Jerry Colangelo

So after evaluating the Process to date and seeing that there is some light at the end of tunnel, it's time to look at the Colangelo choice.

I think this was done for a couple reasons.
(1) lack of accountability of players after Okafor situation and rumors of Noel and Embiid fines
(2) "star" young guys getting special treatment
(3) tone deaf, slow handling of Okafor situation
(4) Hinkie leaving Brett Brown out to dry
(5) team looking like a trash fire this year that may not win 5 games

What will Colangelo bring?
(1) an end to secrecy or at least a more candid franchise
(2) perhaps a free agent vet or two to mentor the kids
(3) some knowledge on creating a basketball TEAM

Is Hinkie out?
This could be Step One of that. I agree that Colangelo hiring is an indictment of Hinkie's slow-moving plan to date and the fact that Hinkie completely left his young studs out to dry this year with such a threadbare team.
I think moreso than indicting the plan, Colangelo is an indictment of Hinkie's DECISION MAKING. If you're gonna bank on the draft, you're looking at OKC as your model and they made amazing picks. Many, many teams have followed similar strategies and there's only one OKC--but many Sacramentos, Clippers, etc. Hinkie's 2014 Draft MAY turn out to be a success but so far it looks like Embiid pick was a big mistake. His 2015 Draft leaves why no Mudiay or Porzingis an open question. And his 2013 Draft failed to bring in Giannis or Gobert and left us with the degrading Noel and the gone MCW.
Hinkie's picks--for all their volume--have strangely been SAFE. Okafor over Porzingis and Mudiay. Noel and MCW as best-player-available picks. Embiid over other players less valued by the consensus. All of these big guys could be said to be guys that "coulda been number one picks if not for..." But these guys all had injury or style red flags. True, Embiid pick was risky--as was Saric--but these were consensus best-player-available picks. No thinking outside the box for an Aaron Gordon or Mario Hezonja or Bruno Caboclo or Kristaps Porzingis.
Further, three Big Man drafts have boxed Hinkie in. He traded MCW at the height of his worth but now he has 3 bigs (at least) and he needs to trade one or more and their value is going down due to injury or bad fit or bad play. This forces you to take a PG or wing in 2016 and NOT best-player-available.

Does Colangelo help the situation?
In Decision Making? Perhaps. In Free Agents? Maybe. In Short Term? I guess so. In Long Term? Who knows?

State of The Process

With Liberty Ballers and half of Philadelphia groveling at Sam Hinkie's feet and the other half calling for an end to Tankadelphia, I thought it might be a good time to evaluate what we've seen so far.

Of course, Jerry Colangelo was just hired to either advise, help or usurp Hinkie so clearly ownership thinks that something has been amiss.

It is true that the Sixers have been unlucky in the draft lottery. Nerlens Noel (injured) fell to them as did Joel Embiid. Brett Brown even said after the 2014 draft that he expected to get Wiggins and Stauskas not injured Embiid and away Saric.

Recent events have not painted Hinkie in the best light. Kristaps Porzingis (NY, pick 4) is spreading the floor and blocking shots for the Knicks while Jahlil Okafor (pick 3) is ground-bound on the Sixers. Okafor has also had disciplinary problems--and some say that Duke even hid some of his fighting issues from the public. Hinkie was too slow in punishing Okafor and gave him a slap on the wrist since Okafor is one of the Important Assets.

Let's review what happened:

Sam Hinkie was hired to great fanfare and in his first season showed a willingness to trade, a penchant for secrecy, the courage to make an impulsive deal, and a strong valuation of future assets vis-a-vis present ones. His first big move was trading then-All-Star Jrue Holiday to NO for Nerlens Noel and a future pick. He would later trade Evan Turner and Lavoy Allen to Indiana basically for nothing. He would also trade Spencer Hawes to Cleveland for a second rounder and Henry Sims. He added Hollis Thompson (whose still on the team). He kept Thaddeus Young. Michael Carter-Williams won rookie of the year despite inflated stats.

Year two saw the return of Noel. The epic punch-in-the-stomach 2014 draft that saw two first round picks deferred (though the swap of the No. 10 pick for a Saric, a 1st and 2nd looked good on paper if you forget that the No. 10 was the very good Elfrid Payton) and a couple good-looking 2nd rounders in KJ McDaniels and Jerami Grant. The team seemed to be gelling when MCW was traded to Milwaukee for a future Lakers pick and KJ McDaniels was traded to HOU for Isaiah Canaan. Thad Young was jettisoned for a pick.

This year the draft brought in Jahlil Okafor and Rishaun Holmes but the team is an abysmal 1-21 due to no experienced players (Luc Mbah a Moute--a good defender and vet--is gone; so is PG Ish Smith) and some mismatched parts. Nic Stauskas was acquired through trade but he doesn't start on the team. Noel and Okafor so far cannot play together. Noel has regressed. For the second year in a row, both Embiid and Saric are not playing. There is no real PG--Tony Wroten (!) and Kendall Marshall are supposed to be the saviors and Carl Landry (what?!) is supposed to be the veteran presence. The team was just annihilated by the Spurs and hired Jerry Colangelo.

Current Assets:
After a teardown year and two drafts, Sam Hinkie has better future picks than he does current players. Embiid, Noel and Okafor will not be able to all play together. One or even two of them will have to be swapped out. Stauskas and Thompson are both decent shooters--though Hollis may be the better of the two at this point. Okafor is useless on defense and Noel is useless on offense. Robert Covington, a D-League find last year, is proving a decent rotation guy. Jerami Grant shows flashes. Isaiah Canaan is just OK.

Hinkie has a lot of misses: Furkhan Aldemir (cut after one year and the only really substantial FA contract player signed); MCW (traded after one year-plus); Canaan for KJ McDaniels (can't vouch for that one and I hate that he equated it as a swap of one 2nd round pick for two--these are players and a future 2nd rounder guarantees nothing); Nic Stauskas (is he Jimmer Fredette or will he improve??); Okafor over Porzingis; Noel and MCW over Antetokounmpo and Gobert; Embiid over Marcus Smart; Saric for Elfrid Payton and picks; and why did he trade Jason Thompson for a completely useless pick swap from Golden State?

He has some hits too: Okafor does look good; Noel looked great last year; Covington was a nice find; the Jrue and Saric trades got back great value; the Stauskas trade will net a future first from Sacto and meaningless pick swaps; a slew of second rounders.

The 2016 Draft:
Due to various trades the Sixers are in prime position to improve with the 2016 draft but only if Hinkie views the present as somewhat important.

I think the hope for this draft is a little overblown given that the Lakers pick will probably not convey (it's top 3 protected and they're the second worst team) and that the other two picks belong to Miami and OKC so they will sit somewhere between 21 and 28 (and not the mid-round picks they could've been last year).

Best case the Sixers get a top-3 pick and the Lakers at number 4 or 5 plus the two later picks.

More realistically they get a top-3 pick and don't get the Lakers pick. So they will add one potentially great player and two decent first round picks. They are limited in who will fit on their team due to their overabundance of bigs (Can we still get that Noel for Smart swap?). A PG and wings are absolutely necessary. Drafting another center to add to Holmes, Saric, Embiid, Noel, and Okafor would be kinda dumb.

Additionally, Saric and Embiid are due to actually play next year.

So the Sixers should have a team that looks a little like this (assuming they take a PG with their highest 1st rounder):

PG 1st rounder  Backups: Marshall, Wroten, McConnell
SG Stauskas/Thompson Backups: 1st rounder, Canaan
SF Covington Backups: 1st rounder, Sampson
PF Okafor Backups: Saric, Holmes, J. Grant
C Embiid Backups: Noel

That's seventeen players--more than they can actually carry on their team. If healthy the above team would be much better than the current perhaps-historically-bad squad. They'd still need a year or two to get better. They would not obviously have their anchor player though Embiid and/or the new first rounder can be that.

In 2017, they may get the Lakers pick (which let's say will be no. 7) and their own pick (let's guess no. 5). So their team ould then shed some stragglers and field a team with something like seven high first round picks.

In sum, things look really bad now but will get noticeably better soon and even better in later seasons. And that's even without making a trade to clear the big man logjam.

Embiid, the Kings Trade and the NBA's Stupid Moratorium

The news that Joel Embiid will "probably" be out for the season is yet another stomach punch in the now-excruciating Sam Hinkie rebuild.

Hinkie supporters have always pinned their hopes to Embiid and his potential. And, surely, we all saw that potential. But the kid never even finished a season of college basketball and will now be out for two straight seasons (more if you count the missed time at Kansas). To say that this guy is a foundational piece is to build your foundation on a really shaky foot.

I hate to say that I can't be optimistic about this. As much as Hinkie preaches "patience" and "process" what he did in the 2014 Draft is inexcusable. He nearly broke the professional sporting world's losing-streak record to grab the 3rd pick in that draft and decided to double down on injured centers. Every fantasy owner knows that you don't want to bet on too many injured guys...they tend to get REINJURED. They also tend to stay out longer than you hoped and produce less than you hoped. Noel was a nice get. Saric may be too. But how do you destroy your team and then use your two first rounders on guys that won't play for AT LEAST TWO YEARS??? Then, you go and trade your starting PG in the hopes of showcasing a guy you scouted, Isaiah Canaan, who by all accounts is not better than fringe NBA journeyman Ish Smith.

It seems that Hinkie's words post-Draft were very telling. The guy whose followers praise for his "best player available" strategy said: "I hope we would have" when asked if he would've still taken Okafor if Embiid weren't injured. Okafor was probably the best player available, but Hinkie knew this was major. He put out a freakin' press release about it. 

