In Defense of the Sixers.

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

*****

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.

Have Mercy on the Undeserving.

So let's talk about mercy.

After heaping praise on a Mavericks team that had slept through most of the regular season, but had impressed me after two highly spirited playoff performances,  the boys in blue let me down tonight.  A  95-79 defeat essentially ended the Mavericks' season.  Dirk Nowitzki delivered a stinker of a performance -- 17 points and nine rebounds on only 40% shooting, as well as three missed free throws -- and the rest of the team looked uninspired and largely defeated.  As fans started streaming towards the exits with about eight minutes left in the fourth, the air left the building and the Mavericks' title defense ended.

But that's the thing.  It's not over!  There's still one more game left to play.  The Mavericks will have one more chance to keep their season alive.  Then, after that, they'll have to win another game.  And another.  And another.  In other words, they'll have to beat the Thunder four times in a row. Or, if you prefer, the Thunder will have to go on a four game losing streak -- something they haven't done in over two seasons -- in order to face the winner of the Lakers-Nuggets series in the second round.  Simply put, it's not gonna happen.

In this week's roundtable, we discussed whether we preferred a five-game series or a seven-game series in the first round.  Most of us voted for the bygone five-game series, as it offered (presumably) a better chance for an upset, and wrapped up lopsided matchups rather quickly.  On the other hand, the seven-game series has been a saving grace for a number of teams.  The 2002-03 Detroit Pistons saved themselves after falling behind 3-1 in a first round series against the Orlando Magic, and won the series 4-3.  The 2009-10 Atlanta Hawks, who had lost three straight to the Bucks after going up 2-0 in their first round series, won two straight to advance.  Obviously, there are situations where seven games can be useful.  But 3-0 is not one of those situations.  No team in NBA history has ever come back from a 3-0 deficit.  Alternatively, no NBA team has ever blown a 3-0 lead in a series.  It just doesn't happen in this sport.

So what to do?  I don't want to watch a Game 4 in this series that just prolongs the inevitable.  Further, I would guess that neither team really wants to play in a Game 4.  The Mavericks would just as soon get their offseason started.  The Thunder would appreciate the extra rest as they get ready for the Lakers (sorry Nuggets fans).  Neither team wants to incur any injuries in an essentially meaningless game.  There has to be a solution.

So how about something like a mercy rule?  Jason Angeles, who watched Game 3 with me, suggested that once a team goes up 3-0 -- or, if you like half-empty glasses, that a team falls behind 0-3 -- you call it.  That's it.  If you've got a 3 game lead, you're obviously the better team.  If you've got to win four straight games to get back into the series...well, that's just not going to happen.  But, if you win a game between games one and four, you'd still have the luxury of seven-game series.   This would allow for a series like the Thunder-Mavericks to wrap up in a timely fashion, but gives teams that show some fight in the first four games a chance to stay in the tournament.

In any case, that's my random playoff thought for tonight.

One more thing: excited Grizzlies kid.

Tragic Stupidity

In Memoriam: The Pre-ACL Bulls. A Guest Post by Kurt Scott.

Editor's Note:  The Diss is delighted to feature a guest post from Kurt Scott.  We wish it came under happier circumstances.  This is Kurt's first contribution to The Diss.  He is a lifelong fan of the Chicago Bulls.  You can follow him on Twitter here.

*****

In the waning moments of the Bulls' first playoff game against the Sixers, Derrick Rose hopped into the lane, landing first on his right foot, followed by his left -- those familiar first steps in the choreography of his trademark twisting floater -- before his left knee buckled and he collapsed to the floor.

It looked serious.  Reggie Miller, working color on the broadcast, warned us that it probably was.  Only I didn't believe it, not because the injury didn't look nasty; in what's become one of the most cliched sports observations, the non-contact knee injury is about as worrisome as it gets.  Still, a season of watching D-Rose suffer injury after injury had taught us two things:

1.  Derrick Rose's body can't be trusted.  Certainly not in this condensed season.  As much as we want our boy to be an every-game horse like Durant, Westbrook or LeBron, he just isn't built for it.  And it's not just this year; Rose's oft-cited six missed games over his previous three seasons belies his history of dings, including but not limited to the ankle injury that slowed him for the first month of his sophomore campaign, a back injury in his third year, and a second ankle injury he suffered in last year's first-round series against Indiana, after which he never fully regained his explosion against the Hawks and Heat.

