The Philadelphia 76ers Are Losers

This afternoon the local NBA team, the Philadelphia 76ers, signalled to their fan base what most already knew, that it is a losing organization with no future whatsoever. They did so with the signing of former 76ers star Allen Iverson to a contract.

This signing has to rank as one of the single most cynical moves ever foisted by a professional sports organization on its fan base in the long history of this sometimes-great sports town. Iverson is 34 years old, young by normal standards, but an old man by NBA standards.

Larry Bird retired at age 35 after a couple of seasons battling injuries as mostly a shell of his former greatness. Magic Johnson was driven from the game at age 33 by a combination of his positive testing for HIV and bad knees. Michael Jordan was 36 when he walked away for the 2nd, but not final, time. His final chapter ended at age 40, after mostly limping through parts of three seasons in which he accomplished little.

The point is that the three most important, influential, and greatest professional basketball players of the last three decades, all winners, were roughly Iverson's age when they were wrapping up their careers as champions. Iverson, never to be confused with a winner as a professional, is on his last legs.

So the Philadelphia 76ers have signed him for what reason? To build a champion around? To become a mentor for players like Jrue Holiday, who truly is a legitimate part of the future for this franchise? To teach the younger players the way to win, the right way to play and practice?

Practice? We're talkin' about practice, man? Practice?

During his infamous 2002 "practice" tirade, Iverson was asked by a reporter "Is it possible that if you practiced, not you but you would make your teammates better?" Iverson's reply: "How in the hell can I make my teammates better by practicing?" The reporter went on to clarify that perhaps it would help make them play better with him. In other words, they would play better as a team, the way that winning teams play.

To that question, one that basically was asking if Iverson understood that actually showing up and practicing with his teammates would make them all better as a team, he had this to say: "Is my game is going to get worse? I'm asking you, is my game going to get worse? So what about my game? Is my game going to get better because other players are hurt on my team, I mean, do that hurt me? Do you think that hurts me? I'm being honest, people are hurt on my team but do that hurt me?"

Seriously. That was the thought process of a guy who was supposed to be a veteran leader at that point. And that was 7 years ago. It didn't take long for the Sixers to realize that Allen Iverson had become a cancer. He had always been selfish. Some say all the great ones are a bit selfish, they all want "the rock", need the ball in their hands at the big moments. But the man known as "A.I." wanted that ball every trip down court.

Allen Iverson led the NBA in scoring four times. Of course he did, he was taking more shots than anyone else. Iverson had skills, that much is certain. In being fair, he was the legitimate MVP of the entire NBA for an incredible 2001 season during which he led the 76ers to the NBA Finals before losing to the Lakers. But it was a season that really should never have been. The Sixers had traded Iverson in the preseason to Detroit, a deal shot down because another player refused to go in the deal. They were already tired of his antics then.

Iverson and his entourage were continuously getting into trouble at clubs both locally and in Atlantic City. Assaults, gaming table theft, gun possession, drug possession. He cut a rap record in which he included profane anti-homosexual lyrics. He perpetuated everything that is on the negative side of the ledger relating to the hip-hop culture that has steered so many young black Americans into trouble.

The Sixers finally got rid of him, trading him away to Denver. The Nuggets could only bare one full season of Iverson before dealing away at the beginning of last season to the Detroit Pistons. Without A.I., the Nuggets promptly won their division and reached the Western Conference finals. The Pistons had a losing record and were swept out of the first round of the playoffs.

This is what the 76ers just signed. A selfish, ignorant, past-his-prime distraction. They did it for only one cynical reason: they stink, the fans aren't showing up, and they need to put seats in the stands. They believe that the combination of A.I.'s celebrity status, shadows of that one great 2001 season, and the simple idea of spectacle will bring enough people to the games that the losing won't hurt so much. At least not in their financial bottom line.

