The Philadelphia 76ers had their four-game winning streak snapped on Monday night, falling to the Timberwolves 126-95. Their record drops to 12-22.
- Thaddeus Young has been fire of late, and turned in another good scoring game tonight, finishing with 20 points. However, Thad was ineffective on the glass, pulling down just two rebounds against Kevin Love and Nik Pecovic.
- James Anderson had a solid night off of the bench, scoring 14 points while shooting 5-6 and grabbing seven rebounds.
- Spencer Hawes turned in another lackluster effort, with just seven points and six rebounds.
- Micheal Carter-Williams scored 13 points on 13 shots.
- The Sixers played very little defense in this one. The Timberwolves scorched them for 30 or more points in each of the first three quarters. Philadelphia entered the final quarter down by more than 20.
- The Sixers allowed seven Timberwolves to score in double figures.
Final Thoughts
Rebounding has been a major issue for the Sixers for a couple of years now, and its been a big reason for a lot of their losses.
Too often, situations similar to tonight’s occur when they just get manhandled on the boards. Tonight they were outrebounded 53-40.
The problems stem from having a center that isn’t nearly as focused on his defense as he is offense (Spencer Hawes) and having a starting power forward that really isn’t big enough to effectively contend with most fours and fives in the league (Thaddeus Young).
Add in the fact that the team doesn’t even have a hard working, Reggie Evans-type personality on the bench that can come in, do some dirty work, and grab some tough boards, and you get game’s like tonight where Nikola Pecovic and Kevin Love combine for 21 rebounds next to eight for Young and Hawes.
In the future, this is an issue that Sam Hinkie absolutely has to address. Maybe this is why the team had been so heavily involved in the Omer Asik trade talks.