He is actually showing signs of desperation. Papering over the Embiid debacle with talk of seeing every doctor in the world (whatever). As if doctors visits will somehow translate to championship rings. Going to see if Dario Saric can somehow wriggle out of his Euro contract (he couldn't). Giving interviews! And talking about his process and plan. Releasing the Embiid news over a lazy weekend and trying to package the news with the Stauskas trade. 

The OKC rebuild everyone wants was predicated on the Blazers taking Oden and the Thunder taking Durant. Doug Collins' downfall came when he took Evan Turner over Derrick Favors and Demarcus Cousins--and then traded Iguodala and Vucevic for Andrew Bynum to try to cover that mistake. In 2014, Wiggins went to Minnesota (via Cleveland) and Embiid (that year's Bowie/Okafor) went to Philly. In 2015, Hinkie finally went for a more sure thing taking Okafor.

But it's one step forward two steps back with this rebuild. In year THREE, the teams starting point guard will either be a wild Tony Wroten, the unsigned Ish Smith, or a tiny guy (Canaan or Pierre Jackson). The starting two will probably be Stauskas (or Hollis Thompson). Robert Covington will be the three. The team is rejoicing over the picks it got from Sacto but Sacramento, a perennial bottom dweller, had no need for Carl Landry, Jason Thompson or Stauskas and who knows what will come of all the pick swaps?

The Sixers put out a This Starts Now marketing campaign just before the trade deadline this year with a pic of Embiid, Noel and MCW. Guess what? Only one of those guys actually plays for this team. Embiid is the anti-Iverson: he only practices, never plays games. MCW is gone. Noel and Okafor provide some hope but how is the team's roster so threadbare going into year three of the Hinkie remodel. 

Yes, LUCK plays a part but luck is what Hinkie has based this rebuild on. The luck of the draw. The luck of the lottery. The luck of drafting the right 19 year old player. 

Let's not pretend that Embiid is an established Hakeem Olajuwon sitting on the bench. By the time he plays he'll be rusty and behind the developmental curve. Perhaps his star will emerge eventually but while we wait, Rudy Gobert solidifies the Jazz bench, Giannis Antetokounmpo looks like a stud, Elfrid Payton throws lobs to Aaron Gordon. The Sixers passed on all of these players. Let's think about that next time Hinkie is lionized as a hero just for gathering potential.

2016 will surely be a big year now with Saric, maybe-Embiid, and four firsts probably joining the roster. So in Year Four potentially this team will be a couple years behind Boston and Orlando, and a couple more years behind Utah and Minnesota. Playoffs in Year Six? Who the hell knows?

In other news:

• The Embiid debacle is a bitter pill to swallow any way you cut it, but the trade with the Kings was great. Carl Landry is not very useful to a team that has Furkhan Aldemir, Jerami Grant and Arsalan Kazemi. But Jason Thompson is a decent player who unlike Jason Richardson can ball some in addition to mentoring. The Sixers wanted Nic Stauskas and now they got him. That's a nice reset of the 2014 Draft and hopefully the kid can add some much, much, much needed shooting (just watched them play LA Lakers in summer league and Sixers have no shooters!). The 2018 pick (unprotected in 2019 and on) will be nice whenever it arrives and the pick swaps may or may not have value, they're like added fuel to the lottery. On the pick swaps: Sixers don't get them if Kings are out of the top 10 since Kings owe Bulls their pick in that case. I think the Sixers will be worse than the Kings this year, so perhaps next year the swaps go into effect. A great trade overall. Ultimate value will be predicated on the play of Stauskas and Thompson and whatever the swaps and picks become. On the downside: I know everyone is pillorying the Kings over this but, from their perspective, they could say that they gave a pick and some guys they don't want/need for A LOT of cap room that they used on some decent guys (Belinelli, Rondo, and Koufos). If Stauskas and the pick swaps don't amount to much, then perhaps the Kings weren't so nuts after all. Either way, a great get for the Sixers though I'll reserve judgment until I see how good Sauce Castillo can be on the court (he only averaged 4.4ppg on a bad Kings team).
• The NBA moratorium on free agent signing where everyone comes to verbal agreements has got to go! The DeAndre Jordan saga, funny as it was, is just one highlight. More important I think were the Kings and Suns salary dump trades that were done to free up cap space even though neither team knew who they would or could sign or even how much cap room they would have. The cap amount ended up being higher than expected and the Suns didn't get Lamarcus Aldridge, so why did they still trade Marcus Morris to the Pistons? Just weird. At least announce the cap figure first if you want to have a hokey verbal-agreements period.

Sam Hinkie's Plan Part 3

I think the naysayers are a little off on this one. Hinkie has said repeatedly that he believes in optionality meaning keeping your options open. The scuttlebutt says that Hinkie would have liked to have Andrew Wiggins, Dario Saric, Nerlens Noel, Avery Bradley, and D'Angelo Russell at this point. That would be a very good and balanced team.

The problem is that you don't create a team in a vacuum. There's competition. There's also chance where the draft is involved. So instead of the above the Sixers have Joel Embiid, Jahlil Okafor, Nerlens Noel, and some other stuff. Saric will come in next year along with what could be four other first rounders (at least two will be low firsts as Miami and OKC project to do a lot better this coming year).

A few predilections of Hinkie's that we've divined so far:

• He likes to draft players with athleticism who can't shootc yet. Will he teach them to shoot? We shall see. MCW and Noel examples make this a question mark.
• He doesn't mind renting his cap space for first rounders.
• It's unclear if he's loyal to any of the players he currently has. First it was the triumvirate of Embiid, Noel and MCW then just Embiid and Noel now is Embiid on the outs?
• The rebuild, everyone thought, would succeed or fail based on the projection of Embiid. Now with Okafor  either one can succeed and the Sixers will be in great shape. To this end, it's clear that Hinkie may be one to hedge his bets.
• He seems to not be concerned at all about on-court product, chemistry, the point guard position, or veteran leadership.
• He likes second round picks. He got some great ones in 2014. Most second round picks are crap though.
• He has sat out free agency two years straight and it's unclear if he'll do anything this year.
• He is tight-lipped and feels like being tight-lipped is a strategy. It certainly adds to the talk of a Plan.

So is there a Plan?:

• Most evidence points to there being a strategy not a point-by-point plan.
• Evidence for a Plan comes from Hinkie's acquistion (or, rather, Morey's acquisition) of James Harden via a series of asset grabs and maneuvers. The Rockets though are in a perpetual wind turbine of trying to attract every big FA out there. Philly was never a big FA destination. The Sixers always had to acquire big names via trade with the exception of the Elton Brand signing. I don't see big FA acquisitions in Philly unless the team becomes a true contender.
• The whole Joel Embiid thing is bordering on ridiculous. Has Embiid deep-sixed the whole rebuild by (1) falling to the Sixers at 3 instead of Wiggins, (2) being out a year-plus, (3) giving hope that he's the next big league star despite scant evidence, (4) forcing them to take a third center in 2015? Was his pick a mulligan in 2014? 
• In sum: if there was a Plan, it's met some detours. So far it's unclear that there's a point-by-point plan. There is a strategy. It's unclear when that strategy hits Phase 2. Phase 1 is blow-up/asset acquisition. Phase 2 is going for it. On trade deadline day 2015 the team put out a new marketing campaign saying "This Starts Now" featuring Embiid, MCW, and Noel. Will things start in 2016? This is the big question, when will Hinkie finally play a hand.

Sam Hinkie's Plan Part 2!

In the 2014 Draft, Hinkie collected Joel Embiid (injured), Dario Saric (2 years away), KJ McDaniels, Jordan McRae (sent to Australia), Vasilije Micic (Euro Stash), and Jerami Grant. Instead of adding as many as five good players in a very deep draft, the team immediately added only two second rounders.

There were then a series of deals (in the season and off-season) that brought in-and-out players like Ronnie Turiaf, Marquis Teague, and Andrei Kirilenko, none of whom played for the Sixers. All of these deals exacted Hinkie's "troll toll" of a second round pick.

The only free-agent acquisition the Sixers reportedly attempted was a move toward the Celtics' Avery Bradley.

The only first-rounder the Sixers obtained was for Thad Young in the Kevin Love trade.

Now Hinkie had completely blown up the team with a mess of second rounders to show for it, a first rounder that would come from Miami, an out-for-the-year center, a Euro stash guy, a center coming back from injury, and some prospects like Tony Wroten, Hollis Thompson, and Jerami Grant.

Wishful thinkers thought the team would be loaded soon with an Embiid that was the next Hakeem, Dario Saric who was the next Toni Kukoc, Nerlens Noel swatting shots, etc.

Pessimists saw a bare cupboard full of "assets."

I worried that the Sixers, like the Rockets before them, would become a revolving door team that players would avoid. No one wants to be a chess piece in someone else's game. You want to be a respected employee of a loyal organization.

The team began coalescing around MCW and Noel and new-addition Robert Covington until the 2015 trade deadline when Hinkie hit reset again. The (really) poor-shooting MCW was traded to the Suns for the Lakers first-round pick. JaVale McGee was added with a first-rounder from OKC coming to Hinkie for his troubles. Then, KJ McDaniels, who looked like a low-cost keeper, was swapped for Isaiah Canaan and yet another second-rounder. Hinkie, on that trade, said that he'd essentially gotten two 2nd rounders for one. Well, whoop-de-freakin-do. He also seemed to be high on his latest Rockets pick-up Canaan like he was on his previous Rockets scoop-ups Royce White (never made the team) and Furkan Aldemir (playing despite performance saying he shouldn't).

