Sixers already pumped for next season

It was like the last day of school at Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine. Players and coaches and trainers and others in the 76ers organization hugged one another goodbye after the team's final meeting of the season following Wednesday's 97-91 loss to the Miami Heat in Game 5 of an Eastern Conference, first-round series.

As coach Doug Collins said after Wednesday's loss, take a good look around, because this will not be the same team next season.

Collins' meaning was twofold. First, there certainly will be some additions and subtractions to the roster. Jason Kapono and Darius Songaila, both free agents, will not return. The team probably would like to re-sign backup center Tony Battie, but others might also be interested, so that decision could belong to him.

And Collins' other message? That even if all the players returned, it still will be a different season from the one that just passed in which the Sixers won 41 regular-season games, witnessed the growth of point guard Jrue Holiday and the resurgence of Elton Brand.

"As we know this team it will never be the same," Collins said. "Even if the same guys came back it would never be the same. I'm excited about next year, from the standpoint of I know what we have and I think we can hit the ground running and we'll be much further ahead to start the season next year. I feel great about how the season went. I shared a couple minutes with our guys, just thanking them for all they did this year from where we started to where we finished. I thought most everybody on our team got better. I think we have incredible growth still. We had as professional a team as I have ever been around in my years of basketball. We had nobody act out all season long. Everybody was united, we had guys play through injuries. I think we solidified ourselves defensively this year and I think we saw that in the playoffs."

That was part of the good happenings of the season, but Collins knows that soon he and the front office - president Rod Thorn and general manager Ed Stefanski - will have to tweak and make decisions on the current roster. The biggest decisions will surround Thaddeus Young and Andre Iguodala. Young is a restricted free agent. The team can sign him or let other teams make offers and match them. Either way, he will probably stay.

Iguodala probably had the most trade value at the beginning of the season, but with the growth of some of the youngsters and his injuries throughout the season, his stock might have dipped. Also, Iguodala might have started the process of moving him by missing his exit meeting yesterday with Collins, Thorn and Stefanski.

They also will have to decide whether to keep Spencer Hawes and certainly will need to add another big man.

"The biggest difference [in the series] was that they beat us by 11 points a game from the foul line and the rebounding," Collins said. "That will be one of the concerns, obviously, coming up in the next season, is addressing that we have to be a better rebounding team.

"Rod is the president of our franchise," Collins said. "He and Eddie and the player personnel people, they are terrific. I will sit in and we'll talk and everything. The beauty of it all is that we see what we have to do to get better. Getting to 41 wins is a great step, getting into the elite is a bigger step. To do that we're going to have to keep adding."

And they will have to get continued improvement from the young players such as Holiday, Young and Evan Turner.

Alone with a reporter in the locker room after the Game 5 loss, Turner couldn't hide his excitement to get himself ready for his second season and how beneficial the playoff series was for him.

"I can't wait to get better at my game during the offseason," he said. "Players like LeBron [James] and Dwyane Wade are great measures for myself. I think the sky is the limit for me if I just keep working. I think [the playoff experience] made a world of difference. I can't wait for the offseason. I can see a light, to tell you the truth."

Holiday spoke of how he wants to get together with his teammates more this summer than he did last year, so that this season's 3-13 start can be averted.

Young acknowledged that he will be concentrating on improving his outside shooting so that when teams like the Heat take away his drives to the basket, he has something to fall back on.

Like that last day of school, everyone was generally sorry to see one another go, but also excited to see how much different, and better, things will be next season.

"It's a downer; everybody still wants to play," Holiday said. "We were just talking about how this year went a lot faster than last year. We expect better from ourselves next year. We might not have the same team but we just want to grow and get better. We expect to win more than 41 games."

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