A moment that many people in the Delaware Valley likely look back upon with a fresh pang of anguish has become a source of encouragement for Brett Brown over the past 48 hours. When last Brown’s 76ers were on the floor, their admirable comeback bid fell short at the hands of Golden State. The defending champs connected on a decisive three-pointer with 0.2 seconds to go in Saturday’s contest at The Center, as the Warriors walked away with a 108-105 win. Rather than lament over what might have been, Brown instead used the game to highlight how far his club has come in the span of a month. “Somebody gave me the picture of the last shot, Harrison Barnes’ last shot,” said Brown on Monday at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, where the Sixers held practice. “Look in the background, though, and look at our team.””That’s people like Kendall Marshall that haven’t played. You see Carl Landry, and Jahlil [Okafor], and they’re into the game. We have a great group. We really, really have a great group.”The team has truly never been stronger as it relates to chemistry. I’m not going to say performance yet, but we’re playing pretty good basketball.”For starters, the Sixers posted more wins in January (4) than they did in October, November, and December combined. They also suffered fewer losses in January (10) than in any other month so far. What factors have made the biggest difference?”I really got to say defensively,” said Nerlens Noel on Monday. “We’ve really risen up the overall ranks. We’ve been playing really well on the defensive end. Guys are really digging down, helping each other, not letting too much penetration while getting back out on three.”The final three weeks of January, the Sixers finished tied with the Utah Jazz for the NBA’s third lowest defensive rating (100.2 points allowed per 100 possessions). Additionally, the squad’s 9.5 steals per game in January matched the league’s third-best mark as well. Examining a few of the Sixers’ noteworthy individual performances from the previous month, Noel himself was stellar. He hit 60.7 percent of his field goal attempts in January, pushing his overall shooting percentage to 52.4, which is ninth-best in the NBA.
“I think I played my game,” said Noel, reflecting on the third month of his season. “I attacked, I went to my shot when it was there. I just played basketball, especially having Ish [Smith], playing that pick-and-roll, and guys found each other. I think I’ve just steadily improved.”Noel isn’t the only starting member of the Sixers’ frontcourt who, in January, experienced his finest shooting touch of the season. Okafor did as well, knocking down 60.9 percent of his tries. The rookie averaged 17.2 points per game for the month. In addition to producing on the interior in January, the Sixers also turned in their most efficient month from beyond the arch. They converted 36.4 percent of their heaves from the perimeter, as wingmen Hollis Thompson, Robert Covington, Nik Stauskas, and Isaiah Canaan displayed a more accurate outside touch. “Oh man, they’ve shot the ball well,” said Ish Smith, the veteran point guard. “Coach got on me about a week or two ago, [assistant] coach Lloyd Pierce, he was telling me, ‘Ish, you’ve got to get your shooters going. You’re getting Nerlens, you’re getting Jah going, you’re getting yourself going. But now, we’ve got some really good shooters. You’ve got to get them going.'”Smith went on, “I think that’s probably been the next step for me, is in transition, on penetration, instead of going to the rim and finishing, now I’m kicking out to shooters and they’re knocking it down, so they’ve been huge, and now the lane opens up even more.” During January, Thompson (45.7% 3fg), Covington (40.9% 3fg), Stauskas (40.9% 3fg), and Canaan (39.6% 3fg) all enjoyed their best months of the campaign in terms of three-point shooting percentage. “That’s helped a lot,” Canaan said. “Now the defense got to stay out there on us, and it opens everything down there in the paint. With us knocking down shots, it makes the defense have to be more honest, and they can’t leave us.”With January now in the rearview, the Sixers began February by spending a portion of Monday’s practice session studying tape of late-game situations. Their aim is to figure out how to wind up on the positive end of photo finishes, such as the one that occurred Saturday versus Golden State. “I think we’ve been playing some really good basketball,” Smith said. “I hate that we only got [four January] wins to show for it, but we’ve been playing some really good basketball. It could easily be .500 basketball with some of the losses we’ve had. But, that’s the growth of it.””We feel together. I don’t think we like moral victories. That might sound bad. I had moral victories when I was in the YMCA, and everybody wins, and everybody gets a trophy. Now, it’s you either win or you lose. You learn from your losses. You learn from your wins. You bounce back, and hopefully grow from it.”The Sixers’ next chance to put that mindset to use is Wednesday at 7:00 PM EST, when they host the Atlanta Hawks, currently tied for fifth-place in the Eastern Conference.
