<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">For three weeks of preseason, the 76ers have had defensive concepts and defensive principles and defensive strategies drummed into their heads so much that maybe they've been walking down the street to an imaginary chant of "defense, defense." But Sixers coach Maurice Cheeks certainly doesn't want to see his team play defense with the same lack of concentration and togetherness it showed last season, so he harps about what's happening at that end of the floor. And so far, he said yesterday, there has been improvement. "The progress has been good," Cheeks said after practice at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine. "One thing we have to do to get better is taking away the layups. Closing out the middle helps our rebounding, the dribble penetration, and forcing guys to the baseline, getting back in transition, all those things. "You hear guys talking about it on the floor, which is going to pay dividends for us because defense is about communication. I think our communication has gotten much better. But taking away layups and rebounding the basketball, those are the two things we're emphasizing on defense." The Sixers had allowed opponents to shoot just 40.5 percent from the field in their first four exhibition games. But in Friday night's 102-92 loss at New Jersey, the Nets shot better than 50 percent in each half and finished the game with a 53.7 percent mark. In the second quarter, eight of New Jersey's 10 field goals came on dunks or layups. But to Cheeks' satisfaction, the Sixers picked it up defensively in the second half. The Nets scored 17 baskets in the final two quarters but only six on layups or dunks. They had 12 points in the paint in the second half compared to 30 in the first half. "The biggest thing is that we gave up too many layups in the first half," Cheeks said. "That put us in the hole. We got ourselves back in the game in the second half. But our defense has to get better, which we'll keep working on. There's where our focus is at, getting better individually and as a group." Veteran Kevin Ollie, who started at guard against the Nets, called the defense "a work in progress." "We're getting better each and every night and we're just going to continue to build," Ollie said. "We've been working on keeping people out of the middle. Our perimeter defense has got to be better and that comes with me, Allen [Iverson], Andre [Iguodala] stopping people from breaking us down and getting in the paint. "Nobody said it was going to be done easy. It's going to take these games to continue to prepare ourselves and work and come in and practice and do our schemes. We're making progress." The Sixers will see the New York Knicks and the Nets this week in their final two preseason games and will carry on in their quest to make their defense better. They hope to have starting center Samuel Dalembert back, at least for the last game, from a strained left hamstring. "We'll hopefully get Sam back at some point, get everybody out on the floor at one point together," Cheeks said. "That's our goal, not necessarily where we're trying to win games but to try to get guys on the floor that are going to be together and get some continuity." </div> Link Good to hear. Considering how bad we were at defense last season, anything can be called an improvement
