good and bad in Game #1

On Nov 1, 10:27 am, "Kurt Straub" <jkurtstr....RemoveThis@comcast.net> wrote:

> In the part I watched, Andre Ig was not a factor, but Jason Smith looked
> very good. This surprised me, he was so up and down during the preseason,
> here it was as though he actually belonged in the NBA. Say tuned, this
> could be important, if Sammy can only play 25 minutes a night until his foot
> heals up.

I was able to get video of the game and, I guess as usual, was fairly
unimpressed by Smith. He had a couple of decent baskets in the first
half, which gives some hope that he can provide some scoring in the
future, but his defense was terrible. I remember that Nesterovic was
easily pushing him around and guys like Calderon found little
resistance getting to the rim. People will point out the block on
Bargnani in the third but that shot was a lousy floater that Williams
probably could have swatted if he were in the area.

> From the box, my major complaint would be obviously poor perimeter defense.
> Bosh and Banganini [sp?] didn't do anything underneath, but several Toronto
> shooters lit up the place with outside shooting, especially three point
> shooting.

I thought the perimeter defense was actually ok--not great mind you--
it was more a matter of Toronto just having a lot of excellent
shooters. The exception though was that Evans was guarding Bargnani
and was useless trying to guard that far out. On the other hand, as
you indicated, the interior defense was pretty good as long as
Dalembert was on the floor--though, again, it was pretty awful when he
wasn't. If he goes down for any length of time I have trouble seeing
how the Sixers can beat anyone. The rebounding is also much improved--
with Iguodala moving to the frontcourt (where he can probably average
8-10 a game) the Sixers may even have been overcompensating for the
past rebounding woes with the Evans acquisition. That line of
Dalembert-Evans-Iguodala may now be the best rebounding-wise in the
league. They'll need it with all the bricks.

Some other thoughts:

--What exactly is the point of having Andre Miller on this team if he
isn't actually being used to help facilitate scoring among all the
frontcourt guys--and this includes Iguodala? Iguodala is athletic but
not very creative at all--he really needs to be coming off screens and
getting hit with nice passes on drives rather than being left in 1-
on-1 situations. Also, instead of trying to run some plays to give
Dalembert and Evans some easy baskets, they were forced to throw up
some ridiculous shots on their own that were just painful to watch.
Meanwhile, Miller is leading the team with 17 FG attempts? No thanks.
Cheeks needs to run some damn plays.

--Korver will be interesting to see this year. He did get quite a bit
of time at PF, which had good and bad sides. The good was actually
that he seemed to hold his own quite well enough on defense. The bad
was that, especially in the first half, he was stuck moving around
inside a lot setting picks for the likes of Carney and Green, and
trying to show that he has some inside moves of his own--with rather
bad results. But then when they went with a transition game in the
2nd half, he was pretty spectacular with his shot. And he needs more
than the 12 attempts he got in this game. Evans actually should have
got more time than the 21 minutes he got, so I would certainly like to
see more of Korver back at SF. Whether that means more of Smith
playing or *ahem* their #12 pick Young getting time, it could be worth
it to free Korver up to just fire away. They need it.

--Williams and Carney seemed very competent off the bench. I really
hope they displace Willie Green's minutes soon. Green didn't shoot as
poorly as usual but his makes were pretty easy shots and his defense
was typically awful.

--In sum, as the first poster mentioned, the Sixers have very little
room for error. Any wins the team gets will probably require the
following things:
--Dalembert plays at least 30 minutes.
--*both* Iguodala and Korver have good shooting nights, probably with
at least 15 attempts each.
--Miller has more assists than fg attempts.
--At least one of Dalembert/Evans/Smith/(Young) gets more than a dozen
points
--At least one of Green/Williams/Carney gets more than 15 points on
>45% shooting.

--IK
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