This reset was yet another stomach punch. What started with a bold move: Jrue for Noel and Saric, now looked like his only move: trade budding players for future picks. With no PG, Brett Brown became depressed for the first time and said he didn't want to coach a bunch of "gypsies." Isaiah Canaan looked worse than pick-up Ish Smith. Thomas Robinson, another pick-up, looked decent. Noel raised his game. Covington flitted in and out of being a good player. Aldemir got some minutes. The season ended with a whimper.

Then came the 2015 Draft. What could've been as many as four first-rounders turned out to be 1 when OKC and Miami fell out of the playoffs and the Lakers made sure that they optimized their chances of keeping a top 5 pick. The Lakers got pick 2, the Sixers pick 3. The draft went: 1 Minnesota (now with Wiggins): Karl-Anthony Towns; 2 Lakers: D'Angelo Russell; 3 Sixers: Jahlil Okafor. The Sixers then forewent their usual wheeling and dealing in round two and instead went for two low-ceiling players (JP Tokoto and Richaun Holmes) and two Euro stash picks that didn't sound like they would ever come to the US (Hinkie never really talked them up).

Now some of the "dividends" from the original blow-up were coming to fruition and none were actual material things. A bunch of detritus in the 2015 second round, some Euro stashes for later. On the court chemistry, cohesion, and consistency were thrown out the window. And, yes, Hinkie now had three potentially elite centers and no decent point or shooting guards and only Covington at SF.

Obviously Hinkie backers can say he got SOMETHING for Evan Turner, Lavoy Allen, and Spencer Hawes but when that something is a Euro Stash pick that will never come over that something is actually nothing.

The 2015 trade deadline pick-up on two first rounders in addition to the Thad Young trade (Billy King now gets to pay him in Brooklyn!) should turn up 4 firsts next year. Picking best player available should yield some decent players and hopefully begin filling out the roster, but we're talking about three LOST seasons in order to get to a fourth where your roster will still be one of the youngest in the league. Meanwhile, Hinkie has passed on Giannis Antetokounmpo, Rudy Gobert, and Elfrid Payton. These three guys are healthy and can play basketball well.

The next post will deal with the question of whether Hinkie has a plan.

Sam Hinkie's Plan (Part 1)

Let's begin with Sam Hinkie's so-called Plan that has torn apart the city of Philadelphia. We'll start with the history.

When Sam Hinkie came to Philadelphia the Sixers had just suffered the Andrew Bynum debacle. Bynum sat out a full season while Doug Collins tried to thread a roster together with Nick Young and Dorell Wright. You had Evan Turner, Lavoy Allen, Spencer Hawes, That Young, and Jrue Holiday. The big questions, to me and other linear-thinking troglodytes, was "do you re-sign Bynum" and "for how much?" Everyone was like: "if you can get him cheap blah blah blah." Hinkie came in and said something cryptic that turned out to be very smart. He said he'd treat Bynum like the "thousands of other basketball players playing all over the world." No one knew what that meant. It meant that Hinkie wanted no part of Bynum. Bynum ended up being a disaster in Cleveland and then a mere trashcan fire in Indiana.

On Draft Night 2013 (not that long ago, but eons in Sixer Time), the Hinkie Era began. Hinkie traded the one great player the Sixers had: Jrue Holiday for Nerlens Noel (the 6 pick) and a future first. He then drafted Michael Carter-Williams in the first round and Arsalan Kazemi, an analytics wunderkind due to his expert rebounding, in round 2. The Holiday trade, executed while I was in Korea, was stunning--especially b/c it was first reported to me as "Noel for Holiday and a future first." But moreso b/c you just don't trade your only All-Star while he's still really, really young and just shown that he can shoot a 3. This was an outside-the-box trade and Hinkie got the second first not just b/c Holiday is good, but b/c Noel was injured and probably out for the year. So you just lost a starting PG for a guy who won't play for a year.

The Sixers that year burst out of the gate winning and I remember making many jokes referencing the movie Major League. The GM clearly wanted to tank but the team was half-decent. They eventually calmed down as most teams led by Elliot Williams do and Hinkie proceeded to trade everyone Collins had except for Thad Young. ET and Lavoy went to Indiana for pennies (I believe one 2nd rounder); Hawes went to Cleveland for two seconds and Henry Sims (who turned out to be serviceable on an abysmal team); and soon you had a team that literally trotted out line-ups that D-League teams could beat. Year One was stamped as the Tank Year and everyone assumed that the Sixers would draft Andrew Wiggins and one other great player (with the first from New Orleans) and start on their road to redemption.

It didn't happen that way. There were two stomach punches in the 2014 Draft. First was when Joel Embiid was found to have a foot injury days before the draft. This was a stomach punch because the Sixers had the 3 pick and Embiid was supposed to be number 1. The draft order was prognosticated to be Embiid, Parker, Wiggins. Now things were turned upside down. It sounded like Cleveland would take Wiggins at 1, then you assumed Jabari Parker would go to Milwaukee, this left a big question mark for the Sixers. The assumption was that Aussie Dante Exum would be taken despite the presence of Michael Carter-Williams, who, by the way, was reported to be on the trading block. The Sixers bypassed Exum and took Joel Embiid--another center! And then took Elfrid Payton, stomach punch to MCW, who they traded to Orlando for Dario Saric, MCW's OK! Fans are down! This was the second big stomach punch: this one to fans. The team was abysmal, went on a 26 game losing streak and now drafted two guys that would probably not play the next year in addition to some second rounders like Jordan McRae and Jerami Grant.

Part 2 Next!

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Why I'm Rebooting Sixersfiend

Yes, it's been three long years since I last wrote.

A LOT has changed--my last post was about the Andrew Freakin' Bynum Trade!

There's still much to say about basketball and seemingly a plethora of places to get information.

The problem, to me, is that most of them are terrible.

Let's have a rundown:

• Bill Simmons got fired from ESPN for calling out their boy Roger Goodell. He writes fantastically. He still makes an inordinate amount of movie, porn, and wrestling references. He is a twelve year-old boy. He is funny. He knows his stuff.
• Simmons' replacement Zach Lowe does a great job of taking stills and gifs of basketball plays. This was his thing until it became a lot of other people's thing. Lowe cannot write at all. He is terrible. He uses the following adjectives to describe black athletes: frisky, cute, snarky. He is fond of saying a player does basketball things and he is known for tweeting "Sports!" when a game is getting hot. All of this is nice and meta in his poor man's Dmitri Martin world. He even has a little drawing of himself at the bottom of his articles. A frisky, cute drawing. I can imagine him batting a ball of yarn. In addition to terrible writing, he is fond of pushing a view of "the new NBA" that every horny writer has his hornball on. The new NBA has a ton of pick-and-rolls and super complex strategy. I definitely saw that in the Finals when the Cavs had a lot of complex action setting a lot of interesting stuff when they all stood in the corner watching LeBron. Lowe is tolerable, but barely so.
• Chris Sheridan has a web site called sheridanhoops.com that, to his credit, broke the Lebron-to-Cavs news. The web site looks like it was conceived and laid out in 1992 and usually has passable articles. It is a decent but forgettable site.
• Bleacher Report has burst on the scene with tons of speculative lists such as Top 20 Draft Picks Your Team Might Be Worried About and Top 20 Things We Love About Summer League. Their feed, full of twitter goodness, is great. Their articles are fine. They suffer from the Internet's recent clickbait headline drama where every headline says something like 3 Things You Wish You Didn't Know About Michael Jordan or 20 Hot Moms Over 50 or Things We Thought Were Stupid But Really Aren't. To say this phenomenon is annoying is like saying that teenage boys are pleased with the availability of nude images in the 21st century. It's a massive understatement.
• There is HoopsHype--now populated by massive pop-up ads--and RealGM--where news is broken about Stanko Barac's latest workout for Olympiacos--and NBADraft.net--where European prospects are carefully placed in the second round of the 2018 Draft.
• On the Sixers side of the ledger there are a few sites. LibertyBallers.com is written by people who truly love the Sixers and Philly but who cannot write. Lowe-ian headlines like Robert Covington does Covingtonish Things that make the players into dorky cartoon characters or, worse, cute little kitties litter the site. The Hinkie Koolade has been supped in massive quantities. I'm not trying to be Howard Eskin here, but the press should criticize and analyze not cheerlead. Everything Hinkie does is supported and explained and supporxplained by LibertyBallers. Okafor will play point guard! Embiid is the next Hakeem! Etc. Etc. Hoop76 is another decent Sixers site that looks like what I'm trying to do here but without the sarcasm and cynicism earned in six long years of grad school. Sixers.com is a nice place to find out when the next Sixers Dance Team tryouts will be.
• Finally, the Worldwide Leader trots out Chris Broussard whose hatred of gays isn't bigotry, it's religion. Religotry? Brian Windhorst whose analysis of LeBron's every eye-blink and knee-scratch is excruciating. Literally this fat guy from Cleveland who they call "Windy" (a fart reference?) writes stories where he dramatizes every glare and eye roll LeBron James emits. He uses sources like "veterans on the Cavs" though for some reason instead of his muse since, of course, he is more likely to hear "the real deal" from benchwarmer Shawn Marion than from LBJ. Marc Stein is a mensch who attempts to break real news in this mess. Ric Bucher left a while ago to join Howard Beck at Bleacher Report and both are doing a helluva job making us forget they once had real gigs. ESPN also has a new stable of idiots who babble nonsense, cannot read teleprompters, cannot speak English, do not know anything about sports, etc. etc. Stephen A. Smith is still livid about something Jose Calderon did in 2013 and Skip Bayless is seriously ready to tear into this myth that you need to watch basketball games to analyze basketball on a basketball show. 
• People that are doing nicely: PTI rolls on, the TNT boys are doin' their thing, David Aldridge is still "DA," and NBATV is a nice place to watch Vinny Del Negro creepily stare at everyone like he's at a Maggiano's and he's been waiting 20 minutes for his veal parmesan.

