Christmas, Holiday impressive for Sixers/Nets team in Orlando Summer League
ORLANDO - There were glimmers of competence, glimpses of cohesion.
There also was another summer-league loss.
The young, unfamiliar Sixers/Nets combined squad lost to the Magic's veteran entry, 108-86, and fell to 0-3 with two games to play.
It was seldom close.
For the Sixers, it was occasionally promising.
First-round point guard Jrue Holiday scored 12 points and hit two of five three-pointers, dealt four assists and limited his turnover total to three.
"It's still a learning process," said Holiday.
The same is true for former Temple star Dionte Christmas, who went undrafted. After two games of wild misses and airballs, Christmas broke out with a team-high 18 points. He hit five of his first six shots, hit four of his first five threes and went 4-for-4 from the free-throw line, the result of two hard drives.
Christmas needs that sort of production just to land a job.
It's a different story for Holiday, drafted to be the Sixers' point guard of the future.
A 19-year-old who spent the NBA-mandated 1 year in college at UCLA, where he played shooting guard, Holiday was deferential in the first two games Monday and Tuesday.
Last night, against a team composed of relatively seasoned professionals who spent the past few years on the fringes of the NBA, Holiday was considerably more assertive, especially as the game progressed.
"In the second half, I was more aggressive," Holiday said. "I'm figuring it out. Dionte - he definitely figured it out today."
Six shots
Sixers forward Marreese Speights, a 2008 first-rounder who saw spotty time last season, took to heart the Sixers' wish that he spend more time near the basket. He scored 12 points and had six rebounds. . . . Pacers rookie Tyler Hansbrough, perhaps the highest-profile player here, got his first start yesterday. He scored 24 points and hit all 14 free throws. Four of his five rebounds were offensive. His summer squad moved to 3-0 with a 95-79 win over Utah. *
