"Did you say what I thought you said? MEEKDonalds?" Indeed he did, Marc. Malik had no
choice but to get punny with Jodie's name as he shot the Sixers past
the 100-point mark against the Wizards, ensuring Big Macs for all in
attendance. Meeks' shot was absolutely brilliant tonight, reminding us
that he can look an awful lot like Ray Allen once he sees a couple of
his shots drop early. Jodie was an insane 10-11 from the field and 6-7
from downtown—raising his FG% from 39% to 46% and his three-point % from
34% to 42% on the season in the process—and scored 26 points, the most
since that game against the Bobcats two Decembers ago where he hit six
treys in the first quarter.
True, though, it's not all that hard to look brilliant against the
Wizards. A number of Sixers manage to do it on occasion tonight,
including Lou Williams (19 points and six assists, with just one
turnover), Spencer Hawes (a double-double in just 19 minutes, ten points
and ten rebounds in his first action in six quarters) and Andre
Iguodala (a typical all-around line, 13 points, five boards, three dimes
and two steals). Evan Turner even managed to hit a couple threes—his
first two of the year, somewhat incredibly—on the way to his 12 points,
five boards and four assists. Seven Sixers in all ended up in the double
figures, as the Liberty Ballers cruised to the 120-89 victory.
In stark contrast to the Sixers' strong, solid, mature play for most of
the evening, the Wizards were an absolute mess. They had some nice runs
in the second and fourth quarter to keep the game respectable—and yes,
for Washington, a 31 point loss to a good team on the road now qualifies
as "respectable"—but for the most part, they were disjointed, sloppy,
undisciplined and just kinda lazy. It's one thing to get beat by the
Sixers on the fast break—that'll happen to most teams—but it's quite
another to get beat to the basket in what should be a half-court set,
resulting in some unnervingly easy layups for Philly. Even John Wall,
the #1 overall pick in the draft two off-seasons ago (just before our
Evan Turner, of course), looks like he's completely lost confidence in
his jump shot, and with the Sixers doing a good job of creating traffic
for him in both the half-court and full court, he was miserable in this
game, scoring seven points on 3-8 shooting with five assists and just as
many turnovers.
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The one bad thing about this game for the Sixers—aside from the fact
that it necessitated their fans to actually watch a Wizards game—was
that Lou Williams did something extremely dangerous, both for himself
and the team: He made two end-of-quarter shots. The second-quarter one
was actually a good one, as he did a good job drawing the foul on his
jumper and just happened to make the shot as well, but the third-quarter
heave was inexcusable, as he squared up from about four feet behind the
arc with plenty of time left on the shot clock for a ridiculous three.
He hit it, of course, and that was all well and good, but the two
unlikely makes ensure that The Sweetness will absolutely go for it again
in a terrible iso play for the next eight end-of-quarter situations he
finds himself in, and will be lucky to actually connect in two of them.
Next up: The Wizards again, this time in Washington, 7:00 tomorrow. Sound good? Sounds good.