PHILADELPHIA – The numbers uglying up the boxscore were making non-believers of many at the Wells Fargo Center Friday night. Some left early. Others stayed but with little hope that the Philadelphia 76ers could dig themselves out with so little going their way.
After living through it once, the Sixers got to see it again on video. By the time they gathered midday Saturday for their film session, they knew how the story ended – a 79-74 victory over Chicago in Game 3 of their Eastern Conference first-round series. And even then it was hard to believe, the way the negatives stacked against them.
“I stopped the tape and it was 69-56 with, like, 9:13 to go,” head coach Doug Collins said at the team’s practice facility. “And I said, ‘How many people watching the game or in the arena last night gave you any chance to win this game? Ain’t anybody outside this room thought we were going to win that game. But you did it. And that’s what you have to do. Those are the kinds of games we have to find a way.’ Our guys summoned up a way to do it.”
Fran Blinebury: Taking you at your word — pseudo-contender — then the biggest fake in the league was the notion that the Knicks could combine Jeremy Lin with Amar’e Stoudemire and Carmelo Anthony to make noise in the playoffs. In two weeks, we have gone from Linsanity to Linadequate and Linsufferable watching Melo and coach Mike D’Antoni do their dance of mistrust. The Knicks need a makeover. What they’ll likely get instead is D’Antoni’s head.
Fran Blinebury: C’mon, don’t tell me you expected a Sixers team that opened the season with a five-game road trip to be sniffing the same rarified air as the Heat and Bulls even two weeks into the schedule. Doug Collins has built on last season’s foundation and has Philly playing hard and with a sense of togetherness. As John Schuhmann noted in the Hang Time blog, it’s the Sixers’ bench led by Thaddeus Young that has bumped them up to the next level. With rookie Nic Vucevic capably backing up an improved Spencer Hawes, they also have legitimate size and presence in the middle. The Sixers are a fun team worth watching. If only the fans of Philly would notice.
