Following their embarrassing loss to Miami earlier this week, the Sixers looked to rebound in a big way tonight as they welcomed the San Antonio Spurs to the Wachovia center. The Sixer's don't have a good history against the Spurs and haven't won a game in San Antonio in quite a while. Fortunately they were home tonight. They actually got off to a bit of a slow start and trailed by 7 at the half. Then funny thing happened late in the 3rd quarter. Ticked off after his teammate, Elton Brand, was called for a charge, wiping away dunk that would have pulled his team within one, Samuel Dalembert let the officials have it and was given a technical, his 2nd in the game's last 30 seconds, and was ejected from the game to the displeasure of his teammates. Sammy's tirade turned out to be just what the doctored ordered for the Sixer's needed. They just fired up and suddenly turned on the afterburners, as the rest of the game turned in a fastbreak contest. With Tony Parker hobbled by ankle issues, San Antonio could not keep up and the Sixers ran away with a somewhat surprising 106-94 victory.
Compared to what they did against Miami tonight was a total 180 for the Sixers. They shot 51% from the field and out rebounded the taller Spurs 45-39. From beyond arc they only shot 25% with a couple treys, but they also only put up 8 treys so that didn't hurt them as much as it had against Miami. Conversely, San Antonio put up 21 treys but only hit 5 of them, that's just 23% , and that really killed their victory hopes for the night. As for the scoring, the Sixers got huge nights from Andre Iguodala and Lou Williams(off the bench) who each had put 20, as well as Brand who nearly joined them in the 20s with 18. Iggy also put up 9 rebounds and 8 assists to just miss a triple double. Other key Sixer efforts, were Thad Young with 12 off the bench, and Jrue Holiday with his best game, scoring 13, while dishing off 4 assists and racking up 5 rebounds. In his 2nd game back, AI once again struggled a bit with just 7 points, but he also pulled down 8 rebounds and dished off 4 assists, so he did enough. Finally Jodie Meeks made his Sixer's debut tonight and did well, nothing and I mean nothing, 0 points, 0 rebounds, 0 assists, 0 turnovers, 0 fouls, 0 blocks, and steals, all in a blistering 2 minute venture off the bench. Okay he did take a couple shots, but he missed them both. Hopefully he'll get better at some point.
The Sixers actually trailed by 3 heading into the 4th quarter, and coming into tonight they had only won 3 times when trailing to start the 4th quarter. So winning tonight was a huge step in the right direction for them. With the win the Sixers move to 21-33 overall, still 10th in the Eastern conference, 6.5 games out of 8th. So all in all this was an impressive way for the Sixers to rebound from the loss to Heat and hopefully they can keep it up.
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