Meanwhile, on the court and in the locker room, the development of the Philadelphia 76ers young players will be stunted. Hopefully they will not be tainted permanently by this experience. As Bob Ford, a writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer correctly put it, his signing has created a "..sideshow, luring in the curious and the bored and the kind of people who slow to gawk at the wrecks along the highway. He is the bearded lady, the fish boy, the bear who chugs beer from the bottle."

The Philadelphia 76ers are losers. No, not because of their current 5-13 record that already has them 9 games out in their division just a quarter into their season. That is the product of having a young team still trying to find the right mix with a relatively new GM and coach. No, the 76ers are a loser at the organizational level for thinking that this signing of Allen Iverson is in any way a sound transaction. Anyone who pushed for this signing should stick their fingers and their thumb up in the shape of an 'L' on their forehead.

A White-Knuckle Ride Home

Last night's drive home from work was one of those nightmare rides that thankfully only come along once or twice a year. I was on a night work schedule so my ride home began when most of you were headed to bed or already sound asleep on your pillow, tucked under your covers like a bug in a rug, warm and toasty. Myself and two of my co-workers along with a few dozen others were just beginning our trek home, but we had a major obstacle in our paths. A snowfall that every local weather person from Cecily Tynan to John Bolaris to Glenn 'Hurricane' Schwartz was predicting would be 1-3 inches in the city turned out to be more like a half foot. Note to local weather persons: 1-3 inches is a minor annoyance just a little worse than a rainy day. A half foot of snow, especially as a surprise accumulation level, is a big deal. These television stations trip all over themselves to advertise how their weather is better than the other guy. "The futuristic Accu-Zoom 12000 Radar/Sonar Skycast powered by the Flux Capacitor" or some other such nonsense. In the end, they all get it right, or they all get it wrong. To give them some credit, weather forecasts are shinier and more technical looking than they used to be a half century ago. But I don't see much more difference in their reliability than I did as a kid back in the 1970's when Jim O'Brien was giving us the Five Day Forecast. Anyway, back to that ride home. It begins with the chore of cleaning off your car. Since you have inches of snow all over it, you start by cleaning off the area around your driver door, so that you can get into the car and start your engine. With the car now started, the engine warming, and your defog settings beginning to work you start the process of clearing the rest of the snow from the car. This is a good measure of how much it has actually snowed. How high in inches that it has piled up on your roof is pretty close to how much has fallen on the ground. Last night there was a lot. Okay, so you spend a few minutes clearing off your car and warming the engine, and now comes the tricky part, actually maneuvering this machine with rubber tires home over frozen, snowy surfaces. Did I mention that I hate some of you yet? You would be the folks with the gas-guzzling, humongous, I-can't-see-around-you SUV's. Seems that these things generally handle this kind of weather better than my little old 1994 Toyota Camry. I slowly and carefully eased out of the parking lot just south of Spring Garden Street and moved on to southbound 10th Street. From here down to Vine Street, which is just about three city blocks, gave me a nice preview of what was in store. The conditions were slick and the roads were totally snow covered. PENNDOT had not yet won the battle, perhaps caught a little off guard by that forecasting fau pax. In any event, the roads last night can best be described as dangerous. That's worse than hazardous or treacherous, and just a notch below impassable. I thought there was a chance that if I could just get to I-95 safely, that I would be alright until exiting at my home neighborhood. No such luck. The interstate was worse than the city streets had been thanks to both the condition of the road itself, snow covered and slippery, but also thanks to a heavy volume of traffic. Little did I know that the Philadelphia 76ers buzzer-beating loss to the Boston Celtics had happened a short while earlier. The fans who had exited into this same storm had cleared their cars at the Wachovia Center parking lot and made their way this far north. Whenever you have weather conditions that are poor such as this or even a hard rain storm, you get 'those' drivers out on the roads. You know the ones. The ones that are driving all 'damn the torpedoes' down the highway. The ones that are bound and determined to drive 80+ miles per hour, weaving in and out, in an effort to get home 5-10 minutes earlier than you will? When one of these rocket scientists on wheels goes zipping past me I realize that they care more about reaching their destination a few minutes early than they do their own safety. More importantly I know that they don't care about mine at all. Well these people were out last night. Thankfully not many of them. Most everyone was realizing either out of intelligence or by slipping and sliding that speed was not on the menu tonight. Most of the ride up I-95 towards my goal of the Woodhaven Road off-ramp was slow going, 30-35 miles per hour. Then we saw nirvana. Well it was for me at least. As I hit the Cottman Avenue area traffic began to slow and bunch, and I feared there was an accident ahead. Instead off to the distance were the spinning yellow lights of those PENNDOT trucks, plowing and salting the road ahead. From here on out the drive on I-95 was a little slower, but it was mostly just wet roads thanks to those wonderful PENNDOT crew workers. And luck for me their plow train continued right where I was headed, westbound on Woodhaven Road. It was there as traffic exited from I-95 on to Woodhaven, just before Franklin Mills, that the final two idiots came barreling along. Apparently they had been road-racing in these conditions and were continuing it into this area where traffic had tightened. Not only were they riding each others bumpers, but they were blaring their horns and cutting in and out of traffic. That these two idiots (nice term for what they are) managed to maneuver their little ego-driven race through the traffic and the weather without causing an accident was one of last night's little miracles. On exiting from Woodhaven and moving into my neighborhood, the conditions again got slick and snow-covered, but now I was almost home. I took it slow through the mostly deserted streets of Somerton and finally eased into a parking spot on my block. I flipped off my wipers and turned off KYW from my car radio. The white-knuckle ride was over, and now it was my turn to finally join the rest of you folks, warm, cozy, and safe with my head on my pillow. Until next time.

