Sixers quash doubts with win over Bulls

Andre Iguodala put on an All-Star performance that included a massive dunk over Kyle Korver in the third quarter. (Jesse D. Garrabrant/NBAE via Getty Images)

PHILADELPHIA — There was one nagging question about the Sixers, even after they went 37-23 last season following a slow start, pushed the Heat in the first round and came out this season blowing the doors off everyone: Can they score against the best defenses?

They couldn’t last season, even amid their best stretches, and it proved their undoing. But in thrashing the Bulls 98-82 on Wednesday, the Sixers provided a template for how they might manage against elite defenses. The caveats are real — the Bulls were missing their best wing defender, Luol Deng, and the Sixers were playing at home for what seemed like the 22nd time in 22 games — but the model is there:

• Keep the half-court offense moving. Philly played a “C” game on offense against the Magic on Monday, with the ball and players stopping after one pick-and-roll instead of moving into actions two, three and four. With some inevitable exceptions, that wasn’t the case against Chicago. The Sixers were so active, with cuts and screens and simultaneous actions on either side of the floor that it was hard to keep up with everything they fit into a 24-second possession. The movement didn’t always produce good looks against a savvy Chicago defense, but it helped loosen things for a team that makes up for its lack of a transcendent offensive player by having its collection of good offensive players work in concert.

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“The ball moves,” Bulls coach Tom Thibodeau said after the game. “[The Sixers] are so unselfish. When the ball gets swung and they move bodies, they have multiple players who can play pick-and-roll basketball.”

The Sixers scored the equivalent of about 112 points per 100 possessions, according to Basketball-Reference’s formula, a mark that would top the league this season. They had four players — Andre Iguodala, Evan Turner, Jrue Holiday and Lou Williams — record at least four assists each, an unusual feat. The ball moved so well despite the absence of Spencer Hawes, whom Collins labeled as essential against an aggressive defense like Chicago’s because of his passing and shooting skills.

“We just did a better job tonight,” said Iguodala, who turned in a classic all-around performance that included a third-quarter stretch in which he took the Sixers to a higher basketball place and a posterization of Kyle Korver.

• Win the turnover battle. Kevin Arnovitz of ESPN.com has written about the Clippers’ low-turnover attack and how teams can manufacture efficiency simply by not screwing up. The Sixers are outdoing the Clippers in that regard. They are on pace for the second-lowest turnover rate — that’s turnovers per possession – in league history, and they coughed it up just 10 times Wednesday.

On the other end, the Sixers forced Chicago into 17 turnovers in a relatively slow-paced game. If you’re looking for the outlier here — the stat you can use to dismiss this game if you’re a Chicago homer — this is it. The Bulls don’t turn the ball over much, and the Sixers force them at an average rate.

But they forced a bunch tonight, including two during that third-quarter run that had Wells Fargo Center going crazy. Iguodala stripped Ronnie Brewer, raced up court, pulled off a jumping, behind-the-back dribble that had to be a violation of some kind, and then found Holiday for a pull-up. About 30 seconds later, Holiday, anticipating a Derrick Rose/Carlos Boozer pick-and-roll, slid right in between the two, causing Rose to stumble and lose the ball. Jodie Meeks picked it up and dished to Holiday for a dunk.

All of this came after a 90-second sequence in which Iguodala twice rebounded the ball and went coast to coast for dunks — including the Korver dunk — and then nailed a heat-check three-pointer. Iguodala was everywhere, crashing the defensive glass (nine rebounds), grabbing steals, leading the break and playing within himself in the half court. He defended Rose, Korver and Brewer at various points, and he defended them all well. It was an All-Star showing.

• Get out in transition. There will be nights when Philadelphia’s half-court offense is stale, even in the playoffs. It happens when you don’t get to the line much or hit even an average number of threes per game. On those nights, the extra oomph you need to beat a good team has to come from somewhere, and this is the place to find it. Philly won’t always force 17 turnovers, but it will always have elite rebounding wing players — Turner and Iguodala — who can ignite a fast-break off a defensive rebound.

