TXT Club E-News Sign Up RSS Feeds Print Share

Coach’s Clipboard Archives - January 2005

Lester Conner was hired on June 4, 2004, joining the Sixers coaching staff as an associate head coach after spending the last six seasons as an assistant coach with the Boston Celtics staff. The Oakland, Calif., native was a scout for the Miami Heat during the 1997-98 season and served as an assistant coach for the Magic Johnson All-Stars for the previous six years. Selected by the Golden State Warriors in the first round (14th pick overall) of the 1982 NBA Draft, Conner averaged 6.3 points, 3.9 assists, 2.7 rebounds, and 1.6 steals during his 13-year NBA career.

Coach's Clipboard Archives: December 2004 | November 2004 | October 2004

January 2005

January 25
Coming up to the half-way point of the season, we’d like to be a little better than where we are right now. You would like to be either even or ahead. It seems like at the 41 game mark, we will not be either of those, but at the same time there’s a flip side to it , we are first in our division. You can’t argue that, you can’t knock that. Whether the division is down or whether other teams are not playing to their capabilities, whatever, first place is first place. We’re just trying to get a handle on the roller coaster ride. During the first half of the season, we've had some big wins in fact some big comeback wins. Other times we go out there and don’t play up to our capabilities especially when we don’t defend the way we should. So it's 50-50. Fifty percent that we wish we could be a little better and the other 50 percent satisfied that we’re in first place.

There have been several bright spots. One is that our young players are starting to develop because they are thrown into situations where they have to. Andre Iguodala has been starting for us consistently, and he’s playing like a rookie. He has some good games, some bad games, and some steady games. Kyle Korver is developing and his confidence grows each day. We're starting to post him up so to ensure he's not just a three-point shooter. Samuel Dalembert is where Tony Dileo and Billy King thought he would be. It just took him a little longer with a new coaching staff and new system. So you have the young guys starting to develop. Another bright spot is that we've been in the top 10 in field goal defense, so we know that we can defend. We’ve also been very good percentage wise scoring the basketball. So there are a bunch of positive things there that we take note of going into the second half that should continue to improve. Perhaps the brightest spot of all has been Allen Iverson. He wants to be the best and that’s all you can really ask for of your franchise player.

January 18
Playing an afternoon game allows our guys to get a little longer rest. With our schedule that we've had in the past and that is coming up, any time you can get the players extra rest it's a good thing. Recently, we haven't had practice time because we've been out West and traveling so it's important for us to work on some things in practice, like the pick and roll defense, down screen, and transition defense, that the team may have been slipping on. Playing an afternoon game allows us to let the guys get an early night. We were finished after the game around 4:30-5:00, they got a nice meal, slept in and then came in and worked.

Kenny Thomas seems to be back to playing like he did last year. Rebounding is one of his major attributes he gives this team. He has worked on his shooting a little extra because he had been missing that 15-17 foot jumper and the work is paying off. All the credit goes to him, he's going to the glass, he's taken advantage of his quickness over other power forwards and putting the ball on the floor to score. It's a compliment to him.

We're able to take advantage of certain situations by going with a smaller frontcourt. When a team does not have a big strong center or inside scoring presence we're comfortable going to a small lineup. We're able to play Corliss Williamson and Kenny at the power forward and center positions. We are experimenting with lineups and have talked about even playing Kenny Thomas at the small forward, to take advantage of his size over smaller wing men so that we could maybe post him up in our offense a little bit more that way. We have to get more post-up contributions from the wing so we're thinking of moving him to the small forward at times.

January 11
I think anytime you can go 5-3 on an eight-game road trip… before we left, if we had to say we can get five games, or would we take 5-3, we would have definitely said yes, but coaches are never satisfied. When we got out there playing, we looked and we could have gone 6-2, or maybe 7-1 if Allen hadn’t gotten hurt in Minnesota. It was a very successful trip, but we always strive for more.

It’s comfortable just being in your own office with your own equipment, and not traveling back and forth packing stuff up and unpacking stuff. The thing that we had to do was get back familiar with Philadelphia. I forgot how to get back home from the airport, we’d been gone so long. Just being in your own bed, your wife cooking you a nice meal versus hotel food or going out to restaurants – just being back in a familiar environment makes it a whole lot better than being on the road.