Philadelphia 76ers: Signs Of Promise, Long Road Ahead
By Cody Daniel
Just as we all could have guessed before the season, the 76ers are still winless at 0-4 after falling to the Houston Rockets Monday night. Although they are showing signs of improvement and guys like Nerlens Noel and K.J. McDaniels are becoming even more exciting to watch with each game, there’s still a lengthy list of areas Philadelphia can improve upon.
Let’s go ahead and get the bad news out of the way, which included some more scoring droughts, turnovers and perimeter defense.
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Although they didn’t suffer the horrendous single-digit scoring quarters they have dragged through already this season, Philly did still have their stretches where scoring was at a premium, as seen practically every quarter of the game outside of their 35-point explosion in the second quarter.
At one point in the third, the Sixers gave up a 12-0 run only moments after finally getting ahead on the scoreboard. It’s things like that the Sixers can’t do if they expect to still be in the game in the final minutes.
Then, as usual, there’s the turnover issue as the Sixers had 17 last night. This is to be expected when you have such a young and inexperienced product on the floor every night, but when a huge chunk of the opponents points come off of turnovers, it becomes an even more glaring issue, which, leads me to my next point of perimeter defense.
There’s nothing you can really do when I team is just on fire from deep, but there can definitely be some adjustments made when they’re hitting so many threes because of porous defense in transition after turnovers. That and the fact that Philly left some knockdown shooters wide open on several occasions.
But there are things to take away from Monday night’s performance that should provide reason for optimism among the winless season.
Most notably was the performance by Nerlens Noel and his tremendous rejection on James Harden as the third quarter clock expired. In addition to his highlight block, Noel showed off some offensive moves in route to 10 points on 5-of-8 shooting.
But any time you can get six steals out of your big man, there’s always something to be proud of, at least if you’re a Sixers’ fan.
Something also worth touching on is that these aren’t the Sixers of last season who are going to get blown out on a nightly basis. No, these guys compete now and have still been in the mix of all four losses until about the last 6-8 minutes of the game.
A large part of this can be credited to guy going all in on just about every play and when you can get six players in double digits, you’re almost sure to at least have a fighting chance to come out on top.
Overall, yes, the Sixers are still bad, but they’re unquestionably showing signs of improvement and at least they are starting to be fun to watch.
With Michael-Carter-Williams set to be back in action Nov. 13, the Sixers will be able to add some much-needed talent and experience to the roster and at that point, they might actually be able to steal a few wins.