The Sixers have been hesitant to label this game or any other a “statement game.” The season is too compacted and each game seems to come with some sort of red flag — an injury, a schedule advantage or disadvantage. But it was clear coach Doug Collins and his team enjoyed this win.

“Everybody was waiting and saying, ‘Let’s wait for the big boys.’ I heard that,” said Collins, adding that teams are starting to view the Sixers in another light, thinking, “‘We’re gonna find out how good we are when we play against Philly.’”

They’re not quite there yet. The Sixers are still a notch below Chicago and Miami. They had played the easiest schedule in the league entering Wednesday’s game, and they’ve played just eight road games, the fourth fewest in the league. But at the very least, they are the clear No. 3 team in the Eastern Conference. They are better than they were last year, and they are going to make any team, Miami and Chicago included, work hard to beat them four times in seven games. That’s a fantastic place to be after 22 games. Let’s see where they take it.

Other notes:

• Major minus points for the girl who brought a sign reading “76ers Fan, But I Love Derrick Rose.”

• Minus points for Eagles wide receiver DeSean Jackson for wearing a winter hat indoors at the game.

• Deng’s absence — and to a lesser degree, Richard Hamilton’s — obviously changed the game. Deng is one of the league’s best defenders, and he gives Chicago a second perimeter creator. On a more obvious note, losing two starters means that two backups have to play extended minutes. Brewer and Korver are nice players, but the former is limited enough offensively that Philadelphia could sag off of him on the weak side, and the latter just has no place to hide against a team like this. Turner hurt Korver on post-ups and dribble-drives, and Turner’s quickness and long arms make him an ideal guy to chase Korver around the maze of picks Chicago sets for him.

• The Sixers didn’t do anything fancy against Rose, but they executed what they wanted to do and forced him into both floaters and tough cross-court passes. On pick-and-rolls, they had Rose’s defender chase him over screens while the guy guarding the screener slid sideways to contain Rose’s penetration. That shut off the lane, but it gave Rose space to launch mid-range shots, and it forced a series of rotations on the weak side as the Sixers scrambled to cover the guy rolling free to the hoop. That opened up those cross-court passes — the least of all threats, as long as Korver wasn’t left open with a ton of space. The Sixers were gambling that they could either get into passing lanes or recover to open shooters while the pass was in the air.

Again, nothing fancy. But the Sixers didn’t jump out hard and trap Rose on the perimeter as often as other teams do.

• The latest Kiss Cam victims: Joakim Noah and Deng. They ignored it completely. Fitting for an all-business Chicago team whose players are semi-terrified of talking to reporters before games because Thibodeau doesn’t like it.

• I counted only two possessions in which Chicago’s bigs bullied Thaddeus Young for post-up scores and one other where they worked him on the offensive glass. But that was it. Young held his own the rest of the game, and the Bulls, the league’s top offensive rebounding team, grabbed just 19 percent of their own misses — a mark that would rank last in the NBA. The Sixers are getting all the benefits of playing Young at power forward without any of the potential drawbacks.

• Wow, Lavoy Allen. The numbers sum up his game: 15 points on 7-of-10 shooting, six rebounds and three assists. The guy knows where to be and what to do in Philly’s offense — when to flash to the foul line, when to cut to the hoop and where to swing the ball. He’s playing with patience and control, making his reads in time, but not rushing. Fun to watch.

• Asked about his dunk over Korver, Iguodala joked that he had to remind some of his younger teammates what he could do. He singled out rookie center Nikola Vucevic, who, according to Iguodala, has poked fun at the fact that Iguodala was in the All-Star Slam Dunk contest while Vucevic was still in high school.

• Korver, who played for Philly from 2003-07, is still popular here. As he was shooting threes during warmups, a young lady in a Korver Philadelphia jersey approached the baseline and snapped a bunch of photos of him.

• Something to watch the rest of the season: the Holiday-Young pick-and-roll. The two are developing a nice chemistry and Young is shooting a career-best 41 percent on long two-point jumpers.