One of Lavoy’s best games in a long, long time.  He was aggressive offensively — taking and hitting open shots that he had been passing up of late.  His 6 points in the early 3rd Q were huge.  Which is why I am a little curious about how little tick he got in the 4th Q and OT.

A mammoth game form Thad.  On top of the usual energy and hustle he delivers, Thad also was a huge part of the Sixers 19-5 run in the 3rd Q and his 14 4th Q points were a big key to completing this amazing comeback.

He really struggled in the 1st half (1-4 for 3 pts.) and IMO Turner is still a little lost.  I am especially concerned with the way he continues to pound the rock into the ground and does not move the ball quickly in the face of a double team.  However his dime to Lavoy in the 3rd Q was a thing of beauty.

Simply put, Jrue was ridiculous last night and may have played his way into the ASG.  Two things really stick out for me.  First, on the final play of regulation Jrue took the ball to the tin and did not settle for a long J or off balance runner (I’m looking at you Dre and Louis).  That was refreshing to witness.  Second, he wanted to be “the man” last night and simply took over this game down the stretch.  He scored the Sixers final 14 point and all 12 of the team’s points in OT.

Ugggghhhh…But we’ll give him a pass b/c of the knee problems he is apparently battling.

I guess it’s back to the Do(u)g-house.

A solid night from Hawes, but the 3PAs he keeps launching are ripping up my insides.  The 3PA he launched in the 4th Q with Sixers down 1, was just brutal.

Jrue needed a quick breather and Ivey did a nice job of getting him just that.

Wilkins did not stuff the stat sheet, but I thought his pressure defense was excellent last night.

Aside from a few ill-advised shots, I thought Swaggy contributed nicely last night.  DC must have thought so as well because he left Young in the game for most of the 4th and the OT session.  However, I wouldn’t mind if had hit a few more 3PAs last night.

So J-Rich gets his knee drained and still takes the floor, but a sinus infection keeps Kwame sidelined?!? C’mon man…

Welcome aboard…enjoy your seat.

I’m not sure what was said at half-time, but he should bottle it up and keep it in his pocket for future use.  Still DC has to be held responsible at some level for the terrible 1st half the Sixers played and I would like to have seen Lavoy in the game during the late 4th and OT.

A nice shooting night by Lavoy, but his defense was atrocious and he grabbed ZERO rebounds in 15 ticks.  Unreal.

A terrible night shooting from Thad.  I’m not sure if the length of the Hornets bigs bothered him, but tonight he missed a lot of the mid-range shots he usually drills.  His energy and hustle were on par.

Offensively tonight was an improvement over the way Turner has been playing over the last ten games.  However, his defense has become suspect at best.

Coming off a great outing vs. HOU, Jrue posts an outstanding double-double (10th of the year) while committing only 4 turnovers.  The haters out there will say that he got toasted by Vasquez (IMO one of the most underrated PGs in the League), but I would argue that he had absolutely no help on the defensive end stopping the pick-&-roll and dribble penetration and that contributed heavily to Vasquez’s stats.

I guess J-Rich needs two nights in a row off to produce anything of value.

21 minutes — 2 boards…That’s simply ridiculous to me.  When you’re 7-feet tall you should grab 10 every night by accident.

(Graded on the Kwame curve of course) I’m not sure if I should make fun of Hawes here for grabbing the same number of boards as this stiff in triple the minutes or make a Kwame has a pulse joke.  I’ll just move on.

Mehhhh

I was expecting more, especially on the defensive end.

All of you in the Swaggy fan club can puff your chest out for one night.  I will admit that he was fun to watch tonight, but let’s make a note that his scoring outburst came in the 4th Q with the game out of reach.  Even with Swaggy’s amazing display of scoring in the 4th, the Sixers were only able to get the Sixers within 9.

I’m giving DC an “A” for simply putting up with this inconsistent group.  I would have lost my mind and quit by now.

3 points and 4 boards in 21 minutes is not encouraging for a guy who really has not found his groove this season.

