The list of things that could've swung this game the other way is very, very long. If Jrue hits even half of the good looks he missed, they win. If Brand connects on one or two more of those elbow jumpers, they win. If Jrue's pass to Thad on the final play of regulation isn't three feet too high, they win. For tonight, take solace in that, chalk this one up as an ugly loss, and move on. When you wake up tomorrow, though, realize they have to rebound from this game quickly, and it's not going to be easy.
Charts (Rotations later)
Thoughts
- I haven't heard any further word on Lou Williams' hamstring yet. Hopefully, it's nothing serious. If it is, cross your fingers that he's at least back for the playoffs. Also cross your fingers that Evan Turner can get out of Doug Collins' doghouse quickly. Tonight, on the second night of a back-to-back, Collins used Jrue for 47 minutes. If Lou isn't going to be available, and Collins isn't going to trust Turner to run the point for stretches, Jrue is going to get burnt out before the playoffs even get here.
- Speaking of Jrue, he had his worst shooting night in a long, long time tonight. 6/20 from the floor. I'd be more troubled by this if he was taking bad shots, but he really wasn't. He was getting and taking his usual looks, they just weren't falling. His overall game was fine. His defense on Brandon Jennings was very good, he was distributing well, and save for the horrible pass on the last play of regulation, he took good care of the ball.
- Iguodala did not look good tonight on offense. Let's just leave it at that.
- One other thing on Iguodala. In the second half, John Salmons caught fire (while Iguodala wasn't covering him.) As soon as Iguodala was switched onto him, that stopped immediately. Iguodala put an end to Salmons' run in the fourth quarter. Then in overtime, Collins decided to send a hard double at Salmons whenever he got the ball. I just didn't see the logic behind this. There was really no need. Iguodala was handling him, why put the rest of your defense in such a tough spot?
- Brand is your player of the game. He got them back in the game, then kept them in it in overtime. 10/18 from the floor, 12 boards, 3 assists, 1 steal, 2 blocks, 20 points.
- The bench was largely absent. Thad had a monster stretch where he scored 12 straight for the Sixers, but other than that, he only had 2 points. Lou only scored 3 in 16 minutes and Nocioni split a pair of threes in 14 minutes.
- Like I said in the intro, put this individual game out of your mind. It's another overtime loss, which blows, but there were plenty of bad breaks to cause it. The Bucks are a bad team, even with a bunch of bad breaks, you still shouldn't lose to them. It's what happens from this point on that matters. With this loss, the Sixers are only 1 game up on the Knicks in the loss column (they're two games up in the standings). The Knicks play Cleveland tomorrow and Toronto on Tuesday. The Sixers play at Boston on Tuesday, then meet the Knicks in Philly on Wednesday. There's a very real chance the Sixers will hold a half-game lead heading into that game, which will be the second night of a back-to-back. Slipping to seventh would be way too easy, and I don't want to see that happen. Hopefully, Collins will rip into the team for the next two days, and convince them they need to make a statement in Boston. Win that game, win the Knicks game and the six seed is basically a lock. That should be the primary goal right now. Lose the next two, and you probably lose the tiebreaker to the Knicks and set yourselves up to meet Miami in the first round, instead of Boston.
Player of The Game: Elton Brand
Team Record: 40-37
Up Next: @ Boston, Tuesday night.
best 76ers content on the web. and, compared to other team's blogs - and a lot of them are really, really good - sixer fans are very lucky to have depressedfan.
thx again brian --
Howdy, first post - just wanted to say thanks for the excellent Sixers coverage.
I also wanted to apologise, I am Australian and have been a Sixer fan for years now, today's game was maybe the 2nd Philly game that has been televised this season, I tuned in at the start of the 3rd with the Sixers holding a good lead and then watched them let this one slip away.
So again, I feel I can take some responsibility for this one.
Well I got my wish last night, Jrue having the ball in his hands on the last possesion and it didn't turn out so good. But it comes with experience and as far as i could remember this was his first crack at it.
