Befuddled Doug Collins hopes it doesn't get any worse for Sixers

THE DISCONNECT is astounding.

As Tuesday night's game began and the players shook hands around the midcourt circle, the Sixers' Doug Collins, an old-school coach, saw three of his new-school players without a lick of sweat on their brows.

Afterward, after the Magic had trounced the Sixers by 14 on the Sixers' home court, Collins eviscerated his team for its lack of effort.

"This is mind-numbing to me," Collins said.

He is nearly alone in his befuddlement.

"We hopped out to an 11-point lead early," said All-Star guard Jrue Holiday.

"If that's what the coach said, that's what the coach said," said Evan Turner, the No. 2 overall pick from 3 years ago.

These are the buttresses with which the Sixers hoped to support Andrew Bynum, the keystone portion of the deal that cost the Sixers their Olympian, Andre Iguodala, as well as two other first-round players and a future first-round pick.

Only one player saw things the way Collins saw them.

"It was all based on energy," said Thaddeus Young. "We didn't come out with any fight at all."

As for the sweatless teammates, Young said, "It means we're kind of cruising into the game."

They entered the game 22-32, four games out of the final playoff spot in the East, losers of their last five. Now, six.

They couldn't afford to be cruising into anything. Despite their denials, losing for the Sixers has become a comfortable old shoe.

The loss to Orlando fit them just right. The Magic had 11 players available, none of whom played for the Magic last season. Eight of them were rookies or 1-year players. The Magic had lost 10 straight road games.

There has not been as bad a Sixers loss in years.

There will be no repercussions. Not from inside the locker room. After the game, the players commiserated, they supported each other, and they prepared to go to Chicago Wednesday afternoon.

Losing takes money out of everybody's pocket, but heaven forbid somebody yell at somebody else and hurt a feeling or two.

"I think we have some guys with some [leadership] capability," Collins said. "They need to take ownership . . . Sometimes you need to help yourself. Youth's a very blaming thing."

Not with Mr. Sunshine running your team.

"We tried to stay positive all game," Holiday said. "You're not supposed to point fingers. You're supposed to work with what you have."

The work needs to go in another direction.

The Sixers have beaten only one fully stocked playoff-caliber team this season - the dysfunctional Knicks. They have played Memphis tough and Miami hard and Oklahoma City to overtime, but they are, overall, a losing club.

They have lost to Detroit, New Orleans and Orlando, all at home.

"We've laid some eggs here," Collins said, none more rotten than Tuesday night's. "I sure hope it doesn't get any worse than this."

It will. In their next six games, the Sixers play the Bulls, Warriors, Celtics, Hawks and Heat, besides the lowly Wizards.

Not only were some Sixers not sweating at tipoff, some of them didn't seem that moist after the game.

Consider center Spencer Hawes, who was outrebounded by Sixers 2012 first-rounder Nic Vucevic, 19 to 1. Or Nick "Swaggy P" Young, who was 1-for-6 and earned just over 14 minutes as a starter.

Crippled by the absence of Bynum, still healing his arthritic knees, the Sixers never projected as a real threat to win anything: certainly not the East, or even the Atlantic.

But the emergence of Thaddeus Young and the All-Star play of Holiday did lend the franchise a degree of respectability.

As expected, they cannot compete with Indiana and Miami; for that, they reconfigured the organization and traded for Bynum. They beat the Wizards and the Hornets and the Kings and, yes, even the Magic. Holiday and Young carried the club past the dregs, at least, and usually got a little help from Hawes one night, Swaggy for three or four, and maybe 2 or 3 weeks from Turner.

They were intriguing, a possible first-round issue for a team such as the Knicks or the Hawks if the seeds shuffled themselves just right. They were not intriguing Tuesday night.

They were excruciating.

Young missed six games with a hamstring strain. Tuesday night, in his second game back, he showed the effects of the time off and of the energy expended Sunday in New York.

The loss of Young, and his reinsertion, altered the delicate chemistry:

"The least little change affects us," Collins said.

So, has losing become acceptable? Collins deferred to his players.

"It kills us every time we lose. It tears us up inside," Holiday said.

In that, Collins and his team are connected.

"I gave my body to this franchise," said Collins, who played through pain for the Sixers in the '70s. "I ran through my sneakers."

Nobody needed new shoes after Tuesday night's game. Neither did the Sixers play hard a week before, in Minnesota, the first game back from the break: "They did not prepare themselves to play," Collins said, referring to the team's approach after the All-Star break.

He has asked his bosses for their insight. What else can Collins do?

"I have not been able to come up with answers . . . There's nothing wrong with our [coaching] preparation . . . If everybody looked inside themselves as much as I do, the world would be a CAT scan."

Collins acknowledged that playing without Bynum and Jason Richardson, out for the season with a knee injury, debilitated the team. There remains no timetable for Bynum's return, and Bynum Tuesday night blew off his weekly press availability, and arrived to the locker room at least 20 minutes late.

There will be no accountability for that, either.

It's just not the Sixers' style.