The scraper did it!

According to Jerry Colangelo, it was the coaches that were choking the life out of this league. I am so confused! Is the problem trying to put multi-dimensional players into constrictive systems? Not giving them enough room to improvise, thus blowing up all semblance of order if they do? This makes it a clean sweep: I've now found ways to blame every player, coach, and front office stooge for making the NBA what it was before the new dawn of heros.

When they write the history of this fair sport, last year's Rockets will come to represent the absolute breaking point. They proved the limits of Van Gundy ball and the tragic flaw of the Francis/Mobley funhouse. And, ironically enough, it took them finding each other to undo each other once and for all!!

In more specific news, I am on a severe pro-Iverson kick lately. I've always liked him more as a personality, or an abstract principle, than as an actual spectator commodity; staying in Philly for four years meant I spent way too much time watching him labor to shoot over .400 for the night. But no one has more heart than Iverson, and the year he's putting together just reminds me why, even if he can't shoot to save his life, there's still no single player in the league clearly more valuable than Iverson. Okay, there is one I can think of, but I'm sick of typing his name.

That was a cliche-ridden wreck, albeit all true. How's this: Iverson is maddening when he's your lifeline to organized basketball, tremendous as mysterious side show, or a folk tale you only get to witness to fits and gasps.

So when I hear that Iverson's pissed about Chrid Ford showing up at games and scouting for the Sixers, I have to give him the benefit of the doubt and insist that he get his way. Ford was a crap coach who serves no purpose now other than getting under the skin of the one thing that keeps the Sixers relevant; at least O'Brien has some pedigree and once got Toine to play nice for a season.

Hasn't basketball learned anything from baseball? When you're stuck hiring dross to coach or otherwise manage the team, you might as well take a chance and hire someone young and inexperienced with a sparkle in his eye. The Lawrence Frank story is a marvelous thing--why won't the Sixer take a chance on me for GM? Could I be any worse than what Brown did when he had personel control? Could the horse I plan to purcahse in the near future fuck up the Knicks worse than Layden or Thomas? Could a series of random coin flips and Rorscharch tests? At least then they could land Donyell Marshall, who is the basketball equivalent of both these things.

At least the draft is hard to do. Unless you're talking about trading for unformed potential--which, given how much time and energy and hope people invest in the NBA Draft (not just me), should never happen, since the whole reason you draft these kids is to try and upgrade, which by definition you should at least try—player dealing in the nba is so much more straightforward than in baseball, where production flucuates wildly, or football, where there are so many variables i could die just thinking about them.

Seriously, give this blog the reigns of a team in the week before the trading deadline and we will make it happen. That's a standing offer.