So they beat the Nets, big deal, right? Well, it is kind of a big deal when you look at (a) the circumstances and (b) how they did it. Second night of a b-2-b, again. Against a rested team, again. Doug Collins didn't make a single sub in the deciding 36-20 fourth quarter. Solid, solid performance, and really their second in a row.
Charts:
Thoughts:
- I'm not a huge fan of forcing Jrue into the number one scorer role, which Collins did for long stretches tonight, but it's great to see he can wear the hat without it taking away from his playmaking abilities. 20 points (on 16 shots), 13 assists and only 1 turnover. Stellar, stellar game from the kid.
- The bench was tremendous in the fourth quarter. Thad and Lou at different times offensively and Battie on both ends.
- Another solid game for Iguoala who played another 42 minutes. Collins has quickly learned that he can't keep Igoudala on the bench for long.
- A couple of funky lineups for Collins tonight. One really big group: Battie, Brand, Young, Iguodala and Holiday. And one lineup I hope to never see again: Speights, Young, Nocioni, Meeks and Lou. That last lineup is a disaster waiting to happen. Lou is the only guy who can even moderately handle the ball, and I don't really want him playing that role. Come to think of it, that's one thing I love about the starting lineup. Off a defensive board or a turnover, the Sixers have three guys who handle it very well and are more than capable of pushing the ball up the floor.
Just a gutsy, gutsy performance in front of a ridiculous crowd that was doing the wave in the third quarter of a tied game. Shameful.
Player of The Game: Jrue.
Team Record: 4-13
Up Next: vs. Portland, Tuesday night.
Game Capsule
We're back in action starting Monday morning, expect a couple of pieces throughout the day to help you ease back into your workweek.
I was at the game, section 123. The military in attendance started the wave. It was nice to see people get into it, but it lasted way too long and started to become distracting.
I hope by putting out that horrible line up you mentioned (Speights, Young, Nocioni, Meeks, Lou) Collins learned how terrible five players can play together. A center who can't defend, two perimeter guys with no one willing to pass to them, and Lou dribbling the air out of the ball. It was a sight for sore eyes.
Evan Turner wowed the audience with his one flashy layup move. I hope to see more of him on the offensive end.
Jrue Holiday was terrific and really a pleasure to watch. He stayed on Harris pretty well and fought through some tough screens. He also stepped it up on the offensive end when the team needed some baskets. Really impressive. I would like to see him and Brand play off of each other more often.
"I'm not a huge fan of forcing Jrue into the number one scorer role"
Why not?
That probably came out wrong. What I mean is that I'm not a big fan of any PG being the #1 scoring option on any team. It's awesome if they're capable of being the go-to guy on any given night, but when teams build their offenses around scoring PGs, it's (a) easy to shut down defensively and (b) takes away from their primary role, which should be setting up teammates. That's just how I like to see the position played.
I don't think Jrue really likes carrying the scoring load, but will if he must. I like that too. Deron Williams could average 26 or 27 ppg if he really wanted to, just doesn't serve the best interests of the team over an 82 game season.
Why is it any easier to shut down a PG than a sg? Because he brings the ball up? Would having good ball handlers like ET and AI9 help at all? I think there's a real possibility that Jrue is our best player on offense and that by trying to keep him in a true PG role we might be missing out on how this team currently best fits together with Jrue as our #1 scoring option.
I'd probably view Jrue being the best option as a #1 scorer on the roster as more of a slight on the makeup of the roster/current pieces than a sound strategy for molding it into a winner going forward.
The scoring PG is easier to shut down because it's all based off isolation and you can specifically do things to shut down isolation. You can double out at mid-court to get the ball out of his hands. You can double all screens. You can press to make him work extra hard to get the ball up the court, you can run him into 10 screens every time down the floor on the defensive end. It's a really tough position to play without being asked to take 15-20 shots/night and be the team's primary scoring option.
Plus, when your point is taking so many shots, that's a lot of possessions with four guys standing around watching.
Or you can have him dump the ball off and run off screens. Think Allen Iverson when he played the point.
Yeah, I never really viewed Iverson as a PG, but even if you did, you're talking about an extreme case. Jrue isn't half the volume scorer Iverson was (and the Sixers never really built a good offense around Iverson either, they won on defense in his prime).
Iverson wasn't really a point guard in my opinion either, though he (and his career) did suffer from never having the right kind of big man on his team.
As corny as the wave was, at least the crowd was into it.
By definition, a crowd doing the wave isn't into the game. If it was started by a group of soldiers, that's kind of understandable. That isn't a group of Sixers fans, just a bunch of guys enjoying a game.
I'm wondering if the wave had anything to do with Collins blowing kisses to the crowd afterward -- never seen that before. Is he really into that sort of thing?
I kind of thought the game mostly came down to us getting hot and making shots, but there's probably something I'm missing.
Yeah, the sixers also played better defense.
Because of Battie, and only because of Battie. I think people are missing something here.
I think you're missing a bunch of comments all year long wher Battie has gotten praise. You have not discovered that Tony Battie is a defensive presence
Well first of all, I have obviously discovered that Battie is a defensive presence, hence the point of my post. Second, I don't see how pointing out that the reason why the Sixers' defense was better in this game was because of Battie means that I don't realize that Battie has been a strong defensive presence all year. Seriously, you need to actually read posts before you blindly reply with your pointless, idiotic responses.