I wanted to do a live Twee-cap of the Sixers-Bulls game Friday night, but due to poor signal strength, I had trouble posting my tweets and gave up fairly early in the night. Saturday’s match up in Detroit I figured I’d just write another T&O piece when it was over since I was watching from home. Now I feel like its better to write about what this weekend really showed us.
This team IS good, not great, not even very good, but they are in fact, a good basketball team. They beat a superior Chicago team in a game that wasn’t all smooth sailing, they took some lumps, lost the momentum several times, yet still held it together and made things happen when they needed to. They went on the road to an inferior opponent in Detroit and pissed away the lead, choked in big spots, and came away with a disappointing loss. The Sixers lack of a leader is killing them, the player who ends up with the ball more than any other during Andre Iguodala’s absence has been Lou Williams, and like the rest of the team, Lou lacks the balls/talent to make things happen on the opponents home court in crunch time.
I regret that the last sentence seems like an indictment of Lou Williams, I think Lou has more heart than most guys on the team and plays with an aggressiveness rarely seen at the Wells Fargo Center. Lou Williams just isn’t good enough to come up with the big shot when the opponent is focused on stopping him. In fact the three guys on our roster that the team looks to in big spots, Lou, Iggy, and Elton are all not talented enough to beat a double team in a big spot. The next generation of Thad, Jrue, and ET have yet to show the desire to want the responsibility of taking that big shot. The next generation of Thad, Jrue, and ET rarely have their number called by Doug Collins in big spots. The end of every quarter either has Lou dribbling beyond the arc before settling on a long jumper, Iggy driving and throwing up a runner or off-balanced finger roll, or Brand dribbling in the post before shooting a contested turn-around jumper.
The time has come to settle this for once and for all. Doug Collins needs to mandate that for better or worse big possessions are going to go through ET. The Sixers didn’t draft the kid to be a role player, he was picked to be a star, so give him the damned ball and see if he has the stones to make things happen. When Turner was sat down for Speights’ rebounding just before the Pistons final free throw and, subsequently, the Sixers final possession, Collins left the Sixers with a group consisting of Jrue, Meeks, Elton, Thad, and Speights. That group only has one option after a made shot and without a timeout, Jrue dribbles to the frontcourt where he draws a double and is forced to pass to Meeks for a desperation three. Only one guy was possibly taking that shot if Jrue didn’t shoot it over two guys himself, and that guy is Jodie Meeks, a role-player (No offense to Jodie, who has been a real bright spot). Thad Young needs to be the one benched and Evan Turner needs to be on the court, and either the guy you drafted to be a star makes a superstar shot in the clutch or he doesn’t, but what would be important is that you called his number, and more important is that you call his number again next time when Iggy and Lou are in the game.
ET, may be Darko Thabeet-Morrison Jr. He may be a poor man’s Shane Battier. Maybe he really is a young Brandon Roy. All these possibilities are still in play, and the only way to know is to give him the ball. Coming through in the clutch can give a player the confidence to command the ball and the game in more mundane situations. It can turn you from a guy not sure of his role, to a star that knows his role is to carry the team on his back when the team is floundering, and when the guys are tired from a long flight after playing your asses off the night before on the other side of the country. ET is reportedly a peculiar dude, it apparently took a little while for him to fit in at Ohio State, and it is taking him some time to find his place in the NBA. It will be written off as growing pains if one of your young building blocks comes up short in a big spot, but what do you call it when a guy who won’t be any better than the third guard on a good team misses that big chance? Not growing pains, just a missed opportunity. Whether the final shot sanked or clanked isn’t important, the shot was a failure when it was taken by somebody other than ET.
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