Thad has been simply tremendous this year and last night was no different.  Energy, rebounding and defense, plus 18 points.  How is he not getting any All-Star talk??  IMO we need to get out a run more when he is on the floor as very few forwards can keep up with him.  I only hope that under these type of minutes and the nightly pounding that he holds up physically for the entire season.

I’m okay with this outing by ET last night as I thought he much more under control then in the previous 10 games.  Hopefully this will be a springboard to ending his recent struggles — over the last 12 games, Turner has averaged 10.6 points while playing almost 36 minutes per night.

A stellar night by “The Jurth”.  Jrue made 11 of 22 shots — some would say 30 points on 22 FGAs isn’t the most efficient night — but I liked what I saw.  He sank all seven attempts from the free-throw line and had nine assists.  The six turnovers were a little disturbing, but I’ll take it if the Sixers play at that pace every night.  I also thought Jrue did a solid job on a tired Lin last night.

I know he missed a number of wide open looks in the 4th Q (and that has to change), but I really liked what I saw from J-Rich last night.  He grabbed a couple huge rebounds, he brought a lot of energy and he did make two key jumpers.

He missed some wide open looks and that can’t happen for the Sixers to succeed.  But I was impressed again last night with his ability to defend and rebound.

This is all I want from Spence — but we need it every night.  Any chance that happens???

I thought he pushed all the right buttons last night.  Including pushing the pace of play (I believe that was done on purpose) and giving increased minutes to the physical (on both ends of the floor) and defensive minded Wilkins.  Plus after J-Rich’s effort last night, he looks like a genius for giving him off vs. Toronto.

I said it before and I’ll say it again.  Lavoy Allen’s nickname should be “Mr. Softee” if you’re talking about his play so far this season.  He’s disappeared and been owned in the paint in nearly every game this year.  His best defensive effort came in the 18 minutes he played against Dwight Howard and the Lakers on New Years day…since then he’s gone back to being the player that we know and haven’t loved. I’m praying that there’s a spot open for him in the Do(u)g house.

This was easily Thad’s worst performance of the season and the Sixers suffered immensely because of it.  Reggie Evans and Andray Blatche (I’ll get to him later) just absolutely dominated Thad on the blocks, combining for 22 points and 30 rebounds.  Lately, Young has seemed to have lost a little bit of the wind in his sails. This is  a very bad sign for a team who desperately needs his intensity every night.

Not much to say here, just a very quiet game from Turner.  His two turnovers in this game were exactly the same and equally as maddening.  On both occasions, he tried to toss the ball from the half-court to an open Sixer near the basket.  Both passes were sniffed out by Nets defenders back in transition. Eight points, seven rebounds and five assists just doesn’t cut it in 36 minutes of playing time.  As pitiful of a stat as it is, his seven rebounds actually led the Sixers in this game.  Turner is another player who seems to be affected by the Sixers’ latest road trip.  He hasn’t been playing consistent basketball since the middle of December and his past four games have been consistently bad.

If anyone should be frustrated over this Sixers loss, it should be Jrue Holiday. His defense on Deron Williams left a lot to be desired (as he dropped 22 on Jrue), but offensively Jrue was the only reason the Sixers were able to keep the score close in the first half.  In the first quarter, Jrue was involved in all 24 of the Sixers’ points they were able to score in the quarter.  Jrue scored 12 while dishing out six assists for part of the other 12 points.  Jrue, however, came out flat in the 3rd committing three turnovers and only netting seven points the rest of the game.  He looked frustrated on the court and his play was evident of that.  He’s been saying the most prayers lately for Bynum to make a fast and healthy return.

His six points in the second quarter and solid defense on Joe Johnson made me think that JRich would end the game with a nice stat-line.  Unfortunately, that was the only notable quarter for Richardson as he spent the majority of the rest of the game on the bench.

Well…On the bright side, Moultrie got a few minutes right?

DWRIGHTWAY played DNOTWRIGHTWAY in 20 wasted minutes.  Back to the Do(u)g house.

If the offensive end of the court was the only side of the court you needed to play on in a basketball game, then I was highly impressed by Spencer Hawes.  He was hitting open shots, he drilled a couple three’s, he had a nice spin move in the post for a dunk and he was crisp on his passes.  On the defensive end of the court however, he was absolutely manhandled on the boards, he picked up four fouls and he couldn’t play a lick of defense all game.  That was not Hawesome.