2.  He eventually works his way back.  The road to recovery is fraught with setbacks, missteps and second-guessing, but because Derrick is a warrior, he eventually gets there, and having the chance to watch him at his most brilliant makes it all worthwhile.

Which is why, for me, and I imagine most Bulls' fans, watching Derrick writhe on the baseline was more of a "here we go again" moment than anything else.  Derrick Rose injuries are annoying, not serious.  They mean rehab timetables that are constantly revised by the Bulls' brain-trust of coaches, trainers and front office personnel; they mean watching Rose labor to regain his conditioning and his confidence in his supernatural skills; they meant the possibility that we could -- *gasp* -- fall to the second seed; and perhaps worst of all, they mean angsty internal conversations wherein you remind yourself that it's grossly unfair to be frustrated with Rose himself, as no one feels more betrayed by his body than he does.

Well, we were indulging ourselves.  We know that now.  Rose's series of "minor" injuries didn't make him more immune to more serious "freak" injuries, of course, it only gave us a false sense of security about his ability to bounce back, like clockwork.  And now that he's facing a minimum rehab of six months, and the possibility that he'll never be the same athlete again, we're pushed into a new reality, one where we're far more afraid of what'll happen two, three years from now that what'll happen tomorrow.

But let's deal with the short term, first.

The Bulls' title run is over.  Obviously.  And if we're being honest with ourselves, it's going to be hard to watch them play in this series (or, God willing, the next one and the one after that) without being sad as shit.  It's a Catch-22: If the Bulls look awful in Rose's absence, that clearly sucks.  And if they beat the Sixers and give Boston and the Heat all they can handle before bowing out, it'll be hard to appreciate the accomplishment in its own light.  We'll instead be distracted by what could have been.  And maybe this is just me being cynical, but I expect "what could have been" to turn into "what could have been avoided."  In other words, more heat on Thibs for having left D-Rose in a game that was probably already in hand.

Look, here's what folks are overlooking: though we all know that Rose's body has been a ticking time bomb, the last thing, and I mean the last thing, the Bulls wanted to do was make Rose feel they were anything short of 1,000,000% confident that he could play hard and stay healthy.  It's the playoffs.  The Bulls were only going as far as a fine-tuned Rose, in body and mind, would take them.  And pulling him from the game when they were up 12, with 90 seconds left, would have sent one message: "You will not spend any more time on the court than is absolutely necessary, lest you bust your delicate ass." That's a little incongruous with their other message, which was, "We need you to lead us to the summit of professional basketball," no?  I'd say it is.

But anyways.  Blame games and dime store psychology aside, the title run is over.  For this year and maybe the next.  Maybe even beyond that, depending on how well Rose rehabs and/or modifies his game to his new athletic limitations (I just threw up a little bit in my mouth).  It absolutely goes without saying (though I'll proceed to say it) that Rose has earned almost infinite patience from the fans and the front office as he works his way back to what he was, or discovers what he now must be.  A torn ACL isn't the career-killer that it used to be, so a bit of positive thinking is in order, for as long as this is possible.

But staying invested in the Post-ACL Bulls will mean swallowing a few hard pills, some of which might go down easier if we embrace them now, before they're thrown in our collective faces.

1.  The NBA hype-machine will turn the page on Derrick Rose.  To some degree, it already has.  The echo chamber (TV analysts, bloggers, fan forums, the twitterati) have used Rose's 27 missed games in the regular season to give Chris Paul back his title as the league's best point guard, and anoint Durant as "the guy we like with the best chance to beat the guy we hate" (it was D-Rose this time last year).  It's a short-term memory league, and Rose's cache will suffer for it.  To quote the late great Guru, for the next couple seasons there'll be "no justice, just us", bulls fans, when it comes to recognizing Derrick's talents.

