When all was said and done, I'm sure most of the Nets fans in attendance at the Prudential Center wish they would've left when Avery Johnson did. The Sixers used a relentless attack on both ends of the floor to put the Nets' three-game home win streak to bed, 106-92 was the final. Jrue Holiday notched the first triple-double of his career, in the first game of the Iguodala-as-point-forward initiative.
Charts
Thoughts
- I'm going to keep this extremely short, because I'm writing up another post focusing on who's initiating the offense.
- Very impressive game for Jrue, and congrats to the kid for coming out and putting up a triple-double under what could've been very stressful circumstances. The best part of his 11/10/11 stat line was the one turnover. And that one turnover came on a 50/50 charge call.
- Had Jrue finished a rebound shy of the triple-double, I probably would've given the player of the game to Lou. He was every bit of good Lou tonight, 26 points on 12 shots is not easy to do, and his scoring came at some crucial junctures of the game.
- Brand continues to be an amazingly steady player for this team. 15 points, 10 boards, a steal and a couple blocks. You can pretty much pencil him in to be right around there on a nightly basis, give or a take one or two in each category.
- Spencer Hawes continues to attempt to leave the floor and somehow get his fingertips above the rim. He continues to fail. 4/14 from the floor with about 5 of his shots being rejections. He did chip in with 12 rebounds, though.
- Iguodala had a quiet 16. Meeks had a loud 15. Thad had a rough shooting night, but made up for it with 6 defensive boards and 3 dimes in 24 minutes. Speights was MIA.
Player of The Game: Jrue Holiday. Great game for the kid, but he needs to start getting back to the line.
Team Record: 22-26
Up Next: vs. the New York Knicks to take a step closer to the #6 seed on Friday night.
Game capsule
Check back in the morning/early afternoon for my breakdown of the initiation duties.
One thing I forgot to mention, another DNP for Nocioni. Not sure if it's because of the finger injury, or simply Doug Collins going with Turner for the mullet's minutes. Either way, I'm not about to complain about it.
"I'm sure most of the Nets fans in attendance at the Prudential Center wish they would've left when Avery Johnson did."
I think people who go to Nets games just go to see a basketball game. That's a really faceless, directionless team. Devin Harris is turning 28 this month and is still basically an average point guard. Even Lopez has been exposed as a mediocrity. And don't tell me Favors will lead them anywhere. He's a piece, but he's not, to use a popular term in Sixersland these days, a cornerstone. If I were them I might have accepted all of Denver's ridiculous demands, just so that when they move to New York they won't be less popular than the pro women's soccer team.
Only game I've seen Favors play all season, but he didn't look particularly talented. Lopez looked really soft, it seemed like Hawes had his way with him, Lopez came nowhere near the hoops. I actually was very impressed with Hawes's effort. 3 of his misses came on one possession where he was fouled about 6 times and got 0 calls.
That said, I think Devin Harris is a well above average point guard. And other than the absurd Travis Outlaw signing, they have good contracts and lots of draft picks. I think they're rebuilding fairly well. They were one of the worst teams in history last year, it takes a few years to recover from that.
Hawes really didn't have anything to do with keeping Lopez away from the hoop, Lopez wants to stay away from the hoop. That's why he's been mediocre in my opinion. When you're looking at Favors, I wouldn't really look at his offensive numbers much at all. He's not going to be able to create his own shot for a while, if at all. 11 boards and 3 blocks in 21 minutes, those are the impressive numbers. If you put him on the Sixers, he'd get three or four easy dunks a night from Jrue, Iguodala, Turner and even Lou. Harris isn't a good distributor, imo. Favors is the type of big that needs guys who can set him up right now. I'd love to see him on the Sixers.
Fair points, 11 boards and 3 blocks is fairly beastly. I haven't watched any other Nets games so if Lopez generally stays away from the hoop, I guess Hawes loses some credit, but I still thought he used his body effectively throughout the game. Other than a few bad shots he was a good center last night.
Lopez is notorious throughout the interwebz for his god awful rebounding :)
They'll be popular when they get to Brooklyn regardless. There's sort of a Manhattan vs. Brooklyn rivalry here, a pro sports team isn't going to have problems drawing fan support and the location is pretty great in terms of getting there and getting home (right underneath a huge subway station w/ a ton of lines running in and out). They'll have a lengthy grace period, with or without Melo in Brooklyn. The Knicks will always draw the celebrities and the suburban crew, but Brooklyn is a different animal altogether.
I'm starting to understand Doug Collins coaching method.