With so much Sixers gossip and news going on, I just can't leave it to the morons. So SixersFiend is back!

BYNUM

My thoughts on the am azing Bynum deal...

First of all: I thought this deal was pure FICTION when I first read it. I mean, swapping Iguodala and some other stuff the Sixers didn't need/want for Andrew Bynum?! It reeked of the GM just floating something out to get in the press. When it happened, my head was spinning.

I've read a lot since on the trade. The overall opinion of the trade seems to be that the Sixers did very well (while the Lakers and Nuggets did even better). ESPN.com has been perhaps most negative on the deal (though Bill Simmons thought it was a great move). Those that are lukewarm feel that the Sixers took two steps back and two steps forward this summer and may be at a similar place. They focus on the Brand, Lou and Iguodala losses.

To be honest, the summer acquisitions had me confused--particularly after signing Kwame Brown to a 2 year 6 million dollar deal. I liked that Elton Brand was gone and I think that those who poo-poo that move are dense. Brand was not playing well in his last year as a Sixer. Let me rephrase that: he was nowhere near at the level of his contract. Last year he averaged 11 points and 7 boards (plus 1.6 blocks). 11 points! So I don't know where this "irreplaceable" nonsense is coming from. To be frank, an optimistic projection on Lavoy Allen might have him averaging similar numbers.

Signing Kwame Brown and Nick Young (whose a chucker on a one year contract) with the money was crap. But, I do like Dorrell Wright.

Now, losing Lou Williams looks worse than it did earlier in the summer. The team has no back-up PG (well, Maalik Wayns). It also could use a slasher-scorer type like Lou. But Lou went to Atlanta and, according to Doug Collins, the Sixers offered him some deals he didn't end up liking.

Iguodala is certainly a big loss. He was the defensive identity of the team. But his attitude is kind of sucky and whiney--and, again, he was no scorer. In '07-'08 he put up 19.9 points, but that average was down to 12.4 last year. So, with Brand and Iguodala, you were shipping out an underwhelming 23.4 points per game, which I think Bynum by himself could average.

Losing Harkless--who the hype said could eventually be special-- and Vucevic--who almost certainly won't be-- is just the cost of doing business. The first round pick is too.

So, yes, the roster is now misshapen. Yes, I don't think the Sixers were brilliant earlier in the off-season. BUT... the Bynum deal was the best trade I've ever seen the Sixers get.

Review the last time the Sixers traded for a true, capable big man: The Mutombo trade. They gave Theo Ratliff (who was blocking everything... but hurt), Toni Kukoc (who was playing well), and Nazr Mohammed (a decent center). That's two very good players and one decent one. Here the Sixers gave a very good player in Iguodala, two decent prospects (who knows what they'll become?), and a pick for A MUCH BETTER CENTER who is 25 years old!!!!

Bynum instantly makes the Sixers a team with purpose. He is a cornerstone. You can get some shooters and defenders to put around him. Getting that big center piece is so critical to NBA success because so few players fit that bill. Last year Bynum averaged 19, 12, and almost 2 blocks. That's 4 points, 2 rebounds, and a fraction of a block less than Brand and Iguodala COMBINED. Think about that: he's one guy whose averaging what your two main guys got together. And he was on a team with two other All-Stars. On the Sixers? Going for 23 and 12 is doable. Could happen.

As for the rest of the roster and how he fits: I think this year could be a transition year but I think this does a few things for the Sixers:
1. They now look like a definite playoff team, before the deal they didn't.
2. Now they can swap out some of their center depth for something else they need (maybe a PF or PG) during the year.
3. The Sixers will be able to compete every night.
4. They no longer look like a worse version of the Pacers. They look like a team with more potential and a more balanced and exciting roster than Brooklyn or New York.
5. The Sixers will be WATCHABLE. I was worried that they were going south after such a great season last year, but this team will be exciting.
6. For the first time I can remember, the Sixers will play NBA inside-out basketball with 3-point shooters and a center. You know, the type of basketball you see in June not in November.

As for the trade, great kudos to the Sixers on making a move that this cynical fan never saw coming. Getting Andrew Bynum for Iguodala is a crazy get. Remember that when Allen Iverson went out what came back was Joe Smith, Andre Miller (who stayed for a while) and 2 first rounders that amounted to not-much. Here, Iguodala goes to the same team (Denver) and you get back one of the best centers in the game. The only way this was even remotely possible was because Dwight Howard wanted to move. Otherwise the Lakers hang up if anyone wants their dominant, young center.

Amazing, amazing trade.

Ug.

Sixers signed Kwame Brown today to a (potentially) 2 year deal. No great way to spin it.

...and supposedly DC wants to start Spencer Hawes at the 4?! (and I'm assuming Kwame at the 5).

Well, if it doesn't work, he'll surely realize pretty fast.

Why not... CARL LANDRY or ANYONE OTHER THAN KWAME BROWN??!!!

West Too-Early Predictions

1 OKC (Gotta put 'em here... but I do think there's a possibility they slip a little)
2 LA Lakers (they could be real killers)
3 San Antonio (they're adding some more international flavor in De Colo and Lorbek and reupping Diaw plus still have Duncan/Parker/Ginobili/SJax, etc.... they'll be in the mix)
4 Memphis (they've got a good squad)
5 LA Clippers (if Billups is healthy, this team will be very good again)
6 Denver (JaVale plus runners... could be very good or miss playoffs)
7 Utah (Jefferson/Millsap/Marvin Williams/Hayward/Mo Williams plus...)
8 Golden State (if Bogut is healthy, this team will surprise a lot of people. Steph Curry/Barnes/Klay Thompson/David Lee/Bogut with RJ on bench. Wow)
9 Minnesota (they could be 7 actually... it's all about Love and Rubio staying healthy. Like Budinger addition. Really wanna find a playoff spot for them but it'll be a fight)
10 Sacramento (with Thomas Robinson/Cousins/Tyreke and crew they will be tough to beat... but young and messy)
11 Blazers (no real concept of who they are anymore)
12 Dallas (Collison is nice, but who else do they have to pair with Nowitzki?)
13 New Orleans (like Ryan Anderson/Gordon/Anthony Davis but they will be young and unproven)
14 Houston (they will be looking to trade. Otherwise, they'll be real young)
15 Phoenix (bleh) 

Contenders:

East: Miami, Chicago, Brooklyn, Boston
West: OKC, LA Lakers, San Antonio

More Free Agency Notes

On the Rockets. They're getting rid of Scola now? Basically, the Rockets are the perfect team to trade a big vet to. They've got picks, young players, cap space. They dumped their two best players: Lowry (for a first) and Scola (for nothin'). The funny thing is their dream is to basically swap teams with Orlando since the Magic are insisting on dumping a million crap-contracts on whomever wants Dwight Howard. So a Rockets- Magic deal will look something like this: Dwight, Q Richardson, Duhon, and J Richardson for Terrence Jones, Donatas Montiejunas, Chandler Parsons, Jeremy Lamb, and 2 1st round picks. The Rockets could then have basically the same team as the Magic with maybe a few more green sprouts (young guys). And were the Magic that good? Not really.

On the Knicks. At least the Sixers are building through youth. Amare is already cooked (or semi-cooked). Melo gets worse every year. Chandler is good. Shumpert is a revelation. Kidd and Camby? This team is destined for a string of out-in-the-second-round runs.

On the Nets. Like what BK just did by taking on Joe Johnson. We'll wait a year before he gets killed for signing Wallace to a $10 mil/year deal, Lopez to a virtual max contract, and taking on Joe Johnson (the biggest contract signed in the last 5 years). They will compete. But how much better will they be? They basically are adding Gerald Wallace, Mirza Teletovic, Reggie Evans, and Joe Johnson to last years team. Those are solid additions, but they're not gonna be contenders (I think). And this is their team for the foreseeable future. Still, it's top-3 in the East: Deron/JJ/Wallace/Hump (presumably)/Lopez with Teletovic/Evans/rooks on the bench. Actually, if Wallace plays up to his potential (Charlotte days) and Lopez improves, this team could be very, very good.

On the Lakers. Love the Nash signing. How many more years does he have left? At least one or two, right?

Top East teams: 1 Miami (love Ray Allen signing... I mean, I don't love it, but it does scare me);
2 Chicago (they're being written off; but they were 1 last year and I think they'll tread water well until Rose returns);
3 Brooklyn (will be much improved)
4 Indiana (better version of the Sixers imho with Hibbert/Granger/George/G. Hill, etc. Maybe this is too high for them but they looked good last year)
5 Boston (reupping and really like Terry signing...can't believe people kept saying Big 3 when Rondo was their best player)
6 New York (don't love 'em, but they'll make playoffs)
7 Sixers (almost put 'em at 6 for the heck of it... though, they could easily miss playoffs)
8 Atlanta (with Lou, Horford, and Josh Smith...they should be ok)
9 Washington (I think they put it together this year with Wall/Nene/Okafor/Beal/Ariza and a fair bench)
10 Milwaukee (Dalembert a fair add; don't think Monta/Jennings backcourt will be good on D)
11 Toronto (will be much improved with Lowry and Valanciunas, who is supposedly a stud)
12 Orlando (with or without Dwight, I don't have high hopes)
13 Cleveland (nice squad... like Irving... will be fine)
14 Detroit (Maggette and Drummond are fine adds but the team is still not great)
15 Charlotte (they will still suck)

continued...

