CHARLOTTE - Doug Collins will say it until the day he coaches his last game: There are no easy teams or easy games in the NBA.
His 76ers seemed to have an easy task last night as they were pitted against a Charlotte Bobcats team that had lost 14 in a row. The Bobcats are the league's lowest-scoring team at under 87 points a game and were without their two top scorers because of injury, Gerald Henderson and D.J. Augustin.
Collins is right, though. Each time the Sixers seemed poised to hand the Bobcats yet another loss, Charlotte, through the wizardry of rookie guard Kemba Walker, stuck around. It wasn't until some fourth-quarter marksmanship by Lou Williams that order was restored and the Sixers improved to 20-9 with a 98-89 win, dropping Charlotte to 3-25.
Williams had 10 of his game-high 23 points in the final 12 minutes, offsetting Walker's 14 (21 total) as the Sixers staved off a Charlotte comeback.
"I think they did a good job of fighting," said Williams, who made seven of nine foul shots and dealt four assists. "Throughout the shootaround and pregame we were expecting a fight like that from them. From what we understand, they got whacked a couple of times recently in this building, a couple times in a row. We've been that team before, fighting for wins, and good teams would come into our building and we would give them a fight all the way till the finish and it wouldn't go our way."
Shoe, meet other foot. The Sixers, leading the Atlantic Division by four games, are the good team that the bottom dwellers are hoping to upset. It wasn't happening last night, though.
Jrue Holiday (19 points) made sure his team got out quickly by making his first five shots for 11 points as the Sixers jumped to a 28-17 lead. The reserves, led by Williams, Thaddeus Young (20 points, six rebounds) and Nikola Vucevic (10 rebounds, eight points) kept the lead at 10 at halftime, but it was far from secure. Charlotte turned the game into a halfcourt affair, which is not a strong point for the Sixers, and was able to take a bite out of the lead. In the fourth, the Bobcats were able to cut it to 81-79 on a wild three-pointer by Walker. But Williams answered with a trey to pad the lead and the Sixers closed it out by making foul shots, also not an area of expertise.
