With his team now locked in a 2-2 series with the heavily favored Detroit Pistons, putting even more pressure on Iguodala going into tomorrow night's pivotal Game 5 could have disastrous results.

Iguodala knows he is struggling. He knows that the 10.5 points he has averaged through the first four games is barely half his regular-season average.

He knows the 22.4 percent he is shooting from the floor isn't enough. Iguodala knows the Sixers could desperately use the 20 to 25 points he could give them on any given night right about now.

Cheeks knows it, too, but he's not going to put that kind of burden on Iguodala, who last night had 12 points on 4-for-16 shooting.

"Yeah, we need [Iguodala] to score, but we have other guys out there who can score the ball as well," Cheeks said. "I'm just not going to put that much pressure on him to say, 'We need 25 or 30 points from you to win the game.' "

As the Sixers' coach, Cheeks has to think that way. There is too much at stake for him to lay everything at the feet of a player who has just eight career playoff games under his belt.

I'm not the Sixers' coach. I don't have to worry about the aftereffects of calling out Iguodala.

This could well be it for the Sixers. Last night's 93-84 loss has given the homecourt advantage and swung the momentum back to the Pistons. If Detroit wins Game 5 and takes a 3-2 advantage, the Sixers won't likely be able to climb out of another grave.

The question about Iguodala since the Sixers selected him with the ninth overall pick in the 2004 draft has been whether he is he capable of being a No.1 player on a team; a superstar capable of carrying the load; of shining brightest in those moments when things look darkest for his squad.

Now is the time for Iguodala to start proving it.

Asked if the Sixers can be successful if he continues to struggle on offense, he replied: "Not at all. We've just got to . . . I've just got to turn it around a little bit. I just got to keep working."

It would be unfair to say that Iguodala has not been a factor in this series.

In fact, he is to be commended for not forcing his offense too much and instead concentrating on doing other things to help the Sixers be successful.

Cheeks has praised Iguodala for being a facilitator for others instead of taking bad shots.

But with series 2-2 now, the Sixers can no longer afford for their best players to just be a facilitator.

Right now, they need Iguodala to be a closer.

For the rest of this series, if the Sixers are indeed going to pull off this upset, Iguodala has to figure out how back to the 19.9 points he averaged during the regular season.

And he can't do it by just cranking up 25 shots.

Iguodala has to dramatically improve his scoring efficiency while still doing all the other things he has done in this series.

Is that a lot to ask? Maybe.

Nevertheless, that is the call to duty for Iguodala.

The playoffs are what separate the great players from the very good ones in the NBA.

The playoffs are where the truly elite players of The Association earn their status, their respect and ultimately, their money.

Perhaps it's too much to ask of Iguodala. Maybe he isn't suited to carry the role he inherited from Allen Iverson as the Sixers' franchise player.

I do know that unlike Iverson, Iguodala used the words "we" and "team" way too many times when asked about his struggles after last night's game.

Right or wrong, the first A.I. would have put every bit of responsibility on his own shoulders. He would have talked about how it was up to him to be the franchise player and step up his game to any level necessary.

Don't misunderstand. It wasn't that Iguodala tried to pass the buck about his struggles. He conceded he was struggling.

Still, for some reason, it bothered me when he said, "The team has been fighting and as a team we have been playing well so I really haven't thought about it."

Maybe I'm being unfair in judging Iguodala based on a decade of Iverson, but he just didn't sound like a player with complete confidence that he was going to take his game to the next level and bring his team along with him.

Iverson didn't always do it, but you never doubted that he absolutely believed he would.

"We're tied 2-2, right now," Iguodala said. "We're a lot further than anyone expected so as far as a team, we're playing OK. As far as myself, I'll work through it. I can't continue to harp on how I'm playing good or bad when the team is playing well."

The Sixers playing well isn't going to be enough to beat the Pistons in a three-game shootout with Game 7 slated for Detroit.

Starting tomorrow, the Sixers are going to need to be extraordinary, and they are going to need an extraordinary effort from an extraordinary player to do that.

We're about to find out if Andre Iguodala is that player. *

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