Talk of the Philadelphia 76ers Losing to Kentucky is Pure Nonsense
By Mike Gibson
@papreps
Bill Streicher-USA TODAY Sports
Until the Philadelphia 76ers actually beat a professional basketball team, they will have to hear talk about them losing to a great college team like Kentucky.
Pure nonsense, of course, but the Sixers had to listen to it last week when Eric Bledsoe of the Phoenix Suns said that the Sixers would win “one, maybe two” games against Kentucky in a seven-game series while on a national radio show. It is nonsense for a lot of reasons, one being that Kentucky’s best player of two years ago—Nerlens Noel—is arguably only the second-best player on the Sixers now to returning NBA Rookie of the Year Michael Carter-Williams. Presumably, if the one-and-done Noel was still at Kentucky, he’d still be the best player on this year’s current great team.
Another example was presented on Monday night at the Wells Fargo Center, at least for a half. The 0-14 Sixers actually led a pretty good pro team, the Portland Trail Blazers, 52-50 at halftime and were competitive for long stretches of the second half before falling 114-104. Nobody even in their wildest dreams is saying Kentucky could beat the Trail Blazers or even come that close. Portland came into Monday night having won seven in a row and owning the league’s fourth-best record (10-3).
The Sixers have some interesting pieces to build upon and one is Georgetown product Henry Sims, who had a season-high 22 points. Noel, a 7-footer who specializes in rebounding and shot-blocking, had his second-straight double-digit scoring night and looks to be a future NBA all-star but the real Cavalry arrives in a couple of years when European forward Dario Saric joins another 7-footer Joel Embiid in the Sixers’ frontcourt and presumably the Sixers can find a knock-down shooting guard in this upcoming draft to go with Carter-Williams.
Monday night, though, they showed at least they are getting close to beating a real, live, honest-to-goodness pro team and silence some annoying earlier season speculation.
Mike Gibson is a writer for www.RantSports.com. Follow him on Twitter @papreps , “Like” him on Facebook or add him to your network on Google.
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