In Defense of the Sixers.

Editor's Note:  This is a guest post by Symbol Lai.  She is a frequent contributor to The Diss.

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There seems to be a lot of unsupported, misplaced anger directe at the Philadelphia 76ers here at The Diss and in the basketball world at large lately.  Something must be said.

Understandably much of the "Sixers suck," "No sane analyst will pick the Sixers," and "They will be chased out of the stadium by Boston or Atlanta" prognoses stem from Philadelphia's unlikely victory over the top-seeded Bulls team that was both heavily favored to take the championship and the new NBA darling next to Oklahoma City.  Without a doubt, the Sixers were buoyed by injuries to the Bulls' two best players, Derrick Rose and Joakim Noah.  However, as a skeptical Sixers fan, who is not only doubtful of the organization's plan to build around coach Doug Collins, but also held out on joining the wave of Sixers playoff frenzy until tonight, when Andre Iguodala finally became the clutch player that the city had always wanted him to be, here is why I am not ashamed to be happy for our advance to the second round.

You see, despite the injures to Rose and Noah, the Bulls still could have -- no, should have -- won this series.  This Bulls team had an incredible season.  They managed to pull off the best record in the NBA despite a consistent string of injuries to key players.  They were very well constructed, with role players who could and did step up when needed.  They were extremely well coached by Tom Thibodeau, who almost won Coach of the Year an unprecedented two consecutive times.

This was a Bulls team whose opponent were the Philadelphia 76ers, who, while up and coming, are not complicated and rather predictable, perhaps due to a front office and coach that appear a little averse to change.  The same problems that I pointed out before All-Star break were the same problems that became painfully apparent as the season progressed.

1.  We have no half-court offense; if we want offense, we must create and convert fast break opportunities.

2.  We have no presence in the paint.  While Spencer Hawes is our 7-footer, he is by no means an indomitable force.  This is a guy that prefers shooting jump shots when he's literally two feet away from the basket rather than going for the surefire dunk.  (He usually misses those jump shots too).  And, for all his gifted passing abilities, I've only seen those skills on display in a handful of games.  Hawes simply hasn't been consistent since returning from his Achilles injury, particularly against opponents who are willing to apply some physical pressure.

3.  We are a skittish, young team, prone to make silly mistakes under pressure and likely to succumb to doomsday scenarios after a few missed shots.

Again, the 76ers are not a terrible, unwatchable team (when playing well, we're rather intriguing to watch I think).  But we are not all that hard to figure out.  This is not rocket science.  Any sports analyst, knowledgable Sixers fan -- hell, even I, a PhD student in History, who is not paid to break down basketball strategies  -- could have told this to the Bulls.  In fact, I daresay someone probably did in light of how Omer Asik and Carlos Boozer's physical play gave the Sixers fits in Games 5 and 6.

All this to say: in this series, the Bulls, who, under similar circumstances, had picked apart many worthy opponents in the past, simply did not perform.  They could have won, given how noticeable the Sixers' persistent weaknesses were.  They should have won, given an overall roster that is superior to the inexperienced and therefore inconsistent Sixers.  And they didn't.

This wasn't a question of the Sixers doing anything exceptionally well, but rather a matter of the Bulls not doing what they needed to do -- what they were fully capable of doing.  As such, I think a setting aside of our froofy playoff basketball tastes and re-evaluation of people's collective resentment towards the Sixers are in order.  Simply put, lower your noses and point those fingers elsewhere.  Finally, for the record, the Sixers took the series against Boston during the regular season.  We might not win, but it will be competitive.

Series of the Week: Chicago Bulls (1) versus Philadelphia 76ers (8).

Should we celebrate the rise of the Sixers?

