Happy New Year's! I just woke up. I hate having my sleeping schedule all messed up during a week off of work. Anyway, tonight the Sixers travel to Los Angeles to face Elton Brand's old team. It sucks that he's not going to be there for it. He would've had Paul Davis guarding him.

"Yeah, definitely, I'm sad," Brand said about 10 days ago. "I know all those fans wanted to wish me a happy New Year, so I'm not going to be out there for that."

This is definitely the Sixers most winnable game of the road trip, but let's not forget how poorly the Sixers have been playing. Plus they beat this same Clippers team by a measly one point in Philadelphia. And that was with Elton Brand. It looks like the Clippers will sill be without arguably their best player, and my best fantasy player, Zach Randolph tonight. They'll also be without Ricky Davis. Yet again, the Sixers catch a huge break (Nuggets minus Carmelo, Pacers minus their whole team and the Jazz minus Boozer and Milsap), but thus far they haven't been able to capitalize on any of them.

Thad Young and Andre Iguodala seem to think they should win this game. Are they being realistic or is it just a false sense of confidence?

"We're looking at it as a game we should get, we should win," forward Thaddeus Young said.

"We need to win the rest of the games on this trip," swingman Andre Iguodala said. "We have to finish it off strong and be a better road team."

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see the Sixers turn it around and start playing quality basketball, but I won't believe it until I see it. As you can see I'm still practicing Sixer-homerism by predicting a win, but I'm far from confident.

So, can we end 2008 on a high note and move to 13-18? One thing to watch for tonight is Eric Gordon. It's completely unrealistic that it would ever happen, but the Sixers would be a much better team in my opinion if our lineup read Miller, Gordon, Iggy, Brand and Sam. Gordon's the type of player Ed needs to try and acquire in the off-season. 

9:30 pm est. Be here.