Philadelphia 76ers March 29th, 6:00 PM TV - FS Detroit, NBALP Radio WDFN 1130 Philly and the Pistons are going in oppposite directions in the EC playoff race. The two teams meet at the Palace with the 76ers in the 6th seed and rising and Detroit in the 8th seed.
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Already too drunk from MSU game to last until chat..... MSU just made the Final Four!!!!!!! What 8th seeded Pistons game?
Is Curry trying to be funny by having Hermann and AI on the floor at the same time? I get the whole "bench" thing, but no. Arron Afflalo please. edited to add; Prince works too.
If anyone has a working live stream of this game, could someone post it here? I had one, but the dumbass operating it decided to switch it to IND-WAS for god knows what reason.
See what happens when you play Amir when it matters. No one getting to the rim at will. No O boards for the opposing team. Almost everybody that played contributed. Rip the closer (although Tay looked like he was going to get fouled and shied away w/ that last shot) AI looked very rusty in the 1st half, but was terrific in the 2nd; played within himself and really gave an effort on D. Tay was great. Stuck looks much better now that Rip is back. And Bynum is owning. The AI/Bynum bench backcourt looks to be promising with Aaron thrown in when we need a defender or 3 ball shooter. Crucial and much needed win; definitely exciting and optimism inspiring. Easily one of the most enjoyable game of the season for me. Curry actually coached well overall. Who knew he had it in him? And we are still getting a major player in Sheed back! edited to add; Oh and LMAO at the KB/AI hug. Anybody catch that?
Our Sunday record improves to 3-13, as AI returns after missing 16 games to provide some hope despite a 3-9 out of shape shooting. A nice win over the sixth seeded Sixers coupled with a Bulls lost and we are back in the 7th slot by our selves...for the time being. More importantly a two game winning streak and two wins in crunch time...is that enough to scare the # 1 or # 2 seed??? No.... but it is a confidence booster and maybe the other missing starter will show up vs the Cavs in the next game?? Tay set the pace in the first half scoring 19 pts on 7-7 shooting, but was held to 1-4 shooting in the second half. That allowed Stuckey to get off in the third and then will.i.am to get off in the 4th. Kwame was active under the hoop too scoring 8 pts in the first qtr and five in the second half. He went to the line 11 times (missing 4). Amir Johnson played over 18 mins with only one foul and MC surprised everyone by leaving him in there in crunch time where he got a key rebound during that stretch. Only 1 turnover in the second half compared to 10 in the first 24 mins. Good job of taking care of the ball by the Pistons. The Pistons also shot almost 53% from the floor and for the first time in awhile I believe, no one (read Dice) got double figures in rebounds. Dyess had 6 and AMir, Kwame and Max each had 5.
The story was the fourth quarter of Amir, AI and Bynum. Amir did what he is supposed to do: get lose balls, board, stop up drivers and even get an inside score. This is a critical time for the franchise as the summer of money looms. We need a fair assessment of our young players. We need to call them out when they are not contributing but equally important, give them their due. Amir was good. Did you see that nice mix of AI and Bynum? That ball was moving. The Philly defense was helpless. AI seemed to be so much more under control. Don't know how they mix defensively, but that was good offense. Kwame too is learning to do damage a bit on offense picking his spots. He plays good on ball defense. Still wonder why he seems so stationary other times as when their young big, Young, drove by him in the second half. When Tay is spreading the floor with the 3 ball, good things happen. He can then mix in drives. Stuckey needs to shoot jumpers and pull ups as he did some tonight. How many times (not tonight) does he drive right and get blocked. The NBA bigs are too good when they know what you are going to do. Rip is a quality player. Perhaps this team can pull it together to make some noise as Sheed, our best big, is coming back. Looking to the very near future, notice how their 20year old big, Young, can score already. Shooting inside and getting his own board over maxiel, shooting the jumper over him and then driving by Kwame. We will need a young big who can score. Maybe Sheed and Dyss can be signed for a lot less and Joe can use that money there. Joe will make the right decision.
Thaddeus Young, 20 years old. 6'8, 220 lbs# ~12th pick of Philly in 2007. Seven straight games of 20 more pts, double figures in 68 games this season..shoots 49% for the season, 15.2 ppg, and 5 boards. Yeah if only our youngster could put up points like that or more importantly if he had been allowed to play consistently when he was 20 years old, then maybe........
