It's taken me more than 24 hours to gain enough perspective on this game to put my thoughts down. It took about 12 for me to separate the result from the game, and specifically the effort. Ultimately, we should be proud of what we saw from the Sixers on the court against Boston. They did everything we could've reasonably expected, and more. They followed the script almost exactly, matching Boston blow-for-blow throughout the night, and even delivering what could've, would've and should've been the knockout blow in the closing seconds. Unfortunately, the last team with the ball won.
I can't get into what went wrong on that last play any more. Derek Bodner and I spent about a half hour talking about it during SixersBeat, so please
listen to the replay if you want the breakdown broken down.
The final 6.6 seconds of this game were heartbreaking, and you can focus on that moment if you like. You can look at it and say the Sixers played the Celtics even for 47 minutes, 53.4 seconds and that would be an accomplishment. I want to dial it back a little bit, though. Yes, the Sixers were even with Boston to that point in the game, but take away two stretches and the Sixers dominated the Celtics.
The mandatory timeout in the third quarter came with 2:39 left on the clock, the Sixers held an 80-72 lead after Lou came out of the timeout and hit two of three from the line. Rajon Rondo banked in a three at the buzzer to cap a 9-0 run for Boston. In the fourth quarter, the Sixers took a 97-93 on a short jumper by Elton Brand with 1:58 left on the clock. Kevin Garnett's game-winner capped a 9-4 burst for the Celtics over that stretch. In 4:37, the Sixers were outscored 18-4. In the other 43 minutes and 23 seconds, the Sixers outscored Boston 97-84.
Over those two stretches combined, the Sixers shot 2/7 from the floor, grabbed 2 rebounds (1 offensive, 1 defensive), handed out zero assists, turned the ball over three times and committed 2 personal fouls. Boston shot 6/6 from the floor, 2/2 from three, 4/4 from the line with 4 boards, 4 assists, 1 steal, 1 block, 2 turnovers and 2 fouls. The only stops the Sixers got came on offensive fouls by Davis and Erden.
I'm sure there are a bunch of games where you can pick out a couple of bad stretches that decided the game, these stuck in my mind because the Sixers had this game. They had Boston on their heels and a hoop here, a stop there, anything to stop the huge momentum swing in Boston's favor, and this game is a win, possibly a convincing win. Also, think about the stark contrast between those two stretches and the rest of the game. The Sixers methodically took Boston apart for the vast majority of this game. They bullied the Celtics. Boston's largest lead of the night was 3 points. Even with those horrendous stretches, the Sixers offensive efficiency rating was an astounding 118.38 points-per-100-possessions. Boston's defense yields 100, including last night's game.
Do those collapses, and when they happened say something about this Sixers team? Probably. It probably says that Boston is a veteran-laden team, and they know when they have to put the pedal to the metal. The Sixers are a bunch of kids and Elton Brand. Not too many of them have had a moment to rise to in their brief careers. This is a learning experience, and two lessons should come out of this game:
- Finishing quarters strong can make up for ten minutes of poor play, and vice versa
- If they execute and play with the energy they should have in spades, they can hang with anyone in the league.
If you want to take a step back, this game basically came down to two teams with absolutely no presence in the middle. Boston made 19 of their 24 attempts at the rim (79.2%) and the Sixers weren't far behind at 16/22 (72.8%). The Sixers only attempted 12 long twos, an excellent ratio. They took care of the ball. They dominated Boston on the glass. They kept their eFG above .500, which has been a benchmark. They went to the line more, they hit 9 threes. There's really nothing the Sixers didn't do well on the offensive end, and you know what? Their defense wasn't even bad except for those two stretches to end the third and the fourth.
Play this game against about 26 other teams in the league, and the Sixers walk away with a double-digit win. That's gotta count for something, no?
Charts
Player of The Game: Elton Brand. 13 points, 14 boards, 3 blocks.
Team Record: 7-15
Up Next: vs. New Orleans, Sunday afternoon. I'll be there.
Game Capsule
All good points Brian. I watched the game replayed last night, so my feelings are still "fresh", may I add some points to yours:
1) TWO defensive assignements missed in the final minute (Allen left alone, Jrue on KG), shouldn't a bell ring for the coach, also?
2) why using a seven man rotation in game 22 of a year in which our only goal should be developing (young) players? Speights was a DNP CD for the second straight night, explain that to me (it could have made SOME sense vs Boston, but vs Clevelend ???)
3) I am not so high on Iguodala, as you perhaps remember, but he played great defense on PP all night and few cared, it seems
4) what's your solution for Evan's struggles? I think his minutes should be increased anyway, for the aforementioned reasons. I don't see how sending him to the D-League (heard this also) will help him
5) do you also see our old buddy Green dropping 15 in one Q on us tomorrow? Karma is bad...
