seed 5? Or?

Well, here's another unexpected scenario. While the question has been
around for a couple weeks whether the Sixers could move up to 6 to
avoid Detroit or Boston in the first round, now they're only half a
game out of 5, where they would play Cleveland--a team they would
seemingly match up even better against than Orlando. If Iguodala and
Young could manage to roughly neutralize James, the rest of the
matchups would be alright. Miller and Williams should be able to
outclass the likes of Delonte West, Daniel Gibson, and Alexander
Pavlovic, while Dalembert/Evans would actually not be giving up much
against Ilgauskas/Wallace. Likely it would come down to the ability
of Young, Williams, and Carney to score off the bench and break the
games into an open court affair.

And here's the longshot scenario, but something which at this point
may not be that far-fetched: the Sixers are only 4 games behind
Cleveland for seed 4, and home court. They also play two games
against each other before the end of the season. If Philadelphia were
to win both and generally keep up their recent play (say, win 8 of
final 11 games), there's a chance if Cleveland continues its own
recent mediocre play. Here's the remaining schedules:

Cleveland: New Orleans, @Detroit, Philadelphia, @Charlotte, Chicago,
Orlando, New Jersey, @Chicago, Miami, @ Philadelphia, Detroit.

--now, say they lose both games to Philadelphia and Detroit, as well
as the New Orleans, Orlando, and one of the Chicago games.
That leaves them 4-7 the rest of the way.


Philadelphia: Chicago, Phoenix, @Cleveland, @New Jersey, @Atlanta,
Atlanta, Detroit, Indiana, @Washington, Cleveland, @Charlotte

--Again, they obviously have to win both Cleveland games. Say they
lose the tough games to Phoenix and Detroit (though both are at
home). Then they can lose either the Washington game or one of the
Atlanta games and if they beat the rest of the teams (all with losing
records) that would leave them 8-3. If Cleveland were to only manage
a 4-7 mark, they would then be tied and Philadelphia would win the
tiebreak having swept the series (they won their only matchup earlier
this year).


Obviously this is all speculative, but there's at least a reasonable
shot. Which of course is still really weird.


--IK

On Tue, 25 Mar 2008 22:19:14 -0700 (PDT), Ian Kognitow
<covanus RemoveThis @gmail.com> wrote:

>Well, here's another unexpected scenario. While the question has been
>around for a couple weeks whether the Sixers could move up to 6 to
>avoid Detroit or Boston in the first round, now they're only half a
>game out of 5, where they would play Cleveland--a team they would
>seemingly match up even better against than Orlando.
I agree that we match up better against the Cavs.

However, I'm not that big a believer in the whole seed thing. Either
we're good enough to win a series or we're not. Agreed that's more
likely against the Cavs or the Magic, but I'm not as interested in
winning the first round as I am in seeing improvement, and we have
that already.

IMO this is the most fun Sixers team to watch since we went to the
Championship. We even have a half court offense which is the biggest
surprise to me.