Good win. But some luck involved, as Dalembert went down with a calf injury. Why do I mention luck? Philly opened the game coming after our non - sensical middle, featuring two centers and no power forward to get over to plays. In the 2nd half, they tried the same, but it was not quite the same with old man Theo attacking us instead of Dalembert. And it ain't changing. Sheed will come back soon, and be paired with Dyess. And the other teams will salivate heavily, waiting for us to come so they can waltz down the lane and score on us over and over and over and over. Herrmann got into the game in the 1st half, briefly. Against Philly? Hey, these guys move and move well. No way Herrmann fits in this game. (Nor any NBA game, in my opinion.) But Curry kept that non - sense to a minimum. And small ball, if you consider playing Rip at small forward small ball, which many do. Does not work. Philly goes way too big and athletic for that. Yes, I would have liked to see Afflalo play in this game, but no, he too would not have been big enough to play in this game at small forward. Basically, we don't have a small forward. (other than Tay) So why did we win with all these problems? We played a whole lot of the game with two guards, Tay, our only small forward, at small forward, a power forward (JMAX or Amir) and a center (always Dyess pretty much when we had the big runs.) Between a good stretch in the 2nd half of the 2nd quarter, and a very long stretch in the 4th quarter, this kind of unit put down a combined 29-6 hurt on Philly. Kudos to Curry for using what works, and sticking with it, in the 4th quarter to win this one. Rip scored enough. Stuckey scored a bunch in the 3rd quarter. Bynum scored a bunch in the 4th. AI and Bynum combined to move that ball around well in the 4th, scrambling Philly's D. Typical play: Bynum drives right to left, passes to AI who drives from the left, gets in the lane, and hooks / floats it in. Kwame got to the line a lot. 7-11 on free throws. Not bad. They said he working of his arc. Which is kind of obvious considering his shot at the line was as flat as pre-Columbus earth. Dyess, as is typical, set the other team up on lots of fast breaks, although he did decide to back down Marshall there. Now, he did make some shots. And he does spread the floor with his outside shooting. I still would like to see him go inside more. (And in case you think I am bashing Dyess here, I will reiterate, he was out there during all our runs. He is fine as a defensive center where he is paired with a power forward who can do the moving part of the game.) Bynum sure can knock down those outside shots. Which of course means you can't play off him, and he is going to burn you getting to the hoop. Pretty impressive game. Stuckey actually playes a pretty darn good stretch of D there in the 3rd. Now, considering just how good Stuckey did in the 3rd, again, Kudos to Curry, especially for leaving Bynum in when he was clicking with AI just fine. Tay made 7 of 7 in the first half, inside and out. Ended up with just over 20 points. Amir played great individual D, and was everywhere otherwise. Like shadowing their point guard in transition, rotating out to shooters. He also scored some. It seems AI and Bynum have not heard of the pecking order which forbids the ball to be thrown into Amir when he wide open. They must be new around here. JMAX did not have that much of a game. He seemed simply not quite to fit on the defensive end, always coming up a bit short to stop a score. But he was part of that very good defensive run in the 2nd quarter. Well, thats about all I can think of at the moment. Great to hear State won. Great to have two straight wins, the 2nd one against a team ahead of us in the standings. I peaked at the boxscore for minutes distribution. Tay is still getting overplayed some. Dyess too for sure. Sheed coming back, you would think, would help Dyess get less minutes. All our bigs should play when Sheed returns, rather than see one of them quit playing. We can not afford any more of these coaching errors this late. The playoffs are upon us and we need all the players ready. But our bench played 86 minutes. That is a lot. Now, for what needs to be done: Tay needs a back up. One who can step in and provide his level of D against tall, athletic players. Either play Amir some at small forward, or start playing Sharpe.
I can say that Curry did a great job of managing his players in this game and not losing the game for us. He looked like a competent coach out there. I won't count on it continuing though. LOL
Y-U-G-E win tonight, Y-U-G-E! I get the feeling Philly is just a tough team for DET to match up with Lee. They did a lot a lot of damage against Max and Dyess and some against Amir and Dyess/Kwame(I did watch the game if Amir/Kwame weren't paired.). They're a weird team that plays small (kind of) but holds their own on the boards especially the offensive. I was impressed with AI's spirit more than anything. If you had asked me before the game I would have said he was dunzo based on the reports in the papers. His presence is a high voltage situation and it has nothing to do with the typical negative AI buzzwords. Curry has zero room for error due to the time left in the season. The Bynum/AI grouping worked tonight, but how often do you want AI just standing there in the corner and how do you avoid that without playing Bynum? AI is a much better scorer than anyone they got. It comes with a price an requires balance. Anyone else see Sheed getting a T his first game back and having to sit out the next game with a suspension? 7th seed baby, 7th seed!!!