From being cut, to being re-signed to a 10-day contract, to getting the most minutes he’s seen in nearly a month all in just two days.  Talk about a whirlwind start to the week.

I was actually slightly impressed by Wilkins’ play in this game and his up and under in the second quarter was a top-play nominee in this game for me.  He was the top rebounder coming off the Sixers bench with four, which goes to show you just how dire the Sixers’ need is for a rebounding big.

Hopefully the haircut Swaggy is promising to his fans in the near-future will change his atrocious play he’s displayed this season.  He is all sorts of negative on the court and his shot-jacking style is raising my blood pressure levels everyday.

All I have to say is…An 18-2 run by the Nets to start the 3rd quarter.  The Sixers were outscored 35-14 overall in the quarter.  A 48-47 halftime deficit was suddenly an insurmountable 83-61 drubbing by the end of the 3rd.  The Sixers have been outscored by a total of 67 points in their last three games. You can talk about rebounding and size in the paint all you want, but it’s obvious that one coach made his halftime adjustments Tuesday night and the other coach did not.  What got me the most was when Doug was shown laughing on the sideline during what should have been a highly infuriating 4th quarter to the coach.  Unless you were listening to Ed Helms’ pipes on your ipod, then you better have some good reasoning behind it.  It’s time to get back to the good ol’ drawing board Dougie.

Lavoy started slow (2 TOs in 1st Q) but found his stride to have a decent game for the 7-6.  However the bunny he blew on a sweet dime from Holiday in the 3rd quarter had me throwing stuff.

It must be tough to play at a high level on offense when you are continually being taken to the weight room by opposing bigs at the other end.  Thad had moments (see next line) of his usual high energy, but he looked worn out to me. FYI…That block (goal-tending call) he had on Westbrook in the 4th Q was amazing.

It was hilarious watching him try to guard KD.

A solid performance by Jrue, but I thought he (and the rest of the Sixers) settled for too many jumpers in the 1st half.  He had 3 outstanding assists in the 3rd Q and two dribble-drive plays that showed me he is capable of getting to the hoop whenever he wants, so he needs to be more assertive in doing so.  There was on trip in the 2nd Q on which Perkins got switched onto Jrue and instead of going to the rim, Holiday settled for a three.

It’s a tough assignment when you have to guard the nearly 7-foot KD and produce some points for this team.  Which may explain why he scored all of his points in one stretch during the 3rd Q.  FYI…I actually thought J-Rich did a respectable job on Durant.

A couple of ill-advised FGAs, but other than that a good night from Wright.

If his shot was falling, it could have been a big night for Spence.

Garbage time…

In the 2nd Q, Swaggy was amazing — 11 points on 3-3 from deep.  He was also the ONLY 76er to get to the FT line last night.

If the Sixers played any slower last night (by design) I would have fallen asleep on my couch. Wait…I did.  I’m sure he stresses this / works on this all the time, but DC has to figure out a way to get this team to the FT line more often, because it’s obvious this group won’t do it on their own.

That’s three near double-doubles in the last week, but Allen (like the rest of the Sixers bigs) doesn’t play physical enough and he got eaten alive by Scola and Gortat.  When he cut the PHX lead to 60-59 on a 19-footer with 6:34 left in 3rd Q, I thought Sixers would pull this one out, but they simply could not get that next basket.

Last night I couldn’t decide overall whether or not Turner was forcing things too much or was simply unlucky.  He got a lot of clean/close/good looks and just could not get the ball to drop.  That’s unlucky in my opinion.  However I could be convinced that he was dropping his head too frequently last night and did a mediocre job of finding teammates.

A triple-double is amazing, but take a closer look at the stats and you’ll see why Holiday did not get an “A”.  He scored 16 points on an inefficient 16 FGAs (6-16 = 37.5%) and turned the ball over 6 times. And while his late 4th Q defense was outstanding, during most of the game, the tenacious Dragic made Jrue look slow and uninterested.