Free Agency and Sixers

My assumption going into free agency that the Sixers would probably sign Lavoy Allen, let Spencer Hawes go, and let the chips fall where they may with Lou Williams. I also assumed that Elton Brand would stay because: he adds a veteran presence, his expiring contract might be worth something during the season, and the team wouldn't want to eat his salary.

So far, I've been wrong about a bunch of things.

ESPN analyst John Hollinger has characterized the Sixers' front office as flying by the seat of their pants. His evidence rests on a few key pieces of evidence. First, he says that the Sixers should have signed Lavoy Allen to a deal that included options for subsequent years after year one. He says every team does this and it's bizarre that the Sixers didn't. Second, he says that this Lavoy mistake led to the amnestying of Brand so the Sixers could open up cap space for Nick Young that they would've had if Lavoy were under a cheapo second-round pick contract. Then, he sees the additions of Nick Young and Dorell Wright and the subtractions of Lou and EB and thinks he sees a team without a plan.

Sixers' co-owner Adam Aron has tweeted that they do have a plan and that their moves have been known internally for awhile--they just got reported as journalists sniffed out the details.

I don't know if the team has a plan or not. I know we have a good coach and I know some solid pieces have been added--and some vets jettisoned. The big thing will be whether they trade Iguodala--something I'm against b/c of Ig's defensive prowess. If Iguodala is gone, the team is clearly looking to build up again--a mini-rebuild--through youth.

Let's look at the moves:

Sixers re-sign Lavoy Allen (2 yrs) and Spencer Hawes (2 yrs). Hawes still has potential and, I think, Allen has more than fulfilled his. Both got fair deals: Hawes about 6.5mil per year, Allen about 2.5 mil per year. Billy King would've signed Hawes to a 50 mil deal no doubt. I like the length and reasonableness of the contracts. Allen will hopefully be a solid bench player. Hawes will hopefully have the incentive to get better with his short contract. The team desperately needs a shot-blocker! Fine moves value-wise.

Sixers amnesty/waive Elton Brand for cap space. A few thoughts here: one, this is a total Chris Webber situation where Brand will go to a solid veteran team (like Dallas) and start putting up numbers (15 and 8?). But watching the playoffs last year, it was obvious that Brand is more or less done. In the least he's a total waste of money on this team when Lavoy Allen (except for with his defensive lapses) more or less replicated Brand's production when the games mattered most. 11 points, 7 rebs, 1.5 blocks is decent but not worth breaking the bank. Put it this way: it's conceivable that Arnett Moultrie puts up similar numbers this year and he was an end of the first round draft pick. Brand did bring attitude and character and experience. But, he was gone next year anyway. This move fast-forwards things a bit and let's the team see what they really have. As Chad Ford said: in the short term it will hurt. So for one year they may be slightly worse than they would've been, but they'll get to give their young bigs experience. Nice move.

Sixers let Lou sign with the Hawks. Web sites are phrasing it as the Sixers "gave" EB and Lou for Dorell Wright and Nick Young. That's not the case. EB was gone this year or next anyway. They DID however replace Lou with Nick Young. Lou was too short in the playoffs. Against the Celtics he was not very useful. He played spotty. I think from a cap perspective this was the right move. Don't overpay this guy and lock yourself in. See what else is out there.

Sixers sign Nick Young (1 yr) and trade for Dorell Wright (1 yr left on contract). I really like Dorell Wright. Let's remember that the year before last he led the NBA in 3pters made and taken. He can shoot it. He's also big enough to conceivably play both forward positions. Nick Young was a bit of a loose cannon on the Wiz, but when he got hot in LA (or Washington) he was smokin'. He can't move the ball like Lou can, but the Sixers had enough guys to dribble (ET, Jrue, Ig) last year and no spot up shooters (save Lavoy and Spencer). These two will allow the Sixers to slash and space the floor. Imagine a lineup with Jrue, ET, Young, Wright, and Thad. Or Jrue, Ig, ET, Dorell, and Lavoy. There's floor spacing, offense, speed and potentially defense.

So, let's move on to possible depth charts and whether future moves are possible.

Here is the Sixers best defensive 5 as it stands: Jrue/ET/Ig/Thad/Lavoy (yes, that frontcourt is weak)

Here is their best offensive 5: Jrue/ET/Young/Dorell/Thad.

Both line-ups are a stretch, so let's look at a possible depth chart.

C: Hawes/Vucevic/Moultrie
PF: Thad Young/Lavoy/Moultrie
SF: Iguodala/Wright/Harkless
SG: Turner/Young
PG: Holiday/Turner

That depth chart actually captures 11 players! I do think that the idea is to have ET play backup point guard. I think that Young may even start (or Wright) playing the former Meeks role.

With no changes, the starters could be Hawes/Thad or Moultrie/Ig/Young/Jrue leaving a bench of Vucevic/Thad or Moultrie/Wright/Harkless/ET. That's a pretty sick bench. I put Moultrie in as a starter because he can rebound. The starters with Ig, Young, Jrue, Moultrie, and Hawes are actually pretty dynamic and including shooting, slashing, D, and rebounding. The second unit with ET/Harkless/Wright/Thad/Vucevic/Lavoy would probably beat any other NBA team's second unit.

The issues I see foremost are with the frontcourt. Lavoy and Vucevic are decent backups. Hawes is fine but unless he improves a lot he's a marginally good starting center. There is no real PF. I'm assuming a rookie (Moultrie) will start at PF because I think Thad and Spencer as starters would be way too undersized and would lack rebounding. Brand would've helped but he doesn't move the dial that much. Would trading Ig for a good PF help? Someone like Millsap might. There are two angles here: either Moultrie/Lavoy/Vuc/Hawes improve or they bring someone in. They can bring someone in next year with cap space (when Young and Wright's deals expire) or trade Iguodala.

If you trade Ig for a PF, the lineups do look cleaner. Let's say, the Sixers trade Ig for Paul Millsap or Pau Gasol.

Then you've got:

C Hawes; PF Gasol/Millsap; SF Wright; SG Tuner; PG Holiday still with a good bench of: Nick Young, Thad Young, Lavoy, Harkless, and Vucevic.

I think I just convinced myself to trade Iguodala. Ha ha.

Game 7: Sixers-Celtics

We stand on the precipice of what could be a dramatic breakthrough for the 76ers: the 2012 Eastern Conference Finals.

Though prognosticators have already looked past this Game 7 assuming that the Celtics will meet the Heat in the ECF, the possibility, though surely unlikely, that the Sixers will somehow make it to round 3 of the playoff must be dealt with.

How did we get here?

The season began as a blur. The Sixers dominating the division and holding the 3rd seed in the playoffs until a late swoon that sent them sideways. This has been the story of the team: at times a well-oiled machine, at others completely useless.

The bad times give us a window into what needs improvements. And during those stretches, like the long stretches in the Celtics series when the Sixers offense looked absolutely catatonic, we see: the need for a go-to scorer, a lack of shooting, a lack of a post-up game, and almost no knowledge of halfcourt basketball.

The good times evince a team that has a lot of "balance": meaning a plethora of good not great players. In addition there's: energy, explosive fast breaks, stout, chasing defense, athleticism, and grit.

Doug Collins has done a remarkable job finding roles for these players and in the regular season it seemed like he had it down pat with Meeks starting and ET, Thad and Lou off the bench. That changed when the team started to decline and Turner got more minutes.

Turner is one of the more important enigmas on the squad. A second pick. He can dribble. He can't shoot. He shoots too much anyway. And he is long and can defend three positions. His head is always set on bobble but his commitment to the game is sound. At points in the season, it looked like he was Lebron lite or at least a more versatile Andre Iguodala. At others he seems like a rookie severely lacking in the ability to finish plays and without the best judgment.

Game 6 showed us the virtues of Lou Williams: a free agent this summer (if he indeed does opt-out). He did his best Allen Iverson impersonation in the second half. On this team, despite my usual miserliness with cap dollars that aren't even mine, he is needed--or at least someone like him is needed.

The rotation of minor stars rising to the top has been a joy to watch. Spencer Hawes looked great in the Chicago series--along with Lavoy Allen--only to fade against Boston. Thaddeus Young looked like the only guy on the team who cared during Boston's blowouts. Yet in other contests he barely registered. Lou has been way up and sometimes way off.

In the end, the team has a few knowns and more question marks. Let's deal with them now:

Free Agents. The most immediate concern will be the free agents: Lavoy Allen, Spencer Hawes, and Lou Williams. All will be unrestricted. Hawes is most likely to leave but what exists behind him? Only Nikola Vucevic and Tony Battie--two players that haven't figured into the playoff rotation at all. Hawes will probably get a rich contract from a below-the-cap team. He is a good offensive player and a young player with room to grow. My fear is that his contract demands will be too much to swallow.

Lou Williams and Lavoy Allen are more important to tie up. Lavoy because, despite his asleep defense in Game 5, is a cool, confident big man who doesn't make offensive mistakes and who has the confidence to knock down shots when they matter. Still, let's not overblow the worth of a player whose stats barely registered in the regular season. He's not the solution at Power Forward. A solid backup more like it.

Lou is a big question mark. At times he looks like the missing piece, at others he can't get going. He needs to improve and get more consistent. Someone out there will want to pay the runner-up for sixth man of the year. The Sixers should try to keep him--and their other free agents--if only because players are hard to replace given the current NBA system. Allen will stay, Spencer and Lou might not. From the player's perspective, Allen needs to stay (he's not gonna find a better role elsewhere), Lou probably wants to (his role in Philly is nice, elsewhere a backup PG may not get as much burn), and Spencer can go where he pleases.

