Season Preview 76ers

[KG-MVP21]

One of the realities of the next couple of years in the NBA is going to be letting the contracts signed during the last couple of CBA's expire. Players like Kevin Garnett and Kobe Bryant are without a doubt incredible basketball players who probably, in the backwards world of sports, deserve the hundreds of millions of dollars they are being paid, but their teams as a whole are suffering for it. No team, though, is as handcuffed by this reality as the Philadelphia 76ers, who have not one but two old-CBA max-money players currently sitting on their roster. On top of that, these are two players who are exiting the prime of their careers while they are getting paid increasingly more money with each passing season.

What I mean by old-CBA contracts is that in previous Collective Bargaining Agreements, players were allowed to sign for much more money than they are now, which leads to players earning upwards of $20 million per year. What this does is severely hamper a team's salary cap situation, because one player ties so much of their cap up. In the case of the Sixers, you're talking about two such contracts in Allen Iverson and Chris Webber, meaning that the other players on the roster would, in theory, need to have more economical contracts in order to field 10 competitive players on any given night.

I only state this fact upfront because even though I understand that Allen Iverson and Chris Webber are hindering their team financially, the team's mediocrity rests solely on the shoulders of their scatterbrained GM Billy King.



Understand this: By now, the 76ers know what their team is as it is built today, and that is a lottery bound team with an outside shot of being eliminated in the first round of the playoffs. That's it. Andre Iguodala, Sam Dalembert, and not a whole lot else surround their aging centerpieces. Billy King is easily one of the least-savvy GM's around, being a guy who has neither an eye for talent nor any comprehension of player valuations. He is fast becoming famous for locking-up his own players to huge multi-year contracts regardless of whether or not they have done anything to deserve them. Keep in mind, this is a team that was eliminated in the first round two seasons ago and didn't even qualify last year. The roster, all the while, has not only remained virtually unchanged, it has actually been locked into place with extravagant contracts owned by Dalembert, Kyle Korver and Willie Green. This is not the kind of 'spread the wealth' team building I was referring to earlier when I mentioned the need for economical contracts.

What this means is that the only existing options this team has to improve are to trade Iverson, or load up on minimum-level contracts and hope that one of those players turns out to be the next Boris Diaw or David West, and considering King's ability to judge talent, that isn't a very likely option. That means that a trade for Iverson remains, as it has been for years, the only way for the Sixers to actually improve. It sounds counterproductive, trade away your best player to improve, but the fact remains that right now Iverson is the only contract on the Sixers roster that is both large enough to diversify cap space as well as bring back enough talent to rebuild. After all, no one is taking on any of the other loaded contacts, if for no other reason than they don't match the talent of the player who owns it, and without getting rid of some of these players, there is no money to sign free agents with.

This summer, Billy King finally began seriously shopping Iverson in an attempt to stockpile some talented, young bodies. A trade with the Celtics nearly went down on draft night that would have gotten them at least Gerald Green and the number seven pick (which turned out to be dynamo Randy Foye), not to mention another player for salary purposes like Wally Szczerbiak or, if Utah was involved as was at one point rumored, Carlos Boozer. When that trade never materialized, Kenyon Martin and Andre Miller from Denver were dangled in Billy King's face, also to no avail.

Ultimately, King felt that these offers did not represent market value for Iverson and were in fact teams trying to lowball a desperate team into giving up their best player cheap. Well, yes, that is exactly what these teams were trying to do, and if Billy King were a savvy GM, he would've taken the bait and ran.

Why? Several reasons come to mind. First, Iverson isn't getting any younger. He's missed 41 games the last two seasons, and a boatload of the games he did play he was still hampered by injuries that severely limited his play, a trait that is only likely to get worse as his body ages. Not many teams are going to be looking to offer much more for Iverson than they are now if he is too beaten up to play up to his contract. Secondly, in any deal that involves Iverson, and likely any possibilities that would follow, the Sixers receive multiple players in return, so not only does the team get to spread out his money a little, but they also get some depth in the deals.