No Mo Cheeks

Thanks to the Philadelphia Phillies run to the World Series championship this fall, the bar has been measurably raised for all of the other sports franchises in the city. The Flyers have responded on the ice with a tremendous run that has seen the team rise from an embarrassing winless start to the brink of their division lead. The Eagles seemed dead just a couple weeks ago, now they are back in playoff contention having beaten the best team in football.

The 76ers, however, have floundered and fallen into last place. A late-season run to the playoffs just eight months ago was enough to get coach Maurice 'Mo' Cheeks a contract extension, but apparently that extension was not enough to guarantee his job. The team struggled to open this season, floundering around the .500 mark for the first month before their recent bottom-out. Management simply did not like what they were seeing, and the first head to roll in the Philly coaching community was lopped off. The 76ers fired Mo Cheeks, a popular local legend as a player.

That recipe has not seemed to work real well, by the way. Both Bobby Clarke as a GM and Bill Barber as the coach with the Flyers organization were unceremoniously dumped despite their legendary player status. Only Billy Cunningham, who coached Cheeks' 1983 Sixers to the NBA Championship and was a player on the Sixers 1967 NBA title team, has had true, lengthy success here after also having a strong playing career here.

There is something wrong with the mix on the Philadelphia 76ers pro basketball team. I don't know what that might be, but I do know that the local hoops squad has not been a serious NBA title contender for a long time. Even in Charles Barkley and Allen Iverson's best seasons, the Sixers were barely true contenders. The argument can be made that not since Cheeks himself ran down the court and dunked for the clinching moment of that '83 title have the 76ers been a real threat to win it all.

Hopefully GM Ed Stefanski can get a handle on both the coaching situation and the player roster, and move this franchise in a direction that will not only get the fan base excited again, but give them a title contender to root for. I don't know if firing Cheeks was the right move. Frankly, the Sixers are #4 on the list of local sports teams for me. I would like to root for them again, but they just don't interest me. That was not Cheeks fault, I liked the guy and had good feelings of his history with that title team. Stefanski is now on the hot seat to build that excitement-generating contender.