Well he is going to be the team's point guard of the future so I rather keep giving him the ball in that situation and let him crash-and-burn if necessary, in order to get better and better at it eventually. And with Jrue I'm convinced he's gonna get good at it sooner rather than later.
"Hopefully, Collins will rip into the team for the next two days"
Always the silver lining in a loss, coaches have some material - team stays focused in practice and down the stretch.
What concerns me is that if the Sixers get in close games in the playoffs...
2-8 in OT
3-8 in games decided by 3 pts or less (6 not in OT)
14-26 in games closer than 10 pts
They are great in non-tight games. 26-11 when the margin is 10+ points. Compare that to their teams that made the playoffs 2 and 3 years ago. Both those teams had .500 or better records in games closer than 10pts. And it translated into a few playoff wins.
Overall this is a better team than those prior 2. They should be a more dangerous playoff team with more weapons and a more diverse attack. But given playoff games are often tight their much worse performance is close games is concerning- and I think it is the absence of a player like Andre Miller that is the difference right now. Hopefully Jrue develops into that type of go to leader on the florr. But he is not their yet.
On the flip side, all of those close losses suggests that they may be a better team than their record suggests. That is why their Pythagorean/predicted record is 44/33.
Yeah, I mentioned this to you yesterday. While I'm optimistic for a first round upset this year, the overwhelming faith in the team actually succeeding at that just isn't quite there without Miller and his steady and timely decision making and play. A lot will be shown of Jrue and what he is/isn't capable of when the bright lights come on in two weeks.
He seems to have cut out his silly foul trouble. He still has games with some careless turnovers, still has games where he doesn't get contact and to the line. Maybe he can clean that ball handling up and get a little more consistent in getting to the stripe like he was able to get his fouls under control. Should be interesting, stressfully, to say the least.
Sixers column: Collins' dilemma: Nocioni or Turner?
http://ow.ly/4s5xU
Never understand why we threw a hard double at John Salmons on like 3 straight possessions with Andre checking him. Never. Think it cost us a couple of baskets with the defense scrambling because of it.
Hope this Lou injury isn't a reminder of Thad getting injured a few years ago right before we went into playoffs. Losing Lou would expose a glaring weakness this squad has.
What did you all think about the iso's for Jrue at the end of the first half and second? He really didn't finish either well but I put that more on Collins not doing it all year. I think Collins called them to see how Jrue would respond. I'm thinking we will have to wait until next year for Jrue to finally get that experience. He didn't look ready to do it for the playoffs.
I don't remember what happened at the end of the first half, but the most positive thing about the two Jrue plays (they weren't isolations) at the end of regulation was the fact that there was a pick involved both times. The execution was off, but Jrue had an open jumper on one play and had Thad open and diving to the hoop on the other play. As I've said before, I don't know why this isn't the type of play they run for Iguodala in his end-of-game plays, instead of asking him to do something he never does the rest of the game (beat his man off the dribble and shoot in traffic).
In fact, I had the impression that end-of-game play-calling was pretty good overall, as they got Brand several open elbow jumpers. He happened to miss more than normal, but I'd say that is a 55% shot for him, a much higher percentage than whatever an isolation play produces (and there's a growing body of evidence that isolations are low-percentage plays even for the best one-on-one players).
Milwaukee is an offensively-challenged team, but they do play defense better than most, so it was a good wakeup call for the Sixers prior to the playoffs, where they will face that type of defense every game.
Agree w/ the end-of-game plays. Forget the results for a second, they ran two plays w/ the ball in Jrue's hands, against a tough defense. The first got Jrue a perfect look from 14 feet, he's probably between 50-60% on that shot. The second got Thad rolling to the hoop wide open, that's probably a 60% shot if Jrue gets him the ball, or higher. They should be encouraged by the looks those two plays got them.
I've been quite glad to see how Jrue is being used by collins recently. Giving him more rope, letting him work through things. Jrue seems more confident in his ability to score and hopefully won't forget his ability to create for his teammates either. Love to see this continue come playoff time, win or lose in the first round, Jrue's play is going to be one of those things I'm going to watch closely.