You see, at some point this week, barring an incredible (but not impossible) comeback by the Bulls, the 2012 Philadelphia 76ers will join an elite crew of eighth seeds that upset their top seeded competitors.  The 1995 Denver Nuggets were the first, followed by the 1999 New York Knicks, the 2007 Golden State Warriors, and most recently, the 2011 Memphis Grizzlies.  In each of those cases, the underdog's victory was widely celebrated as a David-Goliath scenario, where a ragtag team of scrappers beat an arrogant and unprepared team of fat cats.  Many of these series have become emblematic of the playoffs itself, capturing ideas like hustle, determination, grit and intelligence, and the teams that completed the unlikely task of unseating the giant take their rightful places among the pantheon of NBA playoff greats.

However, this is not the narrative of this presumptive 1-8 upset.  Upsets in the past have had celebrated signature moments that become emblematic of the eighth seed's triumph.  Whether that's Mutombo's post-buzzer grasp on the game ball, Allan Houston's big shot, or Boom Dizzle's enormous dunk, each of these series has contained a singular event that fans and analysts can point to, and say, definitively, "this is where the giant fell, and this is when the meek inherited the Earth."  We need these moments to make sense of the upset; to provide an explanation as to how things went so right for the underdogs, and so horribly wrong for the presumed front runners.

This series' signature moment was terrible.  It occurred when Derrick Rose clutched his leg and crumpled to the floor, his anterior cruciate ligament shot, his face contorted with anguish and agony.  That has been -- and will be -- the defining moment of this series.  It had nothing to do with the 76ers, and everything to do with the Chicago Bulls.  It was at that moment, that awful, deplorable moment, when the Sixers were reluctantly raised into the pantheon, whether they, their fans, and observers of the NBA were ready for them or not.  Now, we have watched them eke out three victories against a Bulls team missing its two most important players (apologies to Luol Deng and Carlos Boozer), a regular season sheep in a playoff wolf's skin.

So what are we supposed to do with this red-headed second round darling?  Unlike the Nuggets, Knicks, Warriors and Grizzlies of the past, there is no swelling pride or excitement for this team.  It is largely assumed that these Sixers were well on their way to a 4-0 or, at best, 4-1 defeat at the hands of the mechanically efficient Bulls.  Moreover, we wanted them to be quickly dispatched by the Bulls.  Casual fans of the NBA had no desire to see the Bulls get upset in the first round.  Our hearts were set on a Miami-Chicago Eastern Conference Finals, followed ideally by a Bulls-Thunder or Bulls-Lakers finals.  Derrick Rose and company were going to bring the Finals back to the United Center, conjuring memories of Jordan, Pippen and Phil Jackson back in the nineties.  It was the Bulls year, and the Sixers were just a step along the way.  However, that assumption has fallen apart, and we are looking seriously at a Sixers-Celtics semifinal match in the second round.

No one was ready for this -- perhaps not even Philadelphia itself.  National pundits struggle to offer meaningful commentary about the team since no one watched them the entire season. Local analysts hesitatingly congratulate a team they were ready to dissect due to their regular season inconsistencies and troubling long term prospects.  Indeed, it seems as if most people were ready to watch the Sixers flame out in the playoffs, so they could get to the questions they really want to ask.  Questions like:  Would they fire Doug Collins, who was seemingly tuned out by his players at the end of the season?  Would they trade Andre Iguodala, the talented but limited star?  Would they amnesty Elton Brand, a quintessential professional whose athletic talents have all but disappeared?  Would they figure out what to do with swingman Evan Turner, whose flashes of brilliance, at least in the playoffs, have consistently superseded his stretches of inconsistency and ineptitude?  These were the questions on everyone's mind.

But for the time being, those questions must wait.  Now, we must wonder what types of matchup problems Rondo will cause for Philadelphia's backcourt, or if Iggy can take advantage of a hobbled Paul Pierce.  We must wonder how Elton Brand's going to deal with Kevin Garnett, and if Lou Williams is going to be able to score against Boston's brilliant on ball defenders.  We'll have to wonder if Spencer Hawes can keep playing well, and if Doug Collins can possibly out-coach Doc Rivers.  The eighth seed out East is about to complete a historic upset that none of us want, and there's nothing we can do to stop it.

The Sixers are on their way to the second round of the playoffs.  It's something we're just going to have to deal with, and wonder if things could have been different.