Injuries to Smith, Brand & Young of course have taken tolls to varying extents, but the coaching staff has done a poor job of integrating available talent into anything resembling a dependable substitution scheme (important for player production), a coherent motion ball-moving offense and, most importantly, a smart, hardworking, determined, synchronized defense (night in, night out; at least by NBA standards).  And they put up with Sam’s vacillation and cargo of crap, enable Lou to imagine himself as a legitimate player by continuing to give him PT regardless of his D “work”and shot selection/misfiring, and turn undisciplined Evans and Speights into pivotal resource players.  Given those realities, an expectation of winning is illogical.  

Post-game Dileo remains publicly calm and handy with partial-satisfaction and bail-out statements … “we did a lot things well, I liked our effort in [fill in the blank], we ask the Andres to do a lot, we have to do a better job at [fill in the blank], the back-to-back and travel situations … , there’s not much time to practice during the season, blah, blah, blah.  If the head coach is intent on publicly protecting this crew for whatever his reasons and agenda, who WILL hold them accountable for maddeningly sporadic play and sometimes embarrassing efforts? 

Forget their outside shooting lack, a team that shows up every other game doesn’t get my respect.  A long way to go for Ed, Ed and their minions.

“This team is poetry in motion.” – Borat 

In the 29-point Jersey blowout last Sunday, Williams never rotated over on a wide-open baseline shooter, who drained a 3.  Iguodala looked at him as if to say, “You know that was  your fault.” That happens quite frequently.

I agree Andre Iguodala played hard while LeBron looked like was coasting a bit and still ended up getting his with relative ease.  If he had finished the 4 or 5 drives to the basket when he got fouled he would have had 30 no problem.  To me he just didn’t have his full focus and concentration level because he normally doesn’t miss those.

I’ll have a quick post up for you guys to dive into.

I’ve haven’t been writing as much mainly because what feels natural to write is pretty negative so I have refrained for the most part.

I am hoping the playoffs will be better with stronger performance considering the higher stakes.

It was fun to see LeBron.  He threw down a couple ridiculous dunks in warmups (couldn’t make the underhand shot from halfcourt though).  During the game he had a full head of steam, freight train slam over a retreating Willie Green (not that I blame him at all) in the first half coming right at us.

It was odd to look at the board and see LeBron’s totals because he really didn’t seem like he was doing much, scoring wise I mean.  My wife remarked several times during the game how hard Iguodala was playing and how much effort he was giving trying to deny the ball to LeBron, bodying up to him, and trying to slow him down.  At the end of the 3rd quarter I told her to look at the board.  LeBron had 23 points, a few rebounds, and around 7 assists.  I told her that’s how tough it is with LeBron.  Even in a game where he was not looking to take over (he really seemed ok with just creating for his teammates and only picking a few spots for himself here and there) and where Iguodala was fighting him for every inch, he still had those numbers after 3 quarters.  He certainly could have gone off in the 4th if he wanted to/if they needed him to, but there was no need.

One stat on the board that was very telling was assists.  The Cavs had 24 (on 37 FG I found out this morning) while we had 12 (on 33 FG).  Even before I knew how big the discrepancy was, I knew it was happening.  I mean, the Cavs found West in the corner for a couple 3′s, obviously Szcerbiak had a day (4-4 on 3′s), they hit Verejao a few times cutting to the rim (including that nice pass from LeBron in the 3rd).  Meanwhile, we were playing 1 on 1 x 5 as I call it.  Whoever had the ball tried to break down his man.  If he couldn’t, he would hand the ball off to someone else and let him try to break down his man.  On and on it went.  Seemed to me there were a lot more handoffs than passes last night.  Anyway, as usual, our poor perimeter shooting—2 made 3′s (on 9 attempts)—combined with their very good perimeter shooting/our poor perimeter defense—12 made 3′s (on 23 attempts)—-created too large a deficit to make up.  Even if we were perfect in every other area of the game I don’t know that we could have won.  That leads me to my next thought.

As weird as this might come across, I’m not really upset by this loss.  I mean, the Sixers played as well as they are capable of at this point.  I think what they gave last night was really their max.  It’s disappointing that their max is not good enough to contend, but that speaks to other things like talent level, coaching, etc…  They went up against the best team in the east, if not the entire NBA, gave everything they had (at least I thought they did), and came up short.  That just tells me that they do not have enough, both on an individual and on a team level.