worry not..consider each and every one of my posts invisibly prefaced by please fire mills, perry, fiz
*** that said, considering the inescapable reality of where we are, I am enjoying the current progression
earned minutes not free minutes, sensible substitutions, slightly less end-to-end PF dribbling, slightly less outdated Mase-circa 1994 iso PF ball-pounding, a little more PnR action with different participants, far more consistent defensive effort for longer stretches of the game by greater number of players, experimenting with three guards rather than three PFs, etc..
none-of-the above means I believe Fiz is a competent coach or is creating a situation which will result in drastically more wins than our SPOT-ON PRESEASON projections called for, but I enjoy seeing it, it's good for the franchise, and if it continues in a significant way I have no problem with him keeping his job if he earns it
and this, not last year, is actually a development year, folks can develop in it, EVEN KNOX. As I have always maintained, before last season and forever, nobody develops in a shit-soup, nobody did, we didn't resign any of those mf'ers and the ones who were already undercontract barely budged forward, if at all. Gotta have a mix of veterans and youth, gotta be trying to win, otherwise you are just wasting your time. Knox is so much better off here on the bench, understanding what he needs to do to get in and stay in the game,(and alongside some (semi) talented and (semi) professional vets when he's in it) than running around endlessly like a moron for 30+ unearned min last year next to fellow crap-ola. I'm happy with him this season, can see that he's thinking and trying when he's out there (albeit largely failing so far;)
*** And the next time Fiz tries something so head-up-your-ass-BUTTSTUPID as starting Knox at SG consider any optimism or backhanded compliments or niceness I may have have accidentally shown him completely retracted
** in addition to could of easily won if we'd hit a few more free throws last night, I also thought we had to overcome a couple of pretty impactful bad calls. The Mitch foul where Embiid swung up his arms into Mitch's stationary horizontally extended ones, I thought this wasn't a foul anymore, but maybe it's just the side-to-side arm swing foul that's been removed, not the vertical version (horrible that either is ever considered a foul by a defender, but that's where we are in Silver's NBA -- and that extend the leg three point foul (on Ennis? by Randle?) that resulted in three unearned points for Philly (certainly would have been challenged had Fiz not already used his up)