<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">ATLANTA, March 5 (Ticker) -- Marc Jackson and the Philadelphia 76ers clearly have been practicing their free throws. Jackson, who made all seven of his attempts from the line, sank a pair with 1.2 seconds left to lift the 76ers to a 98-97 triumph over the Atlanta Hawks, whose losing streak reached 11 games. Allen Iverson, who scored 33 points and clinched the game with a steal, sank all 13 of his free throws for Philadelphia, which connected on 30-of-34 from the stripe. Philadelphia held a 96-95 lead when Atlanta guard Tyronn Lue picked up his sixth foul pushing off on Iverson with 41 seconds left. But Chris Webber, who scored 18 points, passed the ball out of bounds with 22 seconds remaining and, after a timeout, Tom Gugliotta nailed a jumper from the baseline to give Atlanta a 97-96 edge with 17.3 seconds to play. The 35-year-old Gugliotta was left open when Webber went to double-team a driving Al Harrington and was a step slow rotating back when Harrington passed. </div> Link: http://www.nba.com/games/20050305/PHIATL/recap.html I was going to be really ticked off if the 6ers lossed that game last night. We talkin about playing the worst team in the league the last 15 years or so.
Good news, a loss would be hard to take. Can you imagine how gutted Jackson wpould be if he missed those free throws!?
Not the best win, but a win is a win. The 76ers main focus heading into this season was to go over the .500 mark. Now as we're getting towards that mark we would think that everything is said and done, and playing in the AD and having .500 record would be good enough for first place. However, Boston is not playing. They're about 3 games over .500 and we must catch up. Playing the type of game we did last night is not acceptable. We have to step up big time and not let this happen again. Every game is a pivotal game for us in our quest to take the lead in our division so we cannot let games like this get away from us. Fortunately we won but at the same time it shouldn?t have been this close. We have an easy schedule ahead which is again teams such as the Warriors, Toronto and Bobcats. So we must take advantage of these games and not let happen in Atlanta happen again. But everything I said is easier said that done. What the 76ers need to do, is play with each other. A lot of our guys particularly Allen Iverson scores only on isolation plays. We only had a mere 14 assists against Atlanta. That is not a good statistic, this just shows that a lot of our points came off of isolation plays. And looking at our roster, we can?t risk having to score on isolation plays all the time. The 76ers must play with each other and play team ball. With Webber coming I thought our assists average would sky rocket, but it merely stayed the same. So again, the 76rs must play team ball and play off the ball as well and not just stand around and be spectators and watch one another struggle to create their own shot.
This is just one of the ugly wins that a baskletball team will go through at times. The good thing is that no matter what happened through out the game, we made plays at the end to pull it out. And a win is a win like every said, so the 76ers are still on the right track. But still we shouldn't struggle like we did to beat this Hawks team uner any condition.