Uggghhh…He’s only a starter because of DC’s respect for his veteran leadership.

A solid outing from Wright who seems to have rediscovered his scoring touch after taking the night off vs. GSW a couple games ago.  The alley-oop he caught from Jrue that cut the lead to 87-85 with 2 mins. remaining was a thing of beauty.  He also hit a huge 3-pointer in the late 3rd Q.

Just a terrible shooting night by Spence.  When you’re a big that doesn’t rebound well or play solid defense, you have to provide some scoring punch and Spence failed to do that last night.

Irrelevant.

This is exactly the role I want to see NY cast in by DC.  One or two less running leaners and he would have gotten an A+ from me.

Did anyone else catch Kwame dancing to Gangnam Style??  That about sums up his time here in Philly.

DC should not have waited until the 4 min mark of the 3rd to get Wright back into the game.  Also why the hell is Holiday on the bench for so long in the 4th.  I can’t believe I am saying this, why did Kwame get no burn last night?  DC claims he is the Sixers “physical” big man yet did not see fit to put him in the game as the PHX bangers were knocking our guys all over the place.  Finally, playing a short bench vs. LAL came back to haunt us last night in the 2nd game of the notorious road B2B.

He was effective and efficient in limited minutes tonight.  He also deserves some propers for overseeing Dwight Howard’s dreadful 1-for-7 effort.

Thad struggled from midrange on Tuesday.  Despite getting reasonably good looks throughout the evening, he was just 1-of-8 from beyond three feet.

Tremendous night for Mr. Turner.  After a brutal three game stretch to close 2012 (he shot 7-of-25 and averaged just 5 points per game), he stuffed the box score in a way that he’s uniquely capable of; posting his eighth double-double of the season.  Plus: the 3-pointer he hit to push the lead to 92-85 after Kobe galvanized the crowd was super-sized.

In a triumphant return to his hometown, Jrue was terrific.  The driving dunk he made with 22 seconds left that put the Lakers down six and, effectively, iced it, might be my favorite Jrue Holiday moment ever.  Also: 10 assists against one turnover.  Think on that.

Jason Richardson is three years younger than Kobe Bryant.  It didn’t look that way.

While Wright was on the floor, he hit 3-point shots (especially helpful because of the extra point you get for them!) and grabbed rebounds.  Doug Collins, seeing this, played him a grand total of 23 minutes.

Spencer Hawes, sporting a fresh haircut that made him (finally) look more like a professional athlete than a cast member of MTV’s ‘Buckwild’, did good things against the Lakers for the second time in as many games.  He blocked Dwight Howard at least twice and has now shot 12-of-21 against the Lake show this season.

Kwame Brown, who wasn’t (that) bad in LA, got booed when he stepped on the floor at Staples.  Kind of makes you wonder what the fans do when he returns to Washington: threaten his family?  Throw fruit at him?

Swaggy, who was playing for the home team the last time he played in front of an LA crowd, was unusually cautious against the Lakers, hazarding just three shots.

How many almost double-doubles can one guy post in a year??  Despite his offensive output, Allen was part of a host of Sixers that had significant trouble with GSW’s David Lee.

Hopefully it was just playing against his former team that threw Wright’s shooting stroke off for a night.

Another monster night for Thad on the stat sheet, but he too could not keep GSW’s Lee in check.  However, GSW had no answer for this dunk by Thad either.  One of the best Sixers dunks of the year.

He’s scored 11 points in his last two games and is 5-18 on FGAs in those two runs.  ET is one more poor perfromance away from officially being in a slump.  He also was 0-2 from the FT line last night. But I did like the way he took the ball to the hoop, especially in the 1st half.

A solid night from Jrue on the stat sheet, but I thought he forced a couple of ill-advised shots.  Also if you combine Curry’s and Jack’s numbers, GSW’s point men accounted for 27 points, 12 dimes and 9 boards.  How much of that stat line was Jrue’s fault at the defensive end is debatable.

Coming off a season-high 20 points in the win over Memphis, Spence had two points last night.  Reality —  she is a cold hearted biyatch.

