Collins takes blame for Sixers' loss to Nets

DOUG COLLINS despises excuses almost as much as he does losses. Yet, the 76ers coach certainly had reason to reel off some reasonable points as to why his team lost to the New Jersey Nets, 97-90, in overtime on Wednesday.

He was without starting center Spencer Hawes, who missed his fifth straight game with a strained left Achilles', and was also minus Hawes' backup, Nikola Vucevic, who missed his second straight game with a strained quadriceps. Elton Brand, the team's lone real post threat, fouled out just as overtime began, and power forward Thaddeus Young missed most of overtime after hurting his back in a fall early in the fourth.

But after Collins met ever so briefly with his team yesterday morning at Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, the coach didn't go the excuse route. Instead he pointed the finger at one person - himself.

"I had to try to find combinations and I didn't do a very good job at that," said Collins, whose team will look to rebound when it hosts the 3-16 Charlotte Bobcats tonight. "As a coach, you lay in bed after a game and say, 'What could I have done better?' I just didn't think we had a lot of rhythm in what we were doing, and I think a big part of that was they dictated that, and I didn't give our team much help last night.

"As a coach, I'm paid on a nightly basis to help our guys. We played defense well enough to win that game, and I didn't give our guys enough help offensively. I could not find anything, especially with our smaller lineup out there, that we could get any kind of rhythm with. I gotta get better."

Getting better is pretty tough right now, as practice time is so limited. If Collins wants his team to execute better or differently, it must be done through words, not actions. There just isn't any time to practice.

"We can't [make a ton of adjustments] because there's no practice time," Collins said. "I asked [video coordinator] Monte [Shubik], 'When's our next practice?' and he said March 11. March 11. And he said he looked at the schedule, and we'll probably have six practices the rest of the year. [Yesterday] isn't practice. This is a meeting. You're coming in and what you're doing is touching the guys and giving them a synopsis of last night.

"There are two or three things offensively that I'd like to put in, I can't put those in. They would help us now without Spencer, because they're different ways to do things. But I can't do that now, we have no practice time. We put a couple things in at shootaround that we've tried to run in games, but because we've never practiced, our guys don't have any timing with it."

New Jersey also is battling injuries, but the difference Wednesday was they had a star player in Deron Williams (34 points, 11 assists) who took over the game with the ball in his hands. The Sixers don't have that luxury.

"We just don't have that kind of team where one guy can dominate the ball," Collins said. "We have four guys on the perimeter that we think can all make a play - Lou [Williams], Evan [Turner], Dre [Iguodala] and Jrue [Holiday]. From our standpoint, having one guy handling the ball all the time does not play to our strengths. For New Jersey, it does. They can play off a Deron Williams."

Both Hawes and Vucevic worked on strong basket moves yesterday with assistant coach Jeff Capel. Hawes looked decent, running from about 15 feet out to the basket and grabbing a pass and dunking. His movement seemed not real fluid, but encouraging.

Running the same drill, Vucevic wasn't able to grab the ball in the air and slam it; instead, he caught the ball and laid it up. He didn't look all that comfortable.

"I think [Hawes] is moving better than Nik," Collins said, though he would put no timetable on a return for either. "There's no doubt we miss those two guys."

Collins also said Young's back felt better, though the forward also continues to battle a cold.

Tonight is the third of seven consecutive home games . . . The workout started at 11; Collins talked to the team for about 20 minutes and then summoned the media for interviews, pretty much ending the day for his players. A few stayed around to take some shots, but most left the floor . . . Perhaps you remember the song from years gone by - "Clap your hands, everybody, for the Philadelphia Sixers. One, two, three, four, five, Sixers. Ten, nine, eight, Seventy Sixers." Well it appears it will be making a comeback tonight. Listen closely . . . The Sixers host the Detroit Pistons tomorrow night.