Lyon: Sixers Can’t Quite Pass Knicks Test
Early January. The Garden. Madison Square Garden. Mecca for hoop heads. Located on the Island of Manhattan, where, according to the lyrics, if you can make it there you can make it anywhere.
Which, conveniently enough, is exactly what the 76ers are trying to do on this fog-shrouded night. Stamp themselves as legit. Specifically, convince the skeptics that they are for real, that their out-of-the-gate 7-2 record is not a mirage, and is more, way, way more, than a succession of blowouts against opponents who barely have a pulse.
Alas, that closing argument will have to wait for another time. The Sixers lost to the Knicks, but only by a half dozen, and in the process they didn’t resemble at all the frauds some doubters had suggested.
They fought the good fight in what turned out to be a corking good game, complete with blood on the court, double technicals, some glares and stares, a little bit of posturing and a whole lot of trash talking, some thunder dunking and some rainbow 3’s.
Philly-New York has always been a contentious rivalry and this one did nothing to diminish it.
The Sixers, as most of the civilized world knows by now, came in with the handicap equivalent of one hand tied behind their backs. Their impost was three games all in a row. Lunacy, in short. Back-to-…well, you know it by heart by now.
And yet, here is a real puzzler: The record for those teams playing the third game in as many nights was 6-1. How can that be?
The Sixers also had another handicap. Their center, the vastly improved Spencer Hawes, was a late scratch due to back miseries, first suffered, apparently, one game back. The Sixers said he was held out as a precautionary measure, which was both prudent and wise. In this season of the compacted schedule, better to miss one game than play and suffer re-injury. Two weeks is but a pit stop in a normal season, but could be close to a dozen games in this destructive climate.
The Sixers had some built-in excuses for the loss, but, good for them, they weren’t composing alibis. After all, every other team in the NBA is going to have to run that back-to-back-to-back gauntlet, and twice to boot.
And as for Hawes’ absence, some of those teams the Sixers were blowing up were playing without key performers. In other words, it all evens out in the end, so no whining allowed.
Hawes’ place in the pivot was taken by the Sixers’ resident elder, Elton Brand, who did yeoman work even when giving away sizable size to the Knicks’ formidable, and tall, front court.
The Knicks’ talented tandem of Carmelo Anthony and Amar’e Stoudemire combined for 47 points. Stoudemire took an elbow in the chops and sprang a leak and repaired to the bench for brushing off. Anthony and Andre Iguodala got into it, an old-fashioned dust up with jawing and playground histrionics that got the crowd into it. Iguodala, on one of those snarling attack dog runs he sometimes unleashes, threw down a pair of seismic boom dunks sandwiched around a long, long jumper, while Anthony posted him up and feathered in a string of velvet jump shots.
So then, it was an evening of most satisfactory entertainment, but what did we learn?
Well, the Knicks are well-armed and they own, as is the trend these days, one of those best teams that money can buy, and the Sixers are young and eager and enthusiastic and play their guts out every night.
Their winning streak was stopped at six. No time to mourn, though. They can start another one Friday.
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