Tuesday, February 1, 2011


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.

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