the upper hand, the sixers are very much capable of winning an upset..
I think the Sixers are the sleeper almost by default because the West is so strong 1-8 if Dallas were to beat NO would anyone consider that an upset? Maybe Denver over the Lakers would be highly unexpected but we are talking about a team with Allen Iverson and Carmelo Anthony. I actually think if Camby can shut down Gasol Denver could scare the Lakers with no Andrew Bynum.
As for the Sixers - I am rooting hard for them. They MUST win at least one out of two in Detroit to start the series for them to have any chance. Preferably the first game. The sad part is I don’t think the Sixers will have the advantage of sneaking up on Detroit from lack of respect or under estimation. I am 100% sure Detroit respects our team and will be preparing for a dog fight. I think MO should press Detroit and force them to play faster and bump the average score up into 95+ range to play to the Sixers strengths. The first two loses of the season to Detroit were 83-78 and 86-78, even the “real” win vs. the Pistons was 83-82. I am not confident we can win a series with scores like that. Do you guys?
I think Mo needs to come out and surprise the Pistons with something new. Full-court press and take the ball out of Billups hands and force Rip and Prince who don’t make as good decisions to make a lot on the fly.
Oh and about the starting line-up of Iggy at the 2 and Thad at the 3 which everyone in the world has been calling for (me too) - I don’t like in this series. Do we really want Andre Iguodala chasing Rip Hamilton around 15,000,000 screens for 40 minutes every game? I think he would be so worn out we would lose a great deal of his offense. And we can’t win without his 20+ per game. Leave that to Willie Green and Louis Williams, IMO.
Definitely agree on your points, Dannie. Another big factor, I think, will be how the second unit plays against the Piston’s lower rotation guys.
Not sure what Flip likes to do early in series — does he play the starters heavily in the beginning and then make adjustments through his rotation? Or does he spread the minutes and make the Mo Cheeks make the first counter?
Either way, for me, a lot of the series momentum rides on what happens when the Pistons bench guys get their big burn.
The Jason Smith-Max match-up could prove to be a good indicator of this aspect of the game.
I’ve seen a lot of talk about Jason Smith lately. Do people really like this kid? I think he can be an ok role player, but I’ve heard some crazy stuff like the Sixers needing him to do a good job guarding guys in the post for us to win this series. Where as I think that is his biggest weakness, something we should try to hide and if we are banking on that then our chances are even worse. If he has to guard Sheed, McDyess or Maxiel in the post we lose those match-ups all day long. And ultimately I see that as the reason he doesn’t play much in this series.