<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">By late Saturday night, the Sixers were 10-11, and by percentage points (.476 to the Nets' .474) were back in first place in the Atlantic Division. Whatever else might be going on, Barkley was told that Cheeks' arrival had done wonders for morale in every facet of the organization. "I've always wondered about morale," Barkley said, addressing the issue in general terms rather than specifically to the Sixers. "Guys have got to go play. When guys rebel, that's a bad sign. They've got to learn to play. I wonder why young players today worry so much about who's coaching. I never worried about that. Billy Cunningham was really hard on me, but that never affected the way I played, and he was the best coach I ever had. "I hear stuff about old school vs. young school; we were some hardheads, and I know I could sometimes be nutty, but we went out and played. We put the uniform on and brought it. Sometimes, what I see today, it's frustrating covering it. Two of the most bogus phrases I hear are 'too disciplined,' and 'players' coach.' When you win, you have a players' coach; when you lose, you hear that you have no discipline. You've got to go play." As for the Sixers... "There's no excuse for them to be a bad rebounding team," he said. "With Samuel Dalembert, Chris Webber and Andre Iguodala, they should dominate in rebounding. There's no excuse for them not being a good team; they've got good players. Kyle Korver should be good in halfcourt, and when they're running and gunning [an opponent], seeing Allen Iverson and Iguodala coming at them full speed should be a scary thought." Defense was not an issue against the Nets. The Sixers shot 56.9 percent from the floor. Iverson piled up 42 points, his fifth performance of at least 40 in the last nine games. Korver drained 10 of his shots - five of six three-pointers - to score 25, giving him a 51-point weekend, and the first back-to-back games of at least 20 in his career. There was, of course, the requisite postgame lament in the Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J.: "We know what our record indicates. We're a game under .500. Sometimes we do it right, sometimes we do it wrong. Until we figure out [how] we're going to do it right every single time, that's what our record's going to be." But the words hadn't come from Cheeks. They had come from Lawrence Frank, whose Nets were now 9-10. At least for the weekend, Barkley, watching from a distance, could feel a little better about his old friend and teammate.</div> Source