No Soulful End to the Curse

The indoor Arena Football League played it's championship game yesterday, and the local boys, the Philadelphia Soul, took the Arena Bowl XXII title by downing something called the San Jose SaberCats by a final score of 59-56. The Soul are partly owned by famed New Jersey rocker Jon Bon Jovi, the very public face of the franchise, and have another local hero, former Eagles Super Bowl quarterback Ron Jaworski, among their official team hierarchy. So the club has found a niche in the local sports scene, much as the pro lacrosse Philadelphia Wings and indoor soccer Philadelphia Kixx have found. For those not from Philly, you may not be aware that we are in the midst of one of the worst major pro sports championship droughts in the history of such things. No major Philadelphia professional sports team has won a title since the 1983 NBA Philadelphia 76ers, led by Julius 'Dr. J' Erving and Moses Malone, took that championship from the LA Lakers. That makes it a full quarter-century since Philadelphians have experienced the thrill of a major title, and the ensuing victory parade down Broad Street. The Phillies last won the World Series in 1980, the Flyers last took the Stanley Cup in 1975, and the Eagles won the NFL championship in 1960 - they have never won a Super Bowl. We have come close, as each team made it to the championship series multiple times. The Flyers went to the Stanley Cup Finals in the springs of 1985, 1987, and 1997. The Sixers made the NBA Finals in 2001. The Phillies were in the World Series in both 1983 and 1993. The Eagles famously lost a close 2004 Super Bowl to the New England Patriots that was the city's best shot in recent years. Still, that makes just 7 seasons out of a possible 100 (25 years each for the 4 teams), or 7% for a top ten market to even appear in a championship, and that is beyond woeful. There were comments after the Soul win that the jinx may now be over, with Soul coach Bret Munsey saying "Now we can win championships in Philly. I hope that takes care of everything". Uh, don't think so Bret. Your boys did a nice job. Congratulations to you and game MVP Matt D'Orazio and Bon Jovi and Jaws and everyone in the organization. But it doesn't end a thing involving the jinx, or curse, or whatever you want to call this thing, because 'minor' pro sports teams have done it before. In lacrosse, the Philadelphia Barrage won MLL titles three times in four years between 2004-2007, and the Philadelphia Wings won six NLL titles between 1989 and 2001. In both 1998 & 2005, the Philadelphia Phantoms won AHL Calder Cup titles as the top farm club of the Flyers. The old Philadelphia Stars had won a pair of USFL titles in pro football back in the 80's. Perhaps the most famous Philly title since 1983 wasn't even won by a pro club, that being the Villanova Wildcats winning the NCAA basketball championship in a dramatic upset of Georgetown in the spring of 1985. In an online poll at Philly.com, local sports fans were asked "Does the Soul's championship affect the Philly sports jinx?" At the time of this article, over 4600 fans had placed votes, and more than 73% answered "NO, it has to be one of the 'big four' professional teams." The answer is clear, the jinx or curse is alive. The Soul did a nice job in their league, they should be proud of their accomplishment, and their fans should enjoy the victory. But the fact remains that the curse remains. One day, a major Philadelphia sports franchise will win a title. Perhaps Donovan McNabb of the Eagles will raise the Super Bowl trophy, or Mike Richards of the Flyers will hoist Lord Stanley's Cup, or Elton Brand will raise the NBA championship trophy, or maybe even Chris Coste will get to leap into Brad Lidge's arms as the Phils take the World Series. I was still a teen when Tugger and Schmitty and Charlie Hustle and Lefty won that 1980 World Series. I cheered Clarkie & Bernie and the boys on to a pair of Stanley Cups as a boy, and jumped for joy as Billy Cunningham's Sixers won that last '83 title. I have had the sports fan thrill, but it has been a long time. I was 21 years old when Mo Cheeks dribbled down the court, jumping for joy at yet another title in Philly. I thought that it would happen often, because at that point of my life in just the past seven years the Phils had been to the playoffs six times and won a Series, the Eagles were playoff regulars and had gone to a Super Bowl, the Flyers had been to the Cup finals four times and won twice, and the Sixers were regular title contenders and had now won one. Philly was Title Town in those days. Maybe one day I will live to see it all come around again.