Carney Answering The 'Haters'

<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">Some graduates hang up a mortarboard in their room.

Rodney Carney has a hater board.

On it are clippings from newspapers and magazines - story after story, he says, written by "haters" who have doubted his abilities, both when he played at the University of Memphis and since the 76ers took him in the first round of June's NBA draft.

He had them framed.

"It doesn't stop," Carney said yesterday. "It continues to grow. It's more there now than ever... . They say I can't dribble. I constantly try to work on going to the hole. They say I'm not consistent. In college, they said I wasn't consistent. I was consistent the whole year.

"One [writer] said I couldn't defend. I locked down J.J. Redick to zero points in the second half. Whatever's on there, I try to emphasize and I try to do. I try to be a complete player, so they can't write anything negative about me."

Well, this is the perfect place for someone trying to escape negativity.

With training camp less than two weeks away, things are heating up at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, where Carney and most of the Sixers' youngest players have been working out informally. Allen Iverson and Chris Webber have come through as well; Iverson was there yesterday, though he preferred that his play do the talking.

Probably just as well. What else can he say about the Sixers' attempts to deal him? He wants to be here, but if he's traded, he wants it to be for something good. Fine. The Sixers now maintain that nothing serious ever came down the pike and that they were just surfing.

The result is Iverson and Webber will be here when the team goes to Europe on Sept. 29, and they'll be here for the start of the season.

Now, come January, when teams have had two months to see what they are - and what they aren't - Billy King's phone might heat up again.

For now, though, the team's much-needed defensive improvement will have to come almost exclusively from the same bunch that provided crepe paper resistance last season.

The Sixers' younger core - Samuel Dalembert, Andre Iguodala, Kyle Korver, Willie Green, Louis Williams, Carney and second-rounder Bobby Jones - has to become a gang of stoppers, interested only in getting neck-deep in the opposition every night.

That's a lot to ask from a bunch of young kids, especially with the league's new rules that prohibit just about all contact with offensive players in open space.

At least they're honest about what's in front of them. Williams was asked for his reaction to those who say the Sixers aren't a playoff team.

"I mean, really, it's a fair statement," he said. "We didn't make the playoffs. But we have all the guys in the world. Still got Allen. Still got Chris. Andre's coming into his own... . Kyle's been here working hard... . We've just got to put it together."

Carney can't wait. He thinks a rookie-of-the-year campaign is not out of the question.

"I'm not going to put up big numbers, but I think we're going to win," he said. "I ain't going to be out there being a 30-point scorer, but we're going to be winning enough, and when I get in there and show what I can do, maybe that'll really turn [things] around."

But Carney was brought here to stop people. He held his own against Duke's Redick and Gonzaga's Adam Morrison last season, but this is a step up in weight class and experience.

"When I talked to Billy King, he said, 'Are you ready to play defense?' " Carney said. "I said, 'Yeah, I'm ready to play defense all the time.' And I'm getting a workout guarding Korver. He uses screens very well. I can guard him one-on-one, but when it comes to him using screens, he's very smart."</div>

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