Bob Ford: Another Sixers loss points to the obvious

February gave the 76ers an extra day this year to try to decide just who they are, and even that wasn't enough. A month that began with a win over the Chicago Bulls and contained a lot of good and bad moments in between ended Wednesday night with a come-from-ahead loss to Oklahoma City in which the Sixers did everything but win the game.

Unfortunately, that is the measure they use for the standings, and when it comes time to separate the very good teams from the ones still trying to get there.

The Sixers are good enough on a given night to ride their defensive tenacity and spread offense to a win over the Bulls or Lakers. But they are also still capable of coming apart at the ends of games, as they did in the 92-88 loss to Oklahoma City.

"It's frustrating," coach Doug Collins said. "We're growing. We're learning. We're going to keep fighting and hopefully find a way to win some of these games."

The Sixers held a seven-point lead with less than six minutes to play and frittered it away steadily. They did it the easy way, by failing to score another field goal for almost all of that remaining time. They had some chances to hit a three-pointer and tie the game late, but that went awry, too, with a Lou Williams turnover the last dagger. Collins had drawn up a play with four options, but that wasn't one of them.

On teams with true go-to players, the coach doesn't need that many options. Oklahoma City coach Scott Brooks can tell his guys to get the ball to Kevin Durant and, at the very least, Durant will get to the foul line. You can't stop him. The Sixers don't have a player who can't be stopped.

"You can't have a play with only one option with this team," Collins said. "We can't do that."

None of which is new, but none of which is getting any younger, either. It gets old to have to always state the obvious: The Sixers are better than they used to be, but nowhere near as good as they need to be.

Viewing this as a glass-half-full game is possible, but only because the Sixers went into the all-star break having lost five straight games, and the momentum of early February had been stunted. A road win over a dreadful Detroit team was nice, but getting the back-to-back win against Oklahoma City would have been more meaningful.

Collins said he didn't get much sleep over the weekend as he worried about which direction the team is headed as the schedule gets tougher and the games pile up on his young roster.

He talked on the phone for 90 minutes with Billy Cunningham - his former teammate, former coach, and permanent mentor - and came away feeling the Sixers needed to get healthy and needed to keep their confidence. And also feeling those two were related.

"I understand the fragility of this business," Collins said. "We're a team that has to play with a lot of confidence. When we lose that, we lose a lot of who we are."

They have to believe they are better than they are or the whole house of cards falls apart. Part of the magic Collins brings to the job is the ability to keep them believing in spite of growing evidence to the contrary.

If the Sixers had time to examine the loss to the Thunder, which they don't, it wouldn't be uplifting. They did so many things right. They forced Oklahoma City into turnovers and limited the Thunder's shooting percentage and took care of the ball themselves and moved it around on offense to record 22 assists on their 37 baskets.

All good. But all wasted because Oklahoma City was able to grab 19 offensive rebounds and get to the line 34 times and, when really necessary, hand the ball to Durant, Russell Westbrook, or James Harden and get out of the way. Whom are the Sixers going to hand the ball to and simply wait for good things to happen?

It's true that the Sixers are without starting center Spencer Hawes, whose various ailments are beginning to seem like chronic he-ain't-here disease. It's also true - and this will sound a lot worse than it is meant to be - that any team whose fortunes rely on the presence of Spencer Hawes has a lot more problems than just his absence.

Before the Oklahoma City game, Collins was asked about the keys for success against the Thunder.

"Can we keep these guys off the free throw line? Can we rebound the ball?" he said.

No and no. Oklahoma City outscored the Sixers 26-10 at the line, and outrebounded them, 56-39. For all the things they can do, a not inconsiderable list, the Sixers of the second half of this season are in danger of being defined by the things they can't. If this reality sinks in and the confidence ebbs, things get bad before they get good again.

"As long as we defend, we have a chance. But we have to find ways to win," Collins said.

Defense is effort and it lasts as long as NBA teams think there is a reason to expend that kind of effort. That is the balance Collins is trying to maintain. It is, as he suggested, a fragile balance, and the Sixers' season teeters on that edge.

his blog at www.philly.com/postpatterns,

and recent columns at www.philly.com/bobford.