Vets. The team really only has two vets: Andre Iguodala and Elton Brand. Both get a significant amount of grief largely because they have not always played up to their paychecks. Elton Brand was a warrior in Game 6 but too often he has been a highly limited albeit serviceable big man. Any number of middle-of-the-road Jordan Hill types could replace his production--while not replacing his experience and grit. Brand is an obvious subtraction if, as the owner implied, someone else comes along that the Sixers could sign.      

Andre Iguodala has emerged, amazingly, as a closer in these playoffs. Hitting crucial free throws and nailing important 3s. His defense sets the tone for the rest of the team. His attitude is a conundrum. He always seems calmly depressed. He does care about the game but he's a bit of a downer in his comments. You almost never see him excited. He takes pride in his work but seems not to want to emotionally invest in it. This is the legacy of years of trade rumors. He is offensively challenged and that is obvious for all to see. He can dunk a basketball like few others can. At this point, it will be hard for the team to justify jettisoning a player so important to the overall picture and character of the squad. That said, the argument for swapping him for a big man or a scorer does have legs.

The Young Heart. Most of the team is composed of the Young Heart (Lou and Spencer and Lavoy should be included here but I covered them already).

Everything begins with Jrue Holiday who may be the team's best player. He looks like he's 12. But he makes great decisions (most of the time), controls the tempo, can pass, defends hard, and, when he's on his offensive game, is the team's most complete offensive player. It is truly amazing that in a draft that saw Hasheem Thabeet picked second and Jonny Flynn picked sixth, Jrue Holiday fell to the seventeenth pick (this is especially so because he was in the conversation for the fourth pick!). More amazing: Ty Lawson, Jeff Teague, and Darren Collison were all picked after Jrue.

Jrue is the heart of the team. He needs to become a leader and dribble less. He needs to improve his decision-making. But he is the team's best player.

Evan Turner, as previously discussed, is an enigma. He's not a bust. But his shot is generally broken. He can score at the rim. He can dribble. He can defend. Too often he thinks he's the team's go-to scorer. In the Game 4 comeback, ET shot the ball 22 times (and made just 5). He has a lot of talent and a lot of room to grow. It's unclear whether he'll become a mainstay on this team yet. He is a necessary ball handler and has good size. But he needs to improve on offense and defense for his performance to match his pedigree. One big question with him is: where do you play him? Jrue is the 1. Is ET the backup 1? The 2? A 3? All of the above? DC has done a good job letting Turner share PG responsibilities but he needs to expand his game away from just being a big, ball-hogging point to become the player he can be.

Thaddeus Young is a high energy, perfect bench player. DC gave him the right role. I don't think he can be an NBA starter--not on talent, but just on his lack of a defined position. Thad cares. He can rebound. He has energy. The contract he was given this summer is surely rich and it does imply that the Sixers want more than spot minutes for him, but I still don't see Elton Brand's replacement here. His offensive game is still too raw and he still relies heavily on energy and speed (both of which he has in abundance). He is a great backup big.

Lavoy Allen is a wonderful rotation player to have. A cool character who can hit shots. He should be kept. Spencer Hawes brings size and shooting. He fits well with the team. My assumption is that he'll be gone. Lou William is the lone true scorer. The Sixers will almost definitely do their best to keep him.

The Future?  Saturday's Game 7 will determine a lot. And I don't think that this team will have the opportunity to go so far in the playoffs for a long time. It is talented but lacking in scoring and size. Chicago with Rose would have beaten them in Round 1.

The Sixers need to add another 4 or 5 in the draft and perhaps through free agency. They need another scorer even if Lou stays. They need to internally improve especially since Jrue and ET are so young.

The Indiana Pacers, who whipped the Sixers in the regular season, are a good comparison point for this team. Indy's big differentiator is size. David West and Roy Hibbert are way better than EB and Hawes. The rest of Indy's team is similar: Collison, Paul George, George Hill, Danny Granger, Hansbrough, etc. Indy may have a bit more grit and offensive firepower but Iggy is similar to (probably better than) Granger, Holiday is better than Collison and Hill, Young and Hansbrough are similar energy guys, and Paul George is certainly a step beyond ET (but the Sixers have Lou too). The Sixers are deeper than the other up-and-coming "balanced" (i.e., no superstar) team in the East, but they don't compete on size.

Amazingly, if the Sixers beat the Celtics they'd face another hardnosed defensive team that has a thin frontcourt--so the Sixers' size problem will continue to be hidden.

Philly's learned a lot during these playoffs. First and foremost, is the experience that these defensive struggles have yielded. The team seemed stuck in Atlanta Hawks-style mediocrity and has had a chance to break out of that and truly evaluate its talent. Iguodala, Jrue and Lavoy have risen to the occasion as have many others on the roster at different points (Thad, Spencer, Lou, ET, EB). The future is murky for the 76ers but as a fan the ride this season has been something to remember.

Fans' Manifesto on the Lockout

The lockout is stupid: plain and simple. The NBA just had a great season and it stands to ruin everything because the Milwaukee Bucks' and Sacramento Kings' owners want a bit more money. As fans, we should not demonize the players. We watch for the players, the coaches, even the GMs.

No one watches for the owners. No one cares who the owners are. As fans all we want are free-spending, non-interventionist owners. And that's why we should be against the lockout: the owners want to spend less and intervene more.

Is the NBA system "broken"? Look, it's not the NFL. But it's a global sport that's growing. Last season was wonderful. There has never been parity not because of disparate incomes but because a few good players can tip the scales dramatically in a game that's 5-on-5. That's why NBA teams thrive on "big threes."

Is it our fault that Larry Hughes, Michael Redd, Rashard Lewis, and Gilbert Arenas were given huge contracts? But it is the owners' fault. They signed off on these contracts. Analysts and fans have called numerous NBA contracts stupid from day one. But we became inured to a league that paid big bucks for Adonal Foyle and Hedo Turkoglu. These are players that the lay fan has certainly not even heard of.

I'm with Bill Simmons on this one: the paying of middling players is what has NBA franchises stuck. It's fine to pay LeBron and Wade, but paying Eddy Curry and Jared Jeffries huge salaries is just dumb.

There are, then, two ways to look at this:

1) The owners are forced to pay these huge salaries to maintain a competitive edge.

2) The owners are not forced to do anything. They pay these salaries willingly and are responsible for them.

I lean 2 here.

As a fan the biggest problems with the current system are:

1) Length of contracts

2) Contract guarantees

How fun is it watching Erick Dampier play hard once every 7 years? Or waiting 5 years for your team to clear off bad contracts like Eric Snow's, Aaron Mckie's and Theo Ratliff's and then blow all their money on Samuel Dalembert and Elton Brand so that you can wait another 5 years for your team to sign someone?

It's absolutely the worst.

The Knicks took a good decade to become competitive due to bad contracts. Yes, the owners/GMs are to blame for these but the fans are the ones that suffer most. We're not immortals. We can't wait 10 years for our teams to become half-decent.

Essentially owners end up swapping these crap contracts between the 15 or so middling-to-crappy teams. So Stephon Marbury and friends get swapped around while the few good teams hold on tight to the 10 or so players that really matter.

Look, I'm under no illusion that the Sixers would be world beaters in a different system. But at least there'd be reason for hope and no need to whittle away my entire life waiting on stupid shit.

As for the hope for parity, keep this in mind. The following 5 players account for 17 of the past 20 championships:
1) Michael Jordan (6)
2) Kobe Bryant (4)
3) Shaq (3 with Bryant, 1 without)
4) Tim Duncan (4)
5) Hakeem Olajuwon (2)

Think about that: 5 players account for almost all the championships in the last TWO DECADES. And, if you wanted to be slightly clever, you could take out Shaq or Kobe, and say 4 players have accounted for 16 of the past 20 championships. Now they didn't do it on their own, but if you didn't have these players over the past 19 seasons you probably didn't have much of a chance.

And previous decades bear this out as Magic and Kareem, Isiah, Bird and McHale, and Bill Russell dominated previously.

This is not a sport where the Tampa Bay Buccaneers come out of nowhere and win the championship then disappear into nothingness. Or where a hot goalie can take the Bruins all the way. This is a sport where The Dominant Guy will consistently win over and over.

The interesting part is seeing the dominant guys go at each other. Like Kobe v. Shaq or Shaq v. Duncan or Lakers v. Celtics. Yes, the Pistons took the Lakers a few years back. That was awesome. Yes, the Mavs displaced the Heat. So fun to watch. But the salary system doesn't change the nature of the game.

If you have Dwight, Dwade, LeBron, Kobe, KG, or Durant and you put some decent parts and a great coach with them. You're gonna be in the mix every year. Not so necessarily with football where strength of schedule, injuries, and huge rosters make things highly variable.

So back to the lockout.

I don't care if middling guys get $5 million or $500,000. It's not my money. I don't get to even look at it. What matters as a fan is that player movement is easy, teams can rectify mistakes quickly (because there will always be mistakes and rosters are small), and that competition is strong.

Here is what I would do:

1) Shorten contracts to 3 or 4 years and/or make it so teams can drop one bad contract a year.
2) Shorten the season to 64 games or so. Making the games a bit more competitive instead of the slow wade in the tub that we have now.
3) Make trading a bit easier.
4) Hard cap, soft cap, no cap, I don't care. As long as my team has a chance to compete every year and isn't hamstrung by bad contracts. And the ability to sign new players every year would be nice. So a cap with some signing exceptions would probably be ideal.

That's it.

How much money the owner of Memphis makes doesn't mean crap to me. No one in the history of time made their billions owning an NBA team. People make money elsewhere THEN buy NBA teams like they buy yachts or golf clubs. No one asks their yacht to guarantee a profit.