Have a great weekend !!
i was sitting behind philly's bench thursday night, and what struck me the most was how good brand looked. he was the most dominant force on the court all night. any celtic who got the ball in the low post could barely even get a shot up against him. and there were at least 7 missed shots where i thought boston had the rebound and brand came up with the ball out of nowhere. he was really vocal too and seemed to be the guy his team looked for during breaks in play.
i am a big iguodala fan and he played well but another thing that struck me was how sullen he looked throughout the entire night. i haven't been going to nearly as many games as i have the past few seasons so i don't know if this is a nightly occurrence. and i know people have complained about his body language in the past but i never really thought it was a problem. but thursday night he rarely spoke to any teammate and just basically sulked his way through the game.
Iggy's got a "woe is me" attitude 95% of the time on the court. I've been to several games a year over the past 4 seasons, and have noticed how it has gotten progressively worse. He obviously doesn't want to be here and isn't happy with his teammates. I love his play / hate his attitude!
I'm not sure what people see during timeouts and breaks in play, but I've watched the game twice now and his body language during the game was fine. He was constantly slapping hands with teammates after made baskets, which was only natural because he set up a lot of them. The complaining about calls was there to an extent, but no worse than others on the court (e.g., Pierce). I didn't see any berating of teammates, which is the most important body language element to avoid.
Honestly, if I were Iguodala, playing for a fanbase that is mostly oblivious to his many strengths (finishing on the break, creating off penetration, passing in general, rebounding, defense) and focuses only on his one glaring weakness (shooting) and his facial expressions, I'd probably "play angry" too.
damn straight. one of the top passing small forwards in basketball. he's probably gonna make another team real happy in the near future.
Ah the body language readers, you experts in human expressions, you would make Cal Lightman proud
:))))
+1 on this one
I know it's ridiculus and way too early to take away anything from the play of our own Milwaukee drafted gunner, but i'm just gonna through a little comparison out there to another guy 2 round steal by the Bucks slowly headed to history.
http://www.basketball-reference.com/play-index/pcm_finder.cgi?request=1&sum=1&p1=reddmi01&y1=2002&p2=meeksjo01&y2=2011
Redd is probably slightly better than Meeks in everything, but he wasn't from the get go, he learned it after a few seasons. And i think Meeks is already a better defender than Redd.
Now that's crazy. Before I get to why they're totally different players, let's just start with the fact that their stats in that comparison are in no way comparable. You've got one guy shooting 44% from three and one shooting 38% (rounded up). You have one guy shooting .416 from the field in the hand-check era and you have one guy shooting .476 from the field in a defensive era. You have one guy who takes more than half of his shots behind the arc, and one guy who takes slightly under a third behind the arc. That same guy averages 50% more rebounds than the other. And that's just early Redd, before he took off. Now, as to the substance, Redd was a legit 6'6. When he came into the league he could not shoot. He was a 32% career three-point shooter in college. That's worse than Turner. He got drafted because he was a big-time scorer from the moment he entered college, and that's what he was when he was a good NBA player, not the shooter the media always erroneously made him out to be. In his prime he had a great mid-range game and could get to the basket and finish there about as well as a healthy Roy. Meeks had one good year in college on account of the team being talent-bare, and even during that season over half of his shots were threes. You're comparing a scorer who became a good shooter to a shooter who's never been anything but a shooter. And now he's going to somehow develop a game he couldn't even display on a college team where he was the #1 option. If you want to know what Meeks's future is, see this comparison:
http://www.basketball-reference.com/play-index/tiny.cgi?id=ntGLZ
Two things:
1. I don't think he will be anything close to Redd, just thought it's something funny and worth mentioning.
2. I was thinking more about Meeks stats this season, not taking last season in consideration at all. I posted cumulative seasons in the link above (sorry about that) this is the correct link
http://www.basketball-reference.com/play-index/pcm_finder.cgi?request=1&sum=0&p1=reddmi01&y1=2002&p2=meeksjo01&y2=2011
And of course Redd's stats don't really blow your mind until his fourth season, when he learned how to get to the foul line at a consistent basis. Anyway, the biggest difference IMO is that Redd could handle the basketball much better than Meeks.
I keep waiting for Jodie to go in the tank, he's got to come back down eventually. I really don't think he's this good of a shooter. When he does regress, I think its going to be ugly. Some of his glaring weaknesses will begin to show, his ball handling is poor, I'm not quite sure his defense is any good (he does give effort though)...
I've heard him compared to everyone from Ray Allen to Michael Redd to Dana Barros all based off of a 5 game sample size.
I think they've got themselves a really solid rotation guy that can come in and provide a huge spark. I just see a guy who can play the role that Eddie House/James Posey/ even Donyell Marshall have played in the past.
This team is in serious trouble if he's their starting 2 guard 2-3 years down the road.
The big difference is that Redd's a scorer and Meeks wouldn't even be in the league if he weren't a pretty good but less than brilliant three-point shooter. I'm glad that we turned a second-round pick into a Damon Jones without point guard skills (if he's even that good, he could also have one good season and then fall off like Roger Mason Jr.) - he's our first shooter since Korver, after all, and could be a pretty helpful role player if we were ever good enough for him to matter - but he's not a starting shooting guard in this league, not on a good team anyway.