After all the words and name calling yesterday, it appears to me that Jrue Holiday is a happier player today and the Sixers are a little more dangerous on offense. I'm kind of glad Collins is coaching instead of some of our regular posters. Full out immersion sink or swim is NOT best for everyone. I manage people in a totally non-sports venue and in every training situation they have always said it is better for both the organization and the individual to be hands on with inexperienced employees and to bring them along slowly. It is the rare person indeed who handles well the "sink or swim" method.
+1, +2, +3....
If you manage people shouldn't you realize that one 'event' does not define anything?
I couldn't agree more...and for all of the stories that have been Collins and his handling of young players, I think that - for the most part - he has done a good job with Jrue and ET. Collins recognizes that for all of his ability and upside, Holiday is still only 20, and there are going to be times during the course of the season and certain matchups (see: Billups, Chauncey) where he needs toi still think that they are getting enough minutes to give the kid some room to step back and take a breath. Turner is averaging almost 25 minutes a game on a team where the one area of roster strength is his area (athletic wings)...Wes Johnson - on a WAY worse team - is only averaging 2 more minutes a game than Turner.
Would I be fine with just playing each of them 35 minutes a game and letting the chips fall where they may? Sure...but while I can certainly point to specific games and game situations where I don't see enough of them (which probably has a 0.97 correlation to the times where there is too much Lou), in the overall scheme of things I think Collins is doing an OK job here.
Story: Three times the fun for Holiday:
http://ow.ly/3PyOB
As much as I hate watching Hawes, I was glad Collins rewarded him for rebounding and showing up on defense. Although I don't understand why Speights has not gotten burn since his recent good game.
Looking forward to this "playoff series" against NY. Nice match-up of two middling teams who at least have the drive to get better. I hope they make the same mistake as Denver and try and go small against the Sixers.
Quote of the day: "Hey, I make shots. That's the only way I can really help him." -- Lou Williams, on helping Jrue Holiday get his triple double
Sixers were kind of astounding on the offensive glass last night. When you look at the sixers roster and the nets roster, who thinks that the sixers are going to grab that many offensive rebounds...I'm not even sure memphis grabbed that many.
New Jersey's 'big men' should be ashamed of that performance. Avery Johnsons 'ploy' to fire up his team by getting ejected failed quite well and the sixers did a great job taking care of the ball. If not the best offensive rating of the year, it's gotta be close (sans Phoenix games?) to one of the best over all offensive performances of the season.
And as for POTG thinking
10 points + 11 assists with 1 turnover
TOPS
21 points + 3 assists with 2 turnovers
And that's before we get into the 10 rebounds versus the 3 or the +20 vs the +8 (especially when it seems that Lou was a -6 if Jrue wasn't on the floor, from a quick glance at brians work sheet)
Chad Fords 'top free agent lists' now lists DeAndre Jordan as the #2 Restricted Free Agent
I was thinking about this the other day - with everyone focusing on 2012 as the next big FA summer, would it make more sense for the Sixers to make a (small) cap clearing room this year and go after one of these big men in 2011: Jordan (RFA), Chandler, Nene (ETO), Marc Gasol (RFA), Kris Humphries? I think I'd be most interested in Jordan bc of his youth and Chandler, although his injury history is concerning. I'm not saying this is necessarily the route I think the Sixers should take, just wondering what everyone thought.
I think the only player on your list worth getting who might be gettable is DeAdnre Jordan. Nene wants a big long term deal, and his age and injury history make him a huge risk. I don't see Memphis letting Marc Gasol go after they over paid rudy gay and conley - that would be god awful for them to let him go.
I don't think Chandler would want to come here or the age thing works against him
And Kris Humphries just isn't an NBA center of quality in my opinion.
You MIGHT be able to swing Jordan - but you're going to have to over pay him to maybe get the Clips to let him go. Clips probably match, say, an MLE deal
I need to double check this, but I'm pretty sure the MLE is pretty much the max for an RFA like Jordan. The most you can do is frontload it, but the total length/size evens out to about the MLE each year, for five years, w/ 8% increases.
Dallas made basically the max offer for Gortat, which Orlando matched. The following year, Portland made the max offer for Millsap, but they front loaded the contract to make it a tougher short-term pill to swallow for Utah, who matched anyway. This past summer, Portland did the same thing with Wes Matthews, I believe. This time Utah didn't match.
So theoretically, I believe the Sixers could offer Jordan as much money as anyone (other than the Clippers), but a team with legit cap space would be able to make it harder for the Clippers to match by pumping up the first-year value of the contract, creating a sort of poison pill that Sterling probably wouldn't be interested in taking on.
I give Sterling a bunch of grief for his history but I think Jordan is the first important move that will determine the Clippers direction - with Gordon, Bledson, Jordan, Griffin, will Sterling realize he can make money AND win...if so - no one is getting Jordan.