The owners presently look like a bunch of assholes in both the NBA and NFL. The players are who we watch and want to see. Let's get something together that will please the fans for once. Or would you rather we stop watching altogether?

Revisionist History and the Sixers

The Story the Miami SuperTeam would like you to believe:

Wade, LeBron and Bosh played on crappy teams for years. They gave their cities all they had and then some. But their GMs sucked and their teammates were mediocre. After trying to make it happen "on their own," they decided to do it TOGETHER.

The Real Deal:

Wade won the championship in 2006 with Shaquille O'Neal and a bunch of mercenaries (Gary Payton, Antoine Walker, Jason Williams, James Posey). He then got injured and the Heat traded Shaq for Shawn Marion and Marion for Jermaine O'Neal. After playing with LeBron and Bosh in the summer of 2008, Wade told Pat Riley to "clear the decks" so that the three could join together in Miami. A late-season 2009-10 story that Wade was "frustrated" with his teammates was a smokescreen.

Bosh "toiled" in Toronto by not winning anything though he had an okay supporting cast. Bryan Colangelo failed him miserably by choosing to create a weak Euro-style squad around him that could not play defense. Though Bosh was leaving Toronto (for warm weather, he's from the Southeast) no matter what.

LeBron had the best team in the East. Fine, without him they would not be great, but the Lakers wouldn't be great without Kobe, the Magic wouldn't be great without Dwight, etc. In 2007, they got swept by the Spurs but things were promising. In 2008, the Cavs lost to the new-look "Big Three" Celtics who were en route to winning it all. In 2009, they went down to the Magic who were en route to winning it the East. In 2010, after valiant efforts the previous two years, an injured and/or not-so-interested LeBron went down to Boston who was en route to winning the East. His teammates may not have been stellar, but LeBron DID have a strong supporting cast and seemed to enjoy himself in Cleveland. It's curious then to think why he bolted the best team in the East to form a new best team and why he seemed resigned to losing versus Boston in the playoffs.

The Sixers:

Notes-

• Should we have taken a big man? How many opportunities come up to take one high in the draft? Cousins and Favors are both clearly skilled. Neither is Olowakandi or Hasheem Thabeet. So why pass on them when there's no other clear way to get someone that big and that good????
• Will Evan Turner be the SCORER we need or just another greatly skilled swingman who passes it around a la Iguodala, etc.
• The Sixers are clearly NOT a free agent destination, so we have to build through the draft and trades. No other way to do it. No reason to hoard cap room in the hopes that someone will want to join this squad in Philly. Our only FAs ever have been overpayed, injured big men. Probably won't change.
• I think Ed Stefanski is paralyzed. The team won a shade over 25 games last year and he's doing nothing. Typical additions of washed-up "name recognition" guys (Noc, Battie) and promise that "the young guys" will improve. What's the vision here? I think there is none. Just waiting out the years until Elton Brand's deal expires a la every other injured big man this team has seen in my lifetime.

Rise of the Create-a-Teams

If Chris Paul, Amare and Melo really are aching to make a new Big Three in New York, what does this mean for the NBA?

• Players "hand-picking" their squads once their rookie contracts run out.
• Shorter contracts with guys gearing up to play together in the top locales once they're out of their indentured servitude.
• The Rise of the SuperTeams or Create-a-Teams?? Superstars joining forces to push off Miami. That is, IF Miami is successful.
• The Rise of the Team-Teams. Milwaukee, Oklahoma City and others will try to create tight-knit squads to knock off the Mini-Team USAs forming (notice that Bosh, Wade and LeBron chose their team USA jersey numbers for the Heat. Sounds like they think they're gonna yuk it up against the Slovenian Sixers and NJ Reds).
• The Fall of the GM and the Rise of the Mega-Agencies. Remember the power of David Falk? Mega-Agencies (CAA in particular) will start driving the league.
• And, yet, there's one HUGE speed bump to the New World Order forming: the new collective bargaining agreement. If it creates more restricted free agency (doubtful) or lower salaries or higher incentives to stay with your squad, it could stop the process. But, if it creates shorter contracts that may be partially guaranteed, it could create more player movement and more potential superteams driven by players not GMs. Root for an organization? Nah. Root for a superteam joining on your turf.

Who Deserves "It"?

Amid all the controversy about the Great Miami Team-up of 2010, a lingering feeling of "this is unfair" remains. At first, I thought it was because this was players not management calling the shots. Perhaps it was a 20th century gut reaction, I thought. This is a new era. Free agency means that players have freedom and now they can create their own teams. It had never happened before. Usually teams would have space for one, maybe two players and those players never made it seem like they'd colluded to join forces. When the Magic signed Grant Hill and Tracy McGrady, it wasn't because those two had been dying to be teammates for years. Those were the two free agents that the Magic were able to convince to switch teams (and, yes, money was a factor).

To that end, it got me thinking that this was the first time in NBA history that an organization was not going for a title but rather a collection of players. When management builds a team--like Oklahoma City is doing and like the Spurs did--everything they get has been earned. But when a team is filled with mercenaries and front-runners, like the 2010 and 2006 Heat, it doesn't feel like a championship is the culmination of years of hard work, research, sweat and tears. Instead, it feels like a manufactured championship; unearned, undeserved. The players "deserve" it in the sense that they won the actual games, but what did the organization do? Collect some top talent and mercenaries that wanted to play by the beach? Have insider knowledge that Wade and Bosh and LeBron and Mike Miller wanted to ball together and were willing to take slight paycuts to do it? This wasn't an organizational coup, this was a players' coup.

They dictated the terms and made it happen. I don't think Pat Riley did much convincing. This is what they wanted to do. He just happened to be the only one to know.

So how do you root for a team or an organization that just happened to be the place where 4 good friends decided to join forces and win a crapload of games? It'll make for exciting basketball, but how can you be a loyal fan of a TEAM in such a league? You can't. You just have to wait for your team to orchestrate something similar--which 90% of the teams cannot do. Only squads with desirable destinations--L.A., Orlando, NY, Chicago--will be in the mix for such a strategy.

These places will be more like "landing spots" than teams. You can't say that you developed LeBron or Bosh if you're Miami. You can't say that you gathered assets and then traded for them. I don't know if you can even say that you successfully wooed them with a business pitch. All you can say is that you suffered a middling season or two, cut a lot of players (who then miraculously decided to return--Haslem, Jones, Joel Anthony, Arroyo), and "cleared cap space" so that you could be a landing spot for top free agents who wanted to play together.

Oklahoma City and San Antonio have "earned it" through the draft and developing players. Boston "earned it" somewhat by gathering guys like Al Jefferson to put together for trades. The Lakers "earned it" by developing Kobe, retaining Phil, and (much less so) by stealing Gasol.

But the Heat only "earned it" by getting rid of everyone on their team and then "lucking" into 3 stars who wanted to play together. The thing is, it was no luck. Prokhorov knew that Wade and Bosh were going together to Miami all along. I'm guessing that LeBron was leaning that way all along too. If Wade knew he had Bosh, then maybe LeBron just had a better pokerface. These guys planned it along. Not an organization. It's like a create-a-team in a video game. You might as well call them the Powder Mill Creekwater. So do they deserve a championship? The organization certainly doesn't.

Notes

• Having Billy King sign with the Nets is a joke and it makes our GM choice look crappy and provincial. It's like we swapped GM's with the freakin' Nets. Stefanski sucks.
• Can we please get Kevin Pritchard as our GM????!!!!!
• I'm tired of Wade, Bron and Bosh shitting on their old teammates. LeBron has said that Kobe had people on his team to carry him through, they've all said that they're done playing with mediocre teammates. Isn't this classless? Aren't you supposed to let the media trash on your teammates but defend them all the way? The guys in Cleveland especially fought hard for LeBron. Those were his buddies for years. Now he's saying that they sucked and that he always wanted to play with Team USA talents rather than regular NBA players. It's like the only way to win is on an All-Star team. And by the way, yes, Miami had a purposely crappy supporting cast (to save cap space) and Toronto made some real bad moves last year (Turkoglu for one), but Cleveland had the best record in the league two years running. Was this "toiling with crappy teammates"?? And if it was so bad, why did it seem like LeBron was having so much fun? This wreaks of revisionist history. And like wrestling...LeBron going from a good guy to a bad guy with the simple manipulation of a narrative.

LeBron and the New NBA Season

I've been mulling the changes in the NBA due to LeBron's defection for some time.

I think my initial impulse was that it would be "unfair" for the 3 big FAs to join up in Miami. I thought that it would be bad for competition and generally was bad sportsmanship. When you're playing a pick-up game, it's always obnoxious when the three best guys wanna play together so they can mop the floor with everyone else.

So, I think to me the big question will be: is this team TOO good? I asked a similar question when Barkley and Pippen joined the Rockets (leading to Pippen later calling Barkley a fatass who couldn't get in shape) and when Malone and Payton joined the Lakers (leading to Karl Malone's famous "hunting for little Mexican girls" comment). Those teams imploded memorably, but they were also one-shot deals full of stars who were on their last legs and they went down to "real" teams. The Rockets lost to the Sonics and Jazz; the Lakers famously went down to an incredibly tight Detroit Pistons team.

Yet this new combination is different. It's not a one-shot flier. All 3 guys signed 6-year deals (Mike Miller and Udonis Haslem have also joined up for 5). This is three franchise guys joining together at the height of their careers. LeBron and Wade are arguably two of the top 3 or 4 or 5 players in the league. Bosh is the best young power forward in the league.

