The Sixers put a king-sized ass whipping on the Hawks last night in Atlanta. They have pretty much guaranteed themselves a playoff spot with their improved play, although winning a series remains a pipe dream. But next year…

Next season the Sixers have the players in place to host a playoff series and be real contenders to represent the Eastern Conference as the team that loses to the Heat before Miami goes on to the finals. The Celtics are an older bunch, and hopefully getting closer to a time when their big 3 is merely Rondo, Perkins, and Davis. The Magic are the most likely team to drop off, since next season they’ll be under the same gun currently aimed at downtown Denver. If Dwight Howard appears poised to leave for greener pastures the tension could cause the team to under perform.

The Sixers must do their part in all this. The young guys such as Jrue Holiday, Lou Williams, Evan Turner and Thad Young must continue to improve. The Sixers have to resign Thad, or at least manufacture a sign and trade that recoups his value. Elton Brand is the only main contributor that you could see regress with age, the rest of the team should improve with another year under their belts, and as Brand slips off a touch, he’ll just have to sacrifice more of his minutes to Thaddeus Young until Thad eventually ends up as our starting power forward.

Andre Iguodala has played out of his mind recently, and deserves serious consideration for defensive player of the year, and, if this play continues, a spot in the 2012 all-star game. Andre is the team’s leader, but he isn’t a traditional star. Iggy is very unselfish, which makes him a dangerous playmaker, but also prevents him from being an elite scorer. As long as Thaddeus Young and Lou Williams can keep scoring in the teens nightly, then the Sixers shouldn’t be adversely affected by Iggy’s style of play. Ideally I’d like to see Jrue Holiday play like a second shooting guard if Iguodala is going to control the offense. I think Jrue should probably be given more direction to shoot the basketball, and I want Jrue to emerge as the team’s leader in both scoring and field goal attempts.

The Sixers will have a solid rotation of Iggy, Brand, Young, Jrue, Lou, ET, and Jodie Meeks. You may have picked up the issue with that rotation, that there aren’t any big men listed. Mo Speights will return next season, but Mo isn’t a starter, he is another high-energy offensive minded reserve. Which is ok, if you can get somebody starting with more talent then Spencer Hawes. Looking around the Eastern Conference, the Sixers have to contend with Shaq & Perkins, Dwight Howard, Al Horford, and Amare. Spencer Hawes is not up to the task, and the Sixers must upgrade if they want to get to the next level. Currently on the trade market, it appears Chris Kaman and Marcus Camby may be available, although neither would be a long term solution. In the free agency pool this off season there will be Perkins, Tyson Chandler and Yao Ming, but the Sixers can’t afford anybody under the cap right now.

By not trading anybody thus far the Sixers have grown into a nice little team, and one that should only improve with time. It will be up to the front office to find moves that fix the team’s glaring issue in the middle, while maintaining the rest of a fairly talented roster. Rod Thorn has a history of making savvy moves, let’s hope he has one or two more in him, since that may be all this team needs.

The Philadelphia 76ers, a team predicted by just handful of NBA writers and experts to make the playoffs, have a record thus far of 21-26. The Sixers are currently in position to be the 7th seed in the playoffs, and are playing much better basketball than the handful of teams currently chasing them in the standings. For me, the Sixers are a very rare team in that they are both underachieving and underrated.

This team has struggled in close games, which is a combination of young players learning how to win and veterans forgetting how to get it done. Late in games your “best player” Elton Brand has failed to come through time and time again. I like Elton and appreciate the hard work he is putting in, but Brand isn’t getting it done late in games when the veterans are supposed to step up. Andre Iguodala, who has been injured for much of the season, has returned and he is playing some of the best basketball of his career, naturally the fans eyes have turned to him to fix these late game woes.

Three of our late game meltdowns go beyond ‘growing pains’, they get filed away as ‘full scale nuclear meltdowns’. Detroit on January 8th, Orlando on Jan 19th, and Memphis on Jan 28th, those are the three that are indictments of this team’s lack of leadership. In Detroit, Lou Williams had two free throws to close the game out and missed both. In Orlando the Sixers were up 5 with under 30 seconds to play and couldn’t close. Against Memphis, at home no less, they blew a 22 point lead to an inferior opponent. These losses aren’t your average meltdowns, they are EPIC breakdowns. If anyone paid attention to the team, or supported their playoff push, they would be beside themselves. If this were the Eagles that lost games in this fashion Mayor Nutter would have to call in the national guard.

One of the biggest stories of the season has been the resurgence of the New York Knicks and Amar’e Stoudemire’s emergence as an MVP candidate. Without those three losses the Sixers would be 21-10 in their last 31 games, and they’d be a game behind New York for the 6th seed going into a home and home this weekend. This is again evidence of the lack of attention the Sixers get, if the Sixers overtake the Knicks, how much consideration will Andre Iguodala get for MVP, any? Did you chuckle at the thought? Andre Iguodala can’t even get mentioned for all-star consideration let alone MVP talk. In fact, I will bet the farm that Iguodala doesn’t even get a spot on the second all-defense team.

The chance to undo what has been done is not going to appear, with just those three wins back the Sixers would be 5 ½ games behind Atlanta and 5 behind Orlando, tough but not impossible defecits to erase given their overall improved play, but 8 ½ and 9 game holes are indeed too deep to climb out of. So the Sixers will set their sights on .500 and the Knicks in the 6th seed. Andre Iguodala is going to be given the chance to lead the team to those goals, as Doug Collins has announced Andre will play more as a point-forward.

From this point forward (See what I did there? A pun!) the term growing pains is not allowed in the team’s vocabulary, instead the team must lose that comfort, they must lose the chance to shrug losses off and not take it personally. Iguodala scorched his teammates the other night after the loss to Memphis, and now he is being given control of the team on the floor as well as in the locker room. Iguodala now must take this opportunity and make the most of it, Iggy needs to drop triple-doubles weekly, and get this team winning as much as possible. The Sixers need to finish 6th in the eastern conference and hope that they can upset a young Bulls team that hasn’t yet won a playoff series under superstar and likely league MVP Derrick Rose. Andre Iguodala needs to show the NBA that he isn’t a second tier talent, and that he needs to be mentioned among the league’s most dynamic wing players right after Wade, James, Anthony, Bryant, and Durant. The remainder of this season is a chance for the Sixers, and Iggy, to show that they have been, thus far, underrated and that they have underachieved. These final 35 games also are a chance to shake those labels, and announce that they (the team and Iguodala individually) are up to the challenge of being one of the best in the East.