However, the most compelling reason to pull the trigger on any remotely fair deal is that the alternative is wasting years with this current configuration of the team just because Billy King doesn't feel the offers he's receiving match the value he has placed on Iverson. The fact of the matter is this team, as configured, just isn't going to amount to anything. A change, any change, is at least inching in the right direction because until the Iverson era ends in Philly, they're going to be stuck in neutral waiting for him to retire.

The job of many a GM in the NBA has been lost because of a lack of acceptance that a current plan has been tried and failed. Iverson still has some years left in the tank, to be sure, and none of this is meant to be an indictment of Iverson, or Webber for that matter. As individuals, they could both elevate other teams that have quality pieces already in place to surround them with. In Philly, King just keeps going around in circles waiting for someone to show him the way. He doesn't seem to realize that since he is the one shopping the player, other teams have no reason to offer him fair market value, whatever that might be for an aging superstar. They can sit back and wait until King becomes so desperate that he unloads him for far below what GM's are even offering today.

The Sixers don't have much to look forward to this season, unfortunately, not any season down the road so long as King runs the show and insists on cultivating a dying plant.

PROBABLE STARTING LINEUP

PG - Allen Iverson

What's left to say here? We all know he can be as explosive a scorer as the game has ever seen, but his reluctance to play within any sort of system that doesn't get him the ball 90% of the time is not only exhausting him and making his body more prone to injuries, it's hampering the development of his young teammates who could be in a position to take on some of the baggage if he just trusted them enough to let them try. It's not easy to be both a team's biggest asset as well as its biggest detriment, but ever since Iverson crossed the 30-year-old mark, that's exactly what he's become.

SG - Andre Iguodala

There is so much talent here, if only his team seemed interested in exploiting it. Iguodala is often told he needs to be more assertive on offense, but Iverson's and Webber's insistence on dominating the ball make it hard for Iguodala to do anything but force his offense when he is allowed to touch the ball for fear that he should be chastised for not asserting himself later on. He'll come along in time, and as bad as it sounds, it might just take a long-term injury to Iverson to get there, but Iguodala is going to be in line for a contact extension this summer, and there is no doubt Billy King will be there to make sure he gets it.

SF - Kyle Korver

A one-trick pony to end one-trick ponies. At least a player like Szczerbiak can hit open jumpers anywhere on the court, Korver is at his best behind the arc and nowhere else. He cannot create his own shot, he can't rebound or pass, and even though every team needs a gunner somewhere on the roster to spread the floor and break open a zone, most teams don't make that player one of their top-paid.

PF - Chris Webber

Still a superb passer and deadly mid-range jump shooter, but his ability to elevate is gone and his already-anemic defense disappeared completely when he joined the Sixers. If he were willing to play a role like Antonio McDyess off the bench, he could be a deadly option for the team, but since this team has no depth to speak of, and since Webber isn't known for his selflessness, that isn't very likely to happen. The only thing keeping Webber from being this team's biggest detriment over Iverson is that he is a willing passer and has proven in the past that he is willing to work in a system so long as it provides him with a suitable number of touches. His defense pretty much cancels out his offence when you consider how many points he gives up at the other end, but so long as he's on the roster, you can't afford to not play him, so you sort of take what you can get.

C - Samuel Dalembert

Coaches just hate this guy. So much talent is available to him, but he's just not interested in leaving it out there every night. Dalembert is willing to take the path of least resistance whenever it presents itself, and as a result he's never going to be anything more than he is today, which is a long, athletic question mark. There is nothing you can pencil in for this guy on any given night, making him entirely unreliable when trying to figure out a game plan. His shot-blocking stats are very misleading since it takes his several blown assignments on defense as well as four personal fouls each night for him to collect those 2.4 blocks. I hope he really enjoys them.