This is the first time that players made it happen, not owners. You can't say Kupchack got Chris Wallace again or Kevin McHale gifted Danny Ainge. That's the beautiful and ugly part of this arrangement. It's not about a little kid dreaming up how he can craft the perfect team, it's the three best guys available saying screw it, let's join up and circumventing the traditional GM-built team. You can pat Pat Riley on the back all you want, but he didn't really "do" anything that the Nets, Bulls, Knicks, and others weren't doing. He cleared more cap space, yes. But he took the same risk that others did. Perhaps he even had inside information from Wade. Everyone else assumed that Wade and LeBron would want to join a team with "assets," so we assumed that they'd wanna join the Bulls with Derrick Rose and Joakim Noah. The Knicks went the same course when they committed to Amare because they thought "we're not attractive otherwise." The Nets had Favors, Lopez and Harris...all were expendable, but it was thought that adding LeBron and Bosh to the mix would make for a great squad.

No one thought, "You wanna have no one on your team so that they can all join up here." One reason was that this was a humongous risk. Say the Knicks don't sign Amare, they trade Gallinari for nothing (like the Heat strangely did with Beasley only to replace him with Miller), maybe they dump Wilson Chandler too. Then they have two options: win huge or become a horrible team. The Nets ended up having to scrounge for scraps: Travis Outlaw, Johan Petro, and Anthony Morrow with their cap room.

One reason that the Heat were THE ONLY TEAM that could pursue this strategy was the salary cap rules. A team can go over the cap to sign it's own player when they have Bird Rights. The Heat already had Wade, he was a magnet for the other two. They could free up space for Bosh and then wait to see if LeBron would want to come too. I think that the worst-kept secret of free agency was that Wade and Bosh were joining up. After meeting with both, Mikhail Prokhorov said that he was convinced they were going to the Heat. I think it's highly likely that LeBron made a charade of joining other squads but had made up his mind to join those two long ago too. I think it's a definite that Riley pursued this strategy not because he's a visionary or an amazing genius, but because Wade told him it was possible. Wade was THE ONLY big free agent to recruit other players. LeBron would not meet with Tom Izzo nor would he give assurances to FAs that wanted to join Cleveland over the years. The Twitter picture of Bosh and Wade dining waiting for "someone else" was a ridiculous give-away. LeBron pretended to mull his choice, but the Heat had him all along.

The hubris involved in the decisions here was offputting to many, myself included. The Decision show was ill-conceived and overwrought. LeBron wants to say "I'm still the Man," even though I'm joining an All-Star team. Wade and Bosh and LeBron met with teams in what was more of a spectacle than an information-gathering session. W and B brought camera crews along, LeBron planned an hour-long decision special. These guys could not have come off as more arrogant.

Is this a change of the guard? The players now being in control instead of the owners? If it is, it may be fleeting with a lockout looming and the final Heat product not yet court- and playoff-tested. On the one hand it's a sea change to see players "creating" their own teams rather than letting GMs call the shots. Yes, stars have whined their ways into better situations before, but never have they colluded to create a potential champion like this. A star may join an already solid squad looking to re-up (see Malone and Payton or Barkley and Pippen or Artest on the Lakers), but never have 2 big stars decided to join a third like this. I would say it's refreshing if it didn't tilt the playing field so far in their favor. The only team I see seriously competing them is the Lakers. The Magic and Celtics could too, maybe the Thunder or the Jazz, maybe the Sixers or the Bobcats magically match up well. But really, all I'm thinking is that there will be 1-3 years of the Lakers challenging this squad followed by some years of outright dominance.

People say they can't play together: they're crazy. People say it won't work: it will. The big questions are: do these guys have what it takes to win it all? (LeBron especially) and Will they be willing to do the dirty work to get there or will they all loaf around expecting the others to pick up the slack?

There are some obstacles: the team may be stuck as is due to present or future salary-cap restrictions. The team won't be able to re-up much via draft. It will not have many trade chips for improvement. Wade in particular may get injured (see 2007 Heat squad) thus making this team that much more beatable.

In my mind, though it's LeBron's choice to go wherever he pleases, on the grounds of competition I don't like this arrangement. I never liked "mercenary" teams like the 2006 Heat that attracted every washed-up star looking to snag a ring. I like squads like the old Pistons, the Thunder and the Suns that add pieces but maintain continuity. Part of the joy of being a fan is seeing your team develop players (like Jrue Holiday). The attachment to free agents is always tenuous (see Elton Brand or Jevon Kearse) and, to be honest, most free agent signings do not pan out. The last time a Florida team tried to construct a champion using free agency it worked out miserably: the Grant Hill-Tracy McGrady Magic were always hobbled and the two stars rarely saw the court together. Still, even on paper, the team wasn't the top in the NBA (like the new Heat look like).

The best scenario that can come of this will be an NBA that is even more top-team-oriented with 3 or 4 All-Star teams competing with 26 mediocre squads. The new collective bargaining agreement may in fact crystallize the current layout since teams will presumably have much less to spend on free agents and I don't see incentives to keep your own guys (Bird Rights) going away.

I think if the process had been less manufactured and more candid, we may even be cheering the Three Kings rather than wringing our hands about them. LeBron came out of this looking like a punk. Wade came out fine and Bosh came out, in Stan van Gundy's words, looking like "Wade's lapdog." That the three are looking to "have fun" and "make the game easy" is a bit disconcerting to fans who would rather see Lakers-Celtics than Globetrotters-Generals. Further in a league that has become increasingly talent-diluted, the new Heat should be able to kill on most nights. I think most fans were angling for a Bosh-Wade Heat and a LeBron-Rose-Noah Bulls or a LeBron-Amare Knicks. That would have been something to get excited about. An All-Star team yukking it up against the Sixers might produce some Sportscenter clips but not any scintillating basketball.

NBA Preview

Here's a quick prediction for the future season:

In the East the playoff seedings will be:

1) Orlando Magic--I think they'll put up the best record behind an improved Dwight Howard, a recommitted Rashard Lewis, and a desire to grab regular season top-honor's.
2) Miami Heat--They'll win a lot of laughers, have some mid- or early-season troubles and maybe cool off a bit during stretches when they wanna rest their stars for the playoffs. I could see them being as low as a four-seed, though they may not wanna be in the top-seeds bracket.
3) Boston Celtics--They could challenge the Heat if everything goes right.
4) Atlanta Hawks--same team, dangerous in the regular season but won't go far.
5) Milwaukee Bucks--super-sleeper team now that they'll have a healty Bogut, Corey Maggette, and some other nice additions (Gooden, Larry Sanders) to add to Brandon Jennings. This could be a trouble "team" for Miami.
6) Chicago Bulls--with Boozer, Rose, and Noah they will be a very good squad. I could see them rising as high as the number 3 seed.
7) Philadelphia 76ers--one can hope, right? I could see them having a promising but not playoff-bound season or competing for a spot. I was considering putting New York here but I think their roster is still malformed, Amare will get hurt, and things will continue to go downhill. If the Sixers make it, that would mean that Turner and Iguodala have great seasons (or Iggy moves out for something decent), Holiday and Young improve, and Brand won't suck. As I said before, this spot could easily go to Indiana, New York or Charlotte.
8) Cleveland Cavaliers--they could be terrible, but I'm going out on a limb here and saying that they will be a nice, veteran squad and Byron Scott will get them to play hard.

Crappy teams: Raptors will be abysmal, Nets will be more respectable but bad, Bobcats will be worse though they'll compete for a playoff spot, Wiz will be much-improved with Wall but must deal Arenas for front-court help before they can make a jump, Pacers will be ok again, Pistons won't be great.

East Playoffs: Magic beat Cavs, Heat beat Sixers, Celtics beat Bulls (toss-up), Bucks beat Hawks (this time). Round two: Bucks beat Magic (in a tight one), Heat beat Celtics (in a tight one). ECF: Bucks (or Magic) scare Heat but Heat win (though my heart says Bucks or Magic beat Heat, I don't think either team has the talent when one is relying on Vince Carter and the other on Corey Maggette).

West:

1) Lakers--should be dominant. Big worry as always: Bynum's health and PG position.
2) Mavs--super deep with Haywood and Chandler in the middle. Potential team to knock off the Heat (wouldn't that be beautiful irony?).
3) Jazz--I think Al Jefferson could be a great addition.
4) Thunder--not as into Cole Aldrich as Sam Presti is, but Durant, Westbrook, and Harden will improve. So will Ibaka. This team can be sick. Can be the future-team to knock off Heat and Lakers. (Mavs may be the present one).
5) Spurs--Splitter should improve them. Sleeper team just like last year.
6) Blazers--another really deep squad building from the ground up. If Oden's healthy, watch out.
7) Rockets--could shoot up if Yao is healthy. Really nice building job by Morey.
8) Suns--can't count out Steve Nash. Last year before the season I thought they'd do great. This year, I think they could be very good or implode. No Amare a big question-mark.

Crappy teams: Warriors will be abysmal, Wolves have some pieces but roster is a mess (need Rubio), LA Clippers have talent but Baron is getting older and they're never healthy, Kings will be very good (Cousins may make Sixers fans wish we got him), Grizzlies will compete for a playoff spot (could get number 8), Nuggets could easily get a spot if Yao is unhealthy, Blazers have issues or Suns take a step-back, I'm just not into their lack of depth and think the West is stacked.

West Playoffs: Lakers beat Suns, Mavs beat Rockets, Blazers beat Jazz, Thunder beat Spurs. Round 2: Lakers barely beat Thunder (their year is the year after next), Mavs beat Blazers.
WCF: Lakers beat Mavs.

Championship: Lakers v. Heat (duh). Heat will want it a lot. If Lakers are healthy though, I think their cohesion and experience will win it. Phil will ride off into the sunset. Fisher may retire. The Heat will look to add a center and some more role-players in a bid to meet the Thunder in the 2012 Finals.