Thread: The Sixers Thread.

He is dominating D-Leaguers right now.

Yeah, and I know nothing about basketball. Nothing. Never heard of it until last week.

Originally Posted by CasinoRoyal

The sharpest tool? This is basketball nobody is asking him to go teach calculas at the University of Harvard....I get it though because a guy can slip to 16 and Philly is an upcoming team guys want to Nit pick at my boy. Does not matter though because everything you all are saying is bullshit untill proven otherwise. As far as right now goes? He is dominating and playing with heart on offense and defense. Hes the one playing with the most emotion. Imagine an NBA GM saying they dont want great talent because he cant trach calculas in college or something. Lol. You dudes just keep hoping for the worst while watching him at his best.

It's remarks like this that make people come at you. The "otherwise" in this case is him actually showing consistent effort and positive attitude for the duration of a season. His history is the opposite. So basically, your commenst are the bullshit of the thread...and need to be proven. You can pretend to be the victim of Philly haters, but honestly, who care about the 76ers enough to go out of their way to hate. We're simply discussing truths about the player you are overhyping for his D-League play.

Dominated college also playing little minutes.

Originally Posted by SmilinAssasSin27

It's remarks like this that make people come at you. The "otherwise" in this case is him actually showing consistent effort and positive attitude for the duration of a season. His history is the opposite. So basically, your commenst are the bullshit of the thread...and need to be proven. You can pretend to be the victim of Philly haters, but honestly, who care about the 76ers enough to go out of their way to hate. We're simply discussing truths about the player you are overhyping for his D-League play.

Nobody comes at me, Ive took my fair share of shots. The guys say there just busting balls. So oh well none of that matters. If something is bullshit then thats just what it is. The past is what makes or breaks a man. Speights gets it and is going hard regardless of the level of competition. Its the heart and fire you want to see not if he can score, rebound and block shots. We already know he can do all of that. Its the heart and passion thats standing out. DLeague or not. Let me guess NFl training camp/ Pre season does not matter to young guys either huh? But im sure your looking forward to it. This is just a case where your team has no young studs who is standing out at anything. So you have nothing to watch as far as the summer league goes. You can keep mentioning his past while he tears of the league in the presence.

Trust me, I know what yer saying. I get that not much is goin on and I get that he's exciting and new to your team. I get the same way. Again, if he turns his attitude around long term, more power to him. But to insinuate that his attitude is "fixed" by a quote or two and a week of Summer League may me a bit premature.

It's been a pleasure bantering w/ ya. I have a picnic to go to.

Go Spurs Go!

Originally Posted by SmilinAssasSin27

It's been a pleasure bantering w/ ya. I have a picnic to go to.

Go Spurs Go!

Thats cool have fun with that, Atleast you didnt take things personal like somebody.

Originally Posted by CasinoRoyal

The sharpest tool? This is basketball nobody is asking him to go teach calculas at the University of Harvard....I get it though because a guy can slip to 16 and Philly is an upcoming team guys want to Nit pick at my boy. Does not matter though because everything you all are saying is bullshit untill proven otherwise. As far as right now goes? He is dominating and playing with heart on offense and defense. Hes the one playing with the most emotion. Imagine an NBA GM saying they dont want great talent because he cant trach calculas in college or something. Lol. You dudes just keep hoping for the worst while watching him at his best.

My opinions of him have nothing to do with which team he was drafted by or where in the draft he was taken. I didn't like him before the draft and I still don't like him.

In other news, Morris Almond scored 50 twice in the DLeague last season. Summer league ball is not a good way to evaluate a player whether they are tearing it up or playing terrible. It is basically pickup ball out there and athleticism rules all. It is a pretty poor indicator of how they are going to do in a structured 5 on 5 setting against NBA competition IMO.

Summer League wrap up from ESPN


My Favorite Sixer: Marreese Speights
Even though he spells his first name funny, I was thoroughly impressed with the play of Speights, who was one of just three players to average a double-double (Minnesota's Kevin Love and Denver's Elton Brown were the other two). The 6-foot-10 power forward averaged 18.2 points and was second in the league in rebounds (10.2) and blocked shots (2.2). With his ability to finish around the rim and attack the glass, he could eventually be the perfect backup for Elton Brand and Samuel Dalembert.

he 76ers have been waiting for a force like Elton Brand to show up. How long? Not since Moses Malone and Charles Barkley were in town has Philly had a power player with the prowess of Brand.
Elton Brand is expected to become a Sixer, and let's just say the Eastern Conference race is now a lot more interesting.

Are the Philadelphia 76ers, as presently constituted, good enough to win the East in the 2008-09 season? Doubtful.