I think a lot of the overreaction on Jodie comes simply from the fact that it's the first legit shooter they've had in quite some time.
Who knows if he's even that legit of a shooter yet? He's had a hot start to the season. So has DeShawn Stevenson, shooting a higher percentage, so has Courtney Lee, so has Arroyo (though to be fair all of Arroyo's shots are open). All of them are above 50%. None of them are actually great shooters. Bibby's shooting 54%; over his career he's shot 38%. It's a couple months into the season and Meeks has put up great numbers in a tiny sample size. Last season he shot under 32%. There's really nothing to suggest that there's a huge likelihood of his being a great shooter one day. He wasn't even a great shooter in college. Of course he could become one, it's a lot more likely than his becoming Michael Redd given that he's already at least an above-average shooter, but it's not like we have a miniature Peja on our hands.
"The Sixers are a bunch of kids and Elton Brand."
Iguodala still a kid?
Since the game was decided by one point and no one else mentioned it: why did Lou give Rondo the wide open bullshit 3 to end the third quarter? Normally you'd want him to take that one and the Sixers were sagging way off him and allowing him the outside shot all game. But with 2 seconds on the clock there's no reason to just stand there and watch him shoot.
As much as the loss hurt, I think this was the most proud I've been of the team since game 3 of the Orlando series.
Didn't we beat a couple of good teams last year? I'm trying to see why almost beating, in December, a great that was missing its starting center and had to start a guy like Erden is an epochal occurrence. Especially when it's more likely than not that the players who almost won the game for us won't even be here next year or in a couple years. It'd be one thing if Jrue, Thad and Turner (or Speights!) almost beat the Celtics, that would be promising, but Brand and Iguodala - I mean I appreciate and respect Brand's professionalism and Iguodala working at keeping his trade value high, but that's probably not the future. Nor is Lou and Jodie hitting 8 of 9 threes, or Turner playing 6 minutes. Except in this abstract "doing the jersey proud" kind of way, everything that goes right for this team is a little meaningless right now. If Iguodala and Brand are dealt for cap space and picks and whatever, you're talking about a team that has its point guard, an Al Harrington-like sixth man, its shooter off the bench (maybe), a sickeningly selfish bench combo guard who we'd be wise to get rid of, and Turner... who we know less than nothing about. That's one starting player, one guy whose potential ranges from star to bust, and three role players of varying quality. And Speights. It's very little.
What I like best about Meeks is he decides quickly what he wants to do, similar to Korver. A man has to know his limitations. Thad seems to know this also which makes both players a good fit next to Jrue and Evan for the future.
I'm wondering with the emergence of Meeks if this opens up the idea that we should have drafted a shooter like Wes Johnson this draft.
If we had to do the draft over today. Who would you all draft at the # 2 position or would you trade down the # 4 and have landed Wes Johnson and the T-wolves # 16 pick? If it's the later, who would you have picked at # 16?
I would still take Evan Turner at #2.
If we would have traded down to #4, I probably would have gambled on Cousins. #16, if we're going by who I wanted in June, would have probably been Avery Bradley.
Avery Bradley was my choice back in June as well. I would have taken Wes Johnson/Avery Bradley. We'd still have no young bigs though. Has any young bigs impressed anyone that was picked in the later half of the first round? I haven't paid attention to many of them.
Aside from Blake Griffin, none of them have really done anything.
Right now, if we could take the way back machine, the move we make would indeed be trading the 2 to the Wolves and getting Johnson/Bradley.
Johnson hasn't exactly set the world on fire, and he's a year older than turner.
It's only one year.
After reading about the Cousins "Practicegate" situation, I switch my wayback decision to him and Bradley.
He just wants to win and Westphal is being so weird with his rotations. Especially with a team that young/bad.
Oh well, I am kinda tired of talking about Turner anyway. Too many what ifs, and hows, and whys. Jrue is the WAVE OF THE FUTURE!
It's only one year.
So - it's not even one year. You're ready to give up on Evan Turner but evaluation Wesley Johnson is a 'it's not enough time' kind of thing huh?
A stat that I thought was cool and I never looked at before was on NBA.com was Points+Rebounds+Assist numbers. If you look at the sophomores you'll see that Jrue Holiday is in elite company. He's number 4 right now. If you look further down the list you'll see Ty Lawson at number 10 and then our 1 and only Jodie Meeks at number 18. Pretty interesting look at the overall impact for these young players:
Pts/Reb/Ast/Total
1) Stephen Curry:
20.1/3.3/5.6/29.0
2) Brandon Jennings:
18.5/4.0/5.3/27.9
3) Tyreke Evans:
17.1/4.7/5.4/27.2
4) Jrue Holiday:
13.4/3.8/6.9/24.0
5) Darren Collison:
13.8/2.8/4.2/20.8
6) Wesley Matthews:
14.7/2.9/1.3/19.0
10)Ty Lawson:
9.4/2.0/4.0/15.5
18)Jodie Meeks:
10.1/0.9/0.6/11.6