2.  Chicago will turn the page on the Bulls.  Every Chicagoan knows the Bulls are the hottest ticket in town...when the Cubs, Bears and Blackhawks (with their smaller but considerably more visible fan base) aren't rolling.  And now that Rose is out, expect the MLS team -- the whatever they're called -- to challenge as well, and for casual Bulls fans to go back to their default mode: ignoring basketball.

3.  You will be tempted to turn the page, as well.  Rehab is a hard process, even for those of us on the outside looking in.  Especially when there are so many vicarious fan opportunities out there, waving at us, batting come hither eyes.  The Grizzlies.  Now there's a sexy bandwagon.  Tony Allen's twitter feed is full of fun crazy talk and Zach Randolph has "heel cred."  The Thunder are so good, and yet so flawed, that rooting for them at this point doesn't feel like a total front-runner pick.  You can't go wrong with either of those if you're aiming to shift some of your well-wishing to a team with better prospects.

And then there are the offerings of life itself.  Family, lovers, pets, gardens, vacations, professional fulfillment, the Fire and Ice books, brunch.  Now that there's no guarantee that Rose or the Bulls will be supremely awesome soon or ever again, this feels like a moment to reinvest in those beautiful, tactile, and lovable elements in your life, some of which are capable of actually loving you back.

You could do that.  But it'd be a mistake.

Here's why: because jumping ship now would make you a chump.

As noted above, casual appreciation of the Bulls is the name of the game in Chicago and throughout the Bulls diaspora, so it's not as if anyone would confront you for your chumpishness on the street, at the office or family gatherings (unless it's my family, in which case I will definitely tell you about yourself, cousin T).  In fact you'd probably have plenty of company: since Saturday afternoon, the ranks of Bulls  fans ready to look away from the wreckage, take up new hobbies like chess or paying bills on time, has probably swelled to epic proportions.  But that doesn't make it right.  You know it isn't right.  You know that while following professional sports teams -- that is, corporate entities whose employees wouldn't spit on you if you were on fire -- has to rate as one of the least constructive ways a person can spend their time, the only thing that transforms it into an empty calorie pursuit is deciding to care only when your team's chances of success are at their highest.  Bandwagoning, in other words.

After all, some of the most rabid fan-bases have been hardened by the worst disappointments.  The Blazers, the Knicks, the Jazz -- if you're reading this blog, you don't need a history lesson.  It's no coincidence that the hungriest fans aren't only the most underfed, but the ones who've been close enough to smell the meal, only to have it snatched away and fed to someone else or thrown by fate into the garbage disposal, time and time and time again.

If you consider these fan bases to be mature for their run-ins with crushing disappointment, Bulls fans, as a collective, are in their adolescence.  The Pistons-dominated late-'80's, which many of us weren't old enough to experience, were washed away by the Dynasty years.  The same can be said for the heartache over Jordan's broken foot, which caused him to miss nearly his entire second season; in his third year he came back even Jordan-er than before.  The post-dynasty Bulls (Eddy Curry, Tyson Chander, Eddie Robinson, Jalen Rose, Jamal Crawford and Mark Blount) were too awful to suffer over, and as scrappy as the Hinrich-Gordon teams were, few of us were under any illusion that they were missing a piece.

In other words, when we've had a taste of greatness, we've gorged ourselves on it.  And when we haven't, we'd known not to expect one.  Our outlook was simple, innocent: we've had our ups and downs, but things have been exactly what they appeared to be.

This is what makes this moment unique for Bulls fans.  It's the first time that we've had something truly excellent taken from us, maybe forever.  And it's where my biggest fear for the Post ACL Bulls era lies: we've never shown that we're capable of loving a team that is facing ruin.

Even if Rose comes back fully healthy, there will always be the specter of another crushing injury.  His style of play dictates that reality.  We know that now.  And who's to say what'll happen with Noah and Deng's also fragile healths, Boozer's descent into mediocrity, and Taj and Omer's upcoming contract negotiations in another year?  This will, in short, be a hard and downright scary team to love with all of its uncertainty.  To quote Melisandre, "the night is long and full of terrors."

(And to add her implied meaning, get ready for some disturbing shit to happen while we're chasing this throne, bitch.)