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Monday, December 4 Time for Philly to meet some real teams By Mitch Lawrence Special to ESPN.com |
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NEW YORK -- OK, Allen and Larry, let's see how you do against the varsity now.
The Sixers have been beating up on the JV, winning 13 of 14 against the Eastern Conference's Sisters of the Poor and posting a 14-2 mark overall. But Tuesday, the fun and games end when they play the Lakers in L.A. The next game isn't easy, either, with a date Friday in Portland against the Blazers. If the Sixers get deep-sixed in either place, even with the Lakers and Portland not exactly playing at the tops of their games, no one will be shocked. The East is that bad. Philly's big men figure to get manhandled by Shaquille O'Neal -- if Kobe Bryant ever wants to pass the reigning MVP the ball. "This will be a good gauge of how good Philly really is," said one Eastern Conference VP. "They've been killing the rest of our conference. But are they any better than Dallas? Probably not. And you have to look at what happened when they played the Spurs." Do we have really to? That's like gawking at a train wreck. The Sixers got crushed on Nov. 25 at San Antonio 96-76. In their only other game against a Western Conference team, they nipped the T-Wolves. At least their 1-1 record against the West is better than the rest of the East. Going into the week, the West had won 47 of 73 games against the East. Can you say, total domination? "They'd be in the middle of the pack if they were in the West," Minnesota's Chauncey Billups said. "And we'd probably be one of the top teams in the East. That's just the way it is." It's called total disparity. How bad is it? At the start of the week, the Midwest Division had more teams with winning records than the entire Eastern Conference. But what's Philly gonna do, apologize for its schedule? Before playing Monday in Denver, they still were one of the top defensive teams around, giving up the second-fewest points in the NBA (83.9), while holding opponents to 39.8 percent shooting -- the best of any team. And they were 3-0 in games decided by three points or less. So far, Allen Iverson and Larry Brown haven't had any major run-ins, either. All's been well in the City of Brotherly Love. "They're like the Knicks of the mid-90's," Charles Oakley said recently. "They don't have a lot of talent. But they've got guys who play defense, hustle for loose balls, rebound and play well together. And other than Charlotte, they're the only team in the East with any kind of size. The West has all the size and all the big guys. The East is like the Rucker League. Just a bunch of guys running around putting up shots." Tuesday in Staples Center, the Sixers get to play against the real NBA.
Rim Shots
"That's because Gary is on trial for the rest of the season, and he knows it," said Karl, the ex-Sonics coach. "After this year, who knows if it will work. But the thing about Gary is, you get him behind closed doors, get him face-to-face, you tell him what you want him to do, and he'll go out and do it. When it's one on one, there's a lot of pussycat in Gary." But Paul Westphal only saw the tiger. Speaking of the ex-Sonics coach, he left town confiding that he had no idea that Patrick Ewing had lost so much. Didn't they check the tapes before making that deal?
"You know what, their job is to play and mine is to coach," said Jeff Van Gundy, not at all happy about Rice's comments. "I'll make the decisions."
Rim Shots II
Mitch Lawrence, who covers the NBA for the New York Daily News, writes a regular NBA column for ESPN.com. |
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