Collins not content with current winning performances

WHEN THE LOSSES pile up, there is no end to the ideas of how to correct the many problems.

When the wins continue to mount, as they have for the 76ers this season, there is a plethora of ideas of how to get even better.

Despite an impressive win over the Orlando Magic on Monday night, a win in which Orlando had only 51 points with less than 3 minutes remaining in the game, coach Doug Collins was caught on television cameras after the game with an irate look and some very choice words for some of his players. That is where this team is now. Despite 45 minutes of pure defensive dominance, the coach couldn't let go of the fact that his players had given up 18 points in the final 2 minutes, 40 seconds for a much-closer-than-it-was 74-69 win. The Sixers improved to 15-6, including 11-2 at the Wells Fargo Center.

"They didn't start fouling till the minute mark," Collins said after yesterday's light workout at Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine. "At 2:52, they'd taken their guys out and, really, because we made some of those mistakes [on defense], we put them into position to say, 'Well, let's start fouling and maybe we can win this game.' That's what I don't want to have happen, and our players don't, either. We don't want to have those kinds of breakdowns at the end of games, when we give up threes. We want to make sure that we chase guys off the line. We want to make sure that the two things you have to do to hold leads are defensive rebound and make free throws. And those were two things we didn't do [Monday]. Those are the teaching points that you bring up."

It was Collins' main topic of conversation following the win.

"There's a lot to learn from each win and each loss," said Evan Turner, who appeared to catch some of Collins' ire following the win. "They hit some amazing shots [at the end]. I think one thing in general is, communication is the key defensively."

Yesterday, there was no rehashing the late-game laziness that turned a blowout into a seat squirmer. Instead, Collins chose to tinker with the offense, which he says has shown some "slippage" in its execution lately.

"We had to make this a day where nobody ran," Collins said. "We got warmed up, but we just went through our [offensive] stuff. We've played some tougher teams and we've been a little bit out of sync offensively. We've got to tighten that up. We can't think that we've got to hold these teams to 80 points to win."