It has been a week since the 76ers repeated their performance of last year and were bounced out of the first round playoffs in six games after being up two games to one. You may recall that I said I would wait until after the season to comment on their performance, and more specifically, the coaching job by Tony DiLeo. So, here are my thoughts on the state of the Philly basketball team.First, we’ll start with what cannot be fixed – the roster. As I see it, there are two main problems with this roster. First, they do not have anyone who can consistently hit an outside jump shot. I’m not just talking about 3 pointers. To succeed in the NBA, you need to be able to have some one who can spot up and nail an open jump shot when the opportunity arises. The Sixers have two young players in Andre Iguodala and Thaddeus Young who are very good at driving the basket, but if there is never anyone who a defense will fear hitting that jump shot, they will just collapse their defense and bottle up Iguodala and Young. A good example of this is Michael Jordan, who was so successful all those years because he always had a John Paxson or Steve Kerr to kick the ball out to take an open jump shot. The Sixers do not have a player like that. Iguodala has got better at shooting the jumper, but it is still too inconsistent to be a regular threat and I do not believe his style of play lends itself to him being that spot up shooter.
The second problem is in the middle. Samuel Dalembert, to say the least, has been a BIG disappointment. He just does not have the desire you need to have to be successful playing against the big men of the NBA. There was a lot of press about after Game 5 about Dwight Howard’s elbow against Dalembert that caused Howard to be suspended for Game 6, but the one thing I kept thinking as I watched the replays was that Dalembert seemed not to react much to receiving an elbow in the neck. Contrast that with Ron Artest who got an elbow from Kobe Bryant in Game 2 of the current Lakers-Rockets series. That elbow was not nearly as bad and, in my opinion, was just part of the play and was inadvertent. Artest blew up and went after Kobe, chasing him down the court to take issue with the elbow. Ultimately, it was stupid for Artest to do, because, given his reputation, he got thrown out of the game for it. I’m not advocating that Dalembert should have exploded like Artest did, but I would have liked him to show some emotion. Instead, he is willing to get pushed around. That attitude in a big man is never a winning one.
Unfortunately, due to the NBA salary cap, there is not much that can be done to fix these problems, especially with Dalembert. He has a 15% trade kicker in his contract and he already counts too much against the Sixers salary cap. I don’t see how another team will be willing to take him. I read some report earlier this week that the Sixers were supposedly working out a deal to trade him, but I think it’s wishful thinking. If they do trade him, I’m worried what we’ll get back to make the trade fit within the NBA salary structure. Deals like this are usually one team trading their problem contract for another team’s problem contract. Maybe a team gets desperate close to the trade deadline next year and the Sixers are able to ship him off, but I’ll be shocked if they deal him in the off-season.
As for the rest of the roster, this team is constructed for the regular season, not the playoffs. In other words, they are an athletic team that likes to run and has trouble scoring when it becomes a half court game. Opponents just will not let you run in the playoffs as they are usually much more focused on getting back and playing good defense. I know there are a lot of fans that are having buyer’s remorse over the Elton Brand signing last year. While he may not have fit what they did in the regular season, it would have been really interesting to see what he would have been able to do in a playoff series against Dwight Howard as his game is much more geared to the half court play. IF Brand can come back and stay healthy (and I realize that is a BIG if), I think that may solve some of these problems.
All this brings me to what the Sixers can change – the head coach. In my last post, I said that I was unimpressed with Tony DiLeo’s coaching in the series against the Magic. Specifically, there were times that I think he just failed from an X and O standpoint. The Sixers started with a good game plan in the series in keeping with their outside shooters and letting Howard have his points inside. However, the Magic eventually adjusted and started using many more screen to get their shooters open looks. The Sixers never made the appropriate adjustments to be able to fight through the screens and maintain the match ups they wanted. The biggest example was at the end of Game 4 when, due to a screen, Thaddeus Young ended up guarding Hedo Turkoglu, who hit the game winning shot. Don’t get me wrong, Thaddeus Young is probably my favorite of the Sixers’ young players, but he is still too inexperience to guard a shooter of Turkoglu’s caliber in such a big situation.
Another pet peeve I have on Xs and Os is scoring coming out of a timeout. I’m not talking about end of game situations where there is a lot of thought put into drawing up a play, but the flow during a game when there is a timeout right before you have a possession. You should have a better than average success rate coming out of a normal timeout during the course of a game as the team should all be on the same page about what is going to happen on the next possession. When watching the Sixers, it just seemed that this was not the case and that is a sign of poor coaching.
All this said, I think DiLeo did an admirable job taking over part way through the season considering his lack of head coaching experience. However, he had the same result as Maurice Cheeks did last year and he got fired after a less than stellar start this year. I think the Sixers should thank DiLeo for helping them in a tough situation and return him to the front office where I’m sure he was doing a good job. Then the team can go out and get a head coach with experience who will be able to try and get something out of this poorly put together roster. Maybe that new coach will be able to light a fire under Sam Dalembert and get him to play like a true big man. Yeah, right!