As always I’m grading on the “Kwame-Curve” here and in that case 8 boards in 16 minutes is stellar for this guy.  However, David Lee treated him like an orange practice cone last night.

The fact that he is playing 25 minutes for the Sixers is scary.  It also tells you why the Sixers are looking for a back-up point guard (see note after the jump).

For all you Swaggy P lovers out there, here’s a basketball fact…Scoring 13 points on 17 FGAs is not efficient offense and will NOT help your team win games.

I’m not sure DC could have done anything to prevent the Sixers from losing this game. The Sixers looked tired, Lee was a beast and the GSW got a big night from their bench.  Although I would like to have seen the very athletic, long and quick Moultrie take a shot at guarding David Lee, but he’s playing for Sioux Falls right now.

LA got schooled a bit by Marc Gasol in the early going; watching in helpless/thumb-up-the-rear-end fashion while the Spaniard shot over him in midrange and beat him to the bucket in transition. Momma said there’d be days like this…

More grist for the “Play Dorell Wright” mill. As he’s been more often than not lately, Wright was very good on Wednesday; scoring a season-best 28 points on just 11 shots–including a dagger 3 with 3:16 left that tripped up a Memphis rally and moved the lead to an insurmountable 95-84. He’s hit 18 3-pointers now in his last five games. On a mediocre team, he should be logging more than 22 minutes a night.

With a tough matchup against Z-Bo, Thad, consumate gamer, hung in. He was tremendously active defensively–see Memphis’ 32 percent shooting after the first quarter–and with 13 points, he’s now scored in double-digits in his last 19 games. The consistency helps.

41 minutes. 1 point. 41 minutes. 1 point. Sure, he did some other helpful things, and was a capable facilitator, but…41 minutes. 1 point. 41 minutes. 1 point.

Jrue didn’t bring his A game tonight (there were points in the fourth quarter where I considered the possibility that he was throwing the game), but he did yeoman’s work defensively on Mike Conley and hit a 3-pointer in the third that feels, in retrospect, like it marked a turning point.

After watching, mouth presumably agape, while Marc Gasol abused his team in the first quarter on the strength of a bunch of things he can kind of do, but not really, Spence went off; scoring a season-high 20 points and racking up five swats. He blocked Zach Randolph, which, if nothing else, is something for Zach Randolph to think long and hard about.

The pair of 3-pointers he hit in his first run off the bench were enormous. “They call it a Royal with Threes!” I imagined someone saying at the time, before remembering that I’m an adult man.

An uncharacteristicly efficient performance from the Swaggster.

LA got off to a great start and fell just shy of his second career double-double. He beat Brook Lopez to a handful of rebounds (okay, no great accomplishment there) and posted four points and five rebounds by the midway point of the first quarter. He also made a tremendous extra pass to Thad Young in the middle part of the third.

The third quarter belonged to Thad. He scored 12 points on 6-of-7 shooting and near single-handedly kept the Sixers within striking distance in a game that threatened to get away from them.

Though his midrange game was on point in the early going, ET missed all but two of his last eight shot attempts.

Though saying a guy outplayed Deron Williams doesn’t quite carry the same rhetorical heft it did in, say, 2009, Jrue Holiday got the better of his counterpart tonight. With nine fourth quarter points and three assists, he closed strong in the losing effort.

After a promising performance against Atlanta, Richardson returned to form tonight; which is to say he played badly. He had the worst plus/minus of anyone in uniform on Sunday and struggled, again, to find his shot. JRich has been JPoor lately. * Ugh*

Dorell Wright is not making his shot attempts this season, yes, but he’s also doing really, really helpful things in every other area of the game. Tonight was more of the same. DW used his length to grab three steals and pull down six rebounds.

A vanilla performance. Sorry for the racial overtone.

Swaggy hit a 3-pointer that ended the Nets 18-0 first quarter run, so…well, at least he did that.

The good: More Dorell Wright. Clever zone defense sets. Keeping the team’s head together after the 18-0 BKN run. No fast food controversy. The bad: Calling a timeout nine points into an 18-0 run and making adjustments that allowed the Nets to immediately score nine more unanswered points.