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Is This Sixers Team a Legit Contender?

B-Dub Written by B-Dub, Tuesday January 17 2012
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In this lockout-shortened NBA season, the 66-game season is now roughly 20 percent over for most of the teams.  I bring this up because I have just recently woken up from my NFL coma.

You see, as a fan of the Philadelphia Eagles, this is the time of year that my team normally rips my heart out through my beating chest and shows it to me in one hand, while holding a fistful of my cash in the other hand.  This year the team did it a bit earlier than usual, but as always, I am looking for something to fill the void in my sports world.

It's still two months until pitchers and catchers report to Spring Training, so I usually check out what my Philadelphia 76ers are doing.  In the last decade, the Sixers have been more pretenders than contenders.  Not quite good enough to have any chance of winning a championship, but not quite bad enough to get the top pick in the draft.  It is basketball purgatory.

So I was a bit surprised to look at the standings and see that the Sixers are currently leading the Atlantic Division.  Even more amazing is the fact that only two teams in the entire NBA have more wins than the Sixers' 10; the San Antonio Spurs and Oklahoma City Thunder, who both have 12.

I looked at my calendar to confirm that it is 2012 and not 2000 again.  The Sixers are still led by an A.I., but it is the perfectly mediocre Andre Iguodala and not the electric Allen Iverson.  Doug Collins is a part of the team, but he is the coach, not an NBA Finals teammate of Julius Erving.  So how is this possible?

The Sixers are the same team that finished as the very definition of average last season, with a 41-41 record.  The team was ushered out of the playoffs last season by the "Dream Team" (The real one in Miami) and came back this season with the same exact roster except for rookie center Nikola Vucevic.  So how on earth are they currently the No. 2 seed in the East?

The answer is something that rarely exists in the NBA anymore.  The Philadelphia 76ers are a team.  Say that word with me; "Team".

The word "team" is a foreign concept in today's superstar-driven NBA.  The days of playing good defense and balanced offense are a thing of the past.  Long-gone are the days of Pat Riley's Knicks beating up opponents or the Bad Boys in Detroit of Laimbeer and Mahorn making every trip into the paint a life or death ordeal.      

Today, it's all about isolation plays, highlight-reel dunks and refs forgetting a little thing called "traveling".  

But these Sixers are somewhat of a throw-back to the old days and that is solely because of Collins.  Normally it's a bad sign when the best marketing tool for a franchise is the head coach, but in Philadelphia we love our legends.  Collins had a great career, but it was cut short by injury.  What really endeared him to the current fanbase is that he actually wanted to come back and coach the Sixers.  When you stink, it's nice to be wanted.

Collins took over a horrible team and made them respectable last season.  The team was sold in the offseason, but the new owners knew they had to keep Collins and build around him.  As strange as that may sound, it seems to be working.

Collins thought the best way to approach this lockout-shortened season was to stay the course with the current roster.  He figured that the players' familiarity with what he wanted would give his team an advantage early, while other teams struggled to get their footing.  The early results seem to suggest that he was right.

"If we just play as a team, if we're well conditioned, if we compete every night, we'll win games just because some teams don't want to play every night," Collins said on Monday after the Sixers beat the Milwaukee Bucks 94-82.

What Collins meant was that his team without a superstar needs to get contributions from basically every player on the roster.  On any given night a different player may step up and provide the difference.  Iguodala and Elton Brand are the former all-stars who play an important role on the team, but they don't carry this team.

Lou Williams leads the team in scoring, yet he isn't even a starter.  Point guard Jrue Holiday was supposed to be the future star of the team, yet he is content to let his teammates step up and win the game.  Against the Bucks, center Spencer Hawes recorded his sixth double-double of the season (11 points, 10 rebounds) after he had seven in the entire season last year.  The second pick of the NBA draft last year, Evan Turner is content to come off the bench and Thaddeus Young re-signed with the team to join Turner and Williams as a group of super subs for the surprising Sixers.

Actually, the Sixers bench often outscores the starting unit.  That doesn't seem to bother any of these players, as long as they win.  

That unselfish approach and their commitment to Collins' defensive approach has made them a legitimate contender for the first time in a decade.  

"They don't really have a superstar player," Bucks center Andrew Bogut said.  "That's what makes them so tough.  They are very, very balanced."  And so far that has been a key to winning in this compressed schedule that includes less days off and more back-to-back-to-back games than ever before.

"What they have done really well this year is they have some guys that are very good with the ball," Milwaukee coach Scott Skiles said.  "But when a guy is open, he gets the ball.  And he gets it on time and on target.  They are playing unselfishly.  They have guys that can do things with the ball, but they sacrifice and spread the ball around, and it makes them difficult to defend."

It almost sounds like an old 76ers coach who used to preach about "playing the right way", doesn't it?  

This current version of the Philadelphia 76ers might not be good enough to really compete for an NBA Championship just yet, but they certainly would make Larry Brown proud.  And they are making Doug Collins proud as well.  

In a game where the best player was the opposing center (Bogut), Collins dug deep onto his bench for veteran Tony Battie.  Bogut is a presence down in the blocks, so Collins wanted some beef down low to deal with him.  At one point in the fourth quarter with the Sixers up by nine, Bogut got the ball down low.  Before he could even make a move, Battie had knocked the ball off of his knee and it was Sixers ball.  As Battie ran back down the court he received a hand-stinging high five from Collins.

The Sixers are No. 4 in the NBA in scoring, yet they don't have a single player among the top 41 scorers.  Sixth-man Lou Williams comes in at 42 on the list.  The play tough defense and are among the league leaders in fewest points allowed and opponents field goal percentage.        

In a league driven by superstars and highlight-reel plays, the Sixers are winning without either of those things.  The Sixers are bucking the trend and winning as a team.  

They've been an afterthought in the Philadelphia sports scene for most of their existence, but maybe this "team" of blue-collar players can once again captivate this blue-collar town.  They're certainly off to a good start.
 

 


Tags:  66-game NBA season, AI, Allen Iverson, Andre Iguodala, Atlantic Division, Doug Collins, Dream Team, Julius Erving, Miami Heat, NBA, NBA lockout, Nikola Vucevic, Oklahoma City Thunder, Philadelphia 76ers, Philadelphia Eagles, San Antonio Spurs, Sixers



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