Sports 4 Dorks

Detroit
100, Philadelphia 77

If you had told us before the season that there would be a
game in which the Pistons beat the 76ers in Philadelphia by 23, in spite of the home team
shooting 20 more free throws than the victors, it would have barely registered
a response. The outcome of Thursday night’s game kinda makes sense.

If it had inspired a question, though, the query would have gone
something like, "yeah, was that before Detroit’s annual post-St.
Patrick’s Day meltdown, or after? Before, right?"
 
But the fact that this sort of game happened in the regular season, on May
1^st, and in Game 6 of a first round series? That’s quite the
accomplishment. That’s something that nobody could have foreseen, even as the
Sixers made their late-season charge, and after the team was paired with the
Pistons in the first round.

The Pistons (scary-good on offense, and dominant while holding Philly to 33.8 percent
shooting) deserve credit for their accomplishment as well, I reckon, but this
is the time to focus on the Sixers, who we won’t see for a while.

Ostensibly, Philadelphia
is working with a team-first concept that still swirls around do-it-all forward
Andre Iguodala. There are a couple of problems with that, however - Iggy is a
restricted free agent this summer, he’s already turned down a contract
extension, and he’s hardly a star or even a go-to player. That said, he kind of
fancies himself as both.

And this isn’t reaction to his play in the playoffs, though
AI was stubborn and pretty lousy (a lovely mix) all at once. 13.2 points per
game on 33 percent shooting, with 4.8 rebounds per game (in 39 minutes), five
assists, and 4.9 turnovers. The man was essentially swallowed whole by Tayshaun
Prince, who out-scored Iguodala while nearly doubling his shooting percentage.
It wasn’t pretty.

Iguodala is essentially a poor man’s Shawn Marion. He might
score better on some nights, and handles the ball in a non-scoring role much
better than the Matrix, but he’s nowhere near the defender (few are) and hasn’t
learned how to contribute when the shots aren’t falling. And he wants his
contract to average eight figures.

Sixers GM Ed Stefanski has a whole heap of decisions. Dead
weight contracts from Chris Webber, Aaron McKie, Kevin Ollie, and Greg Buckner
(list provided for anyone stuck in the midst of a bit of warmed revisionist
history regarding the Billy King Era) come off the books this summer, and
should the Sixers pass on re-signing AI and Louis Williams (a long shot, we
submit), the team should have around 20 million dollars in cap space once all
the team’s rookie contracts are accounted for.

That said, the 76ers are bringing AI back. It’s a hard sell
to let a solid youngster go for cap space alone, especially after an inspiring
little playoff run, even though the team’s makeup (a litany of good but not
great players of varying ages) makes little sense.

We’ll have time to break things down further in the summer,
however, especially when teams start to send out feelers for AI’s services, and
wonder what it would take for the Sixers not to match an offer. Actually, we
won’t break the Sixers down further then, because no team with over ten-million
in cap space is going to try and spend it all on Iguodala. It makes no sense.

So, for now, let’s wave at Mo Cheeks, and his bunch. Few, if
any, teams worked harder this season. The Sixers created their own fortune and
their own luck by trying to beat all comers down the court, to the loose ball,
and into the lane.

Teams caught sleep-walking through a game or through a
season were quickly punished by a Sixer team that seemed to want it more every
night; and though we fret about Philly’s future, our appreciation for this team
never waned.