I feel like a true sports analyst now. I can now pull a Ron Jaworski and say, "Well, after looking at the tape...". That's exactly what I just did; I watched a Sixers game, fast forwarding through commercials, free throws and half-time. It took me a solid hour and a half and it was a lot less stressful not having to worry about the final score. I'm still unsure how beneficial watching the disappointing game for the second time, but if anything it did change my opinions on a couple of things.
Here's what I saw:
-We still lost.
-We still can't shoot free throws.
-The first five minutes were even better than I thought. Everybody from Dalembert to Andre Miller was playing lights out D. The offense was playing well. It just sucked that we couldn't build a bigger lead during our "beast mode". I'm not sure it would've mattered anyway.
-Sammy D missed four bunnies, threw two balls away and had an offensive rebound that he passed back out when he would've had an un-challenged layup. That was clear from watching the game live, but this wasn't...
-A lot of people, including me have been complaining about Dalembert, but after watching the game for the second time, he reminded me he is still one of the best at controlling the paint and playing defense. Number one, Chris Bosh only scored 17 points while Sammy was in the game and seven of those came on free throws. Secondly, only four of their ten offensive rebounds (which I'll get to in a second) came with Sammy on the floor. I'm not condoning his missed bunnies or fouls on Bosh's jumpers, but things happen and all those missed bunnies came in the first half, so he calmed down considerably. There's no way Speights or anyone else should start over him.
-Rebounding seemed to be an issue after the game. Well, it's not. So please, if you are complaining about the team's rebounding performance last night, you should stop. Here are some telling numbers: The Sixers had 33 defensive rebounds. The Lakers led the league in defensive boards last night . They had 37. The Sixers gave up ten offensive rebounds. After looking at the rest of the league, I'll consider that a good night. Would you like to know how many of the 24 teams that played last night held their opponent under nine offensive rebounds? Five. We were clearly in the top half of the league in offensive rebounds allowed, so I'm a little confused on why people are complaining about it. Our own offensive rebounding needs no explanation. We dominated.
-Willie Green had four negative plays and four positive plays. Three of those positive plays were blocks, which probably won't happen again.
-Our offense was forced to jack up a bad shot at the end of the shot clock a whopping five times. Four of them were with Lou-Will running the show.
-Lou dribbles around way too much. If I had to blame this loss on a single person, it would definitely be him.
-The crippling moment in the game was when Lou came in for 'Dre Miller in the third. The score was 62-57 at the time and the Raptors ended up going on a 17-3 run, making the score 74-60 and forcing us to play catch up for the rest of the game.
-Andre Miller had ZERO assists in the final three quarters.
-Kareem Rush was on the court with the starters with less than five minutes remaining. I thought that was interesting.
-I only counted us having two dunks, one from Iguodala on a fast break and another on a Sammy putback. I don't have the "average number of dunks a team has on a given night" stat handy, but I assume we averaged a lot more than two dunks per game last season.
That is all. Tomorrow we get the 7 Second or Less Knicks at home. It should be a good one.