But are the Sixers good enough to win a playoff series or two and scare the bejeezus out of Detroit and Boston? You bet. And if they add a shooter and get another year of growth from all their young studs, will they be in position to win the conference in 2010? Absolutely.

It's amazing to think this is the same team that dealt Allen Iverson less than two years ago because their prospects had become so grim, and the same squad that fired general manager Billy King last winter in the wake of several awful contracts.

The Sixers' turnaround may not seem fast compared to Boston's worst-to-first U-turn, but has been amazingly swift by anyone else's standards. Even without Brand, Philly had rebounded impressively enough from a 5-13 start to take the Pistons to six tough games in the first round of the playoffs this spring. And Philly did this with two gaping, open sores on their roster: power forward and shooting guard.

Brand, obviously, fills the power forward slot quite nicely and gives the Sixers the half-court, low-post threat they so obviously needed. Philadelphia's primary option there last season was Reggie Evans, a warrior and a gamer whose low skill level is reflected in his stats: a pedestrian 11.05 player efficiency rating, just 9.0 points per 40 minutes and 43.8 percent shooting. The Sixers also used Thaddeus Young, a teenaged rookie who is going to be unbelievably good but was undersized for the 4 spot at 6-foot-8, 220 pounds, and another, much less impressive rookie in Jason Smith.



Now they can replace Evans and Smith with Brand, move Young back to his natural small forward spot, and plug Evans into the backup big man role that he was meant to play. Plus, moving Young to small forward means moving Andre Iguodala to shooting guard, which takes care of the other problem in the Sixers' starting lineup.



Willie Green moves to the bench and soaks up the minutes vacated by the trade of Rodney Carney, Louis Williams stays in his sixth-man Microwave role behind Andre Miller at the point, and everybody lives happily ever after.

Here's how the math works. Let's be conservative and say Brand isn't quite the player he was before the Achilles injury, and puts up a PER of "only" about 20. (His career PER is 22.7, and not counting his 2007-08 lost season, his lowest mark in L.A. was 21.7.) That's still better than anybody on the Sixers had last season, and nearly doubles the PER of Evans and Smith. My basic rule of thumb is every additional point of PER over 2,000 minutes of play is worth an additional win, meaning replacing the Smith/Evans combo with Brand should be worth nearly 10 wins.

If so, that takes the Sixers from 42.5 wins a season ago (their expected wins based on their point differential) to 52 in 2008-09.

And 52 wins in the East makes you a pretty strong contender.

That, mind you, is without considering any improvement from the rest of the roster. But one has to think the Sixers would have been better in the coming season even without adding Brand. Consider that Young boasted a 16.58 PER as a 19-year-old rookie last season even while playing half his minutes out of position, or that Williams was at 16.71 when he should have been a junior in college, or that Smith can still get better and first-round pick Marreese Speights should provide added frontcourt beef.

Conversely, the only key player one could reliably expect to perform worse than last season is Miller, a 32-year-old point guard. Even here, the Sixers are somewhat insured -- he's in his walk year, and Williams is waiting in the wings.

If there's a reason the Celtics shouldn't be exactly quaking in their boots quite yet, it's because Philly still has one glaring weakness: outside shooting. Philly was last in 3-point percentage last season and at some point the Sixers need to get a shooter to make defenses pay for double-teaming Brand and collapsing against the drives of Iguodala, Miller and Young.

Unfortunately, the Sixers had to trade an ace shooter, Kyle Korver, in order to generate the cap space to bring in Brand. It's a deal they'd do again in a heartbeat, obviously, but it's also somewhat ironic. Fortunately, they're now in position to nab prospective veteran free agents who are looking to join a contender -- a status that was unthinkable nine months ago -- and should be able to pick up a shooter on the cheap at some point between now and the playoffs.

Philly also has to do some housekeeping by retaining Iguodala -- a restricted free agent who could become the target of a big-money raid by the Clippers, especially if they're hell-bent on revenge -- and Williams, who is also restricted. But that shouldn't be a major obstacle given their solid cap position and ability to match any offer.

Even with poor shooting, the Sixers should ascend into the East's upper crust. Boston and Detroit are obviously where the discussion begins in this conference, and Orlando (which made an underrated pickup of their own today in Mickael Pietrus), Cleveland and perhaps Toronto also have to be seen as strong threats.



But none of those teams bursts with potential the way Philly does, and now the Sixers have a 29-year-old low-post rock to be the centerpiece. Much like Kevin Garnett in Boston, Brand could become the key piece to a conference champion. The big difference is that, given his new team's youth, in Brand's case it will likely take more than a year to break through.