Those Jrue plays weren't isos. There were screens set to free him on both.
Interesting how the only recent OT game we won was the one Turner played and dominated.
But nah, he's behind Kapono on the pecking order.
It appears to be officially personal between Doug and Turner.
you really think that Turner could replicate what he did vs Golden state vs the bucks defense?
Also, Kapono is more useful at the end of a quarter iso than Turner, he's not ahead on depth chart.
(1) Yes, I do think Turner can replicate his performances.
(2) We were 12-4 from Feb. 2 to March 8, with Turner getting consistent minutes. We're 7-7 since March 8, when Turner became a lucky-to-get 10 minutes player. Defense and rebounding actually work. Collins has become Eddie Jordan-esque the last 14 games, going with points-per-game ability over all other aspects of the game. It's a recipe for disaster and why we're limping into the playoffs with a near sure-fire first round exit.
So what's your explanation for the BOS win on March 11th when he only played 14 minutes? The ATL win on March 23rd when he only got 4 measly minutes? The CHI win (on the road) on March 28th when he only played 7 minutes? The HOU win on March 30th when he didn't even play?
Or better yet, how do you explain the SAC loss on March 27th when the kid got a whopping 20 minutes but was nearly invisible? Where was the defense and rebounding that day?
Furthermore, why were we only 8-6 in the month of January when he averaged his highest minutes of the season for one month at 25 per game?
You can always pull out individual games where individual players have more or less impact than normal. That's why it always makes more sense to look at a larger sample size. As in, 16 games from February to March 8, and 14 games since March 8, rather than just looking at 2 or 3 individual games. Obviously the larger sample size is the more reasoned analysis, that's basic statistics.
As for why 8-6 in January: well for one, that's better than the recent 7-7, but two, Turner hadn't really found his groove in January. He didn't become comfortable until February, that's the month where he shot 47% and had a ridiculously good assist-to-turnover ratio. It takes a little while for rookies to get comfortable, that's normal. For example, Stephen Curry and Brandon Roy both had very slow starts as rookies. There are loads of other examples, of course.
IMO, Turner has been so consistently inconsistent that any stats you are pulling out are almost incredulous. Simply because its Turner.
Also he plays such few minutes that you cannot definitively draw any kind of correlation between his presence on and off the floor.
You'd have a better chance with the games he started.
I bet you fish in a pond the day after it rains too.
You mention larger sample size yet pull out 16 and 14 game slates. That makes sense too I guess.
Yeah, in other words, I chose to look at all 30 of the last 30 games. You chose to pick out 4 games out of those last 30.
30 > 4
So does 77 not equal more than 30?
You're looking at 16 cherry picked games mostly against bottom feeder defenses and bad quality opponents while I'm looking at 77 of 'em. How's that for reasoned analysis?
Those 4 games were picked because they were playoff teams and quality opponents and *wins*, but you ignored the game vs the bad quality opponent that was a loss when the guy got decent minutes. Was Turner part of the recipe for disaster that day?
Looking at 30 games instead of 77 is easily explained. Actually I already explained it, so I'll copy and paste:
It takes a little while for rookies to get comfortable, that's normal. For example, Stephen Curry and Brandon Roy both had very slow starts as rookies. There are loads of other examples, of course.
So you really do think fish can see bait when the water's muddy?
IMO the way you have to look at Turner is anything positive he gives you this year is great. The negative stuff well I hope he learns from it. He never looked like the type of player that would come in and be in the top 5 for rookie of the year. Next year will be more telling as to what type of player he can start to become. I think he could end up like the type of player Grant Hill is right now. Might be a bit underwhelming for a no 2 overall pick but still a very useful player. I just think that the top 5 of the 2010 draft will not produce that many all star type players ( Wall being the only one).
Great, in a few years we can hope for a 38 year old Grant Hill :)
What about a 25 year old one?