Does it matter that he's a second round pick versus a first?
Thanks for the clarification on that, I didn't know that.
Here's my next question - at the current levels - adding a mid teens draft pick - would the MLE base put the sixers over a projected luxury tax - because I still believe that's Comcasts 'hard cap' in terms of salary.
Depends on if they extend Thad and for how much. If he plays for his qualifying offer, then no. Not even close.
Of course, none of this would even remotely be an issue if they hadn't taken on Nocioni's contract.
But Sam was a locker room cancer :)
In the interest of "coming clean", I was probably as much of an apologist for the Sam trade as anybody around here...and this is probably as good of a time as any to say
I WAS WRONG
Sixers 3 games behind the 6 seed (and likely 17th "Holiday" draft pick.)
Sixers also 3 games in front of the team with the 8th worst record in the NBA.
So - prediction time
5
3
1
Which will the sixers be behind the sixth seed sunday night?
3
(copout)
1.
Now they can proceed to tear my heart out in some unimaginably painful Sixers fashion.
Hey - I thought if they went 1-2 this week it would be unsurprising - so I'm with you - they're going to split H and H with the knicks I believe
Trivia Q of the day. Triple-Doub style:
Name the 8 players who averaged at least 7.5 asst and 7.5 reb for a season.
It has happened 20X and Magic and Oscar account for 10 of them. name the other 8 players. The only other player to do this more than twice is a surprise (at least to me.)
jordan
lebron
darrell walker
fat lever
pippen
havlicek
hill
wilt
Hill, Havlicek and Piipen failed to reach that mark in a single season. So you are missing one :)
And it's an easy one.
Gotta be Wilt, right?
Trivia answer:
Players averaging 7.5/7.5 reb/asst for a season:
Sorry, he said Wilt. The 8 players are:
Magic
Oscar
Wilt
Bird
MJ
Darrell Walker
Fat Lever (X 3)
Kidd
No Lebron, Hill or any others.
Back to Lou v Jrue:
On offense Jrue scored 11 points on 11 shots. He also had 11 assists, but he does not get 100% credit for those baskets (Since on some assists the guy has to hit a long jumper or finish in traffic.) Give him a generous 1.7 pts per assist, for a total of close to 30 points.
Lou had 26 points on 12 shots. He got to the line 9X (drawing lots of fouls.) So with his assists give him a total of about 31 points. His 2 blocks erased 4 points (stopped lay-ups and the Sixers got possession, one of them erasing his bad TO. he also had 1 stl. Jrue had zero steals or clocks, but obviously grabbed more rebounds.
They both had tremendous games. A triple double is a big accomplishment. But it does not diminish "good" Lou's impact on last game. Without Lou carrying the load on offense, IMO the Sixer lose that game, because Lou answered NJ's zone. People often blindly over-rate scoring. But you should not under-rate super efficient 26 pt games either.
You're presuming that if Lou didn't get those points no one would?
The team looked like it was reeling. So IMO Lou's points were essential. As was Jrue's overall performance.
Won the first 3 quarters, nets did hve a small run in the third but I never felt like they were reeling so much as it took them longer than it should have to figure out how to break the zone.
I'm not saying Lou didn't have a good game, but I don't think his points couldn't have been had by others, at least enough to still win the game.
http://www.basketball-reference.com/play-index/pgl_finder.cgi?request=1&player=&match=game&year_min=2011&year_max=2011&age_min=0&age_max=99&team_id=&opp_id=&is_playoffs=N&game_num_min=0&game_num_max=99&game_month=&game_location=&game_result=&is_starter=&is_active=&is_hof=&pos=&c1stat=pts&c1comp=gt&c1val=26&c2stat=fga&c2comp=lt&c2val=12&c3stat=&c3comp=gt&c3val=&c4stat=&c4comp=gt&c4val=&order_by=pts
There have been only 21 games this year where a player scores at least 26 on 12 or less FGA. Teams in those games are 18-3. Lou is one of only two players to do this multiple times this year.
While there have been 22 triple-doubles this year. Teams in those games are equally successful (19-3) and only 3 players have done it more than once.
IMO both are pretty remarkable statistical feats that result in wins, even if the triple-double has more cachet.
If you ask me, a triple double is a more complete accomplishment than having a hot shooting night.
But that's a personal opinion
Almost by definition its more complete. Its more complete than hitting 8 3's or grabbing 20 reb, but both are impressive and really help a team win.
BTW, teams are only 13-19 when a player grabs 20 rebounds.
12-9 when someone hits 7 3s.
http://bkref.com/tiny/6Q7A1
Minnesota is 1-2 in games kevin love goes 30/20
20+ rebound games - 12-20 record for team with 20 rebound guy