<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">For every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction, especially in sports. Action: 76ers do the wrong thing in not trading Allen Iverson. Reaction: Of course, trading him would have been the wrong thing, too. Such is the corner into which the 76ers have painted themselves with their franchise player: They can't win with him, and they can't win without him. Iverson at the trade deadline presented team president Billy King with a dilemma with no correct choice. The 76ers would have taken a step back by trading Iverson, but they are moving in that direction with him, anyway. It never works out to trade players of Iverson's stature and influence. See Barkley, Charles. Teams just can't get value. They either get another team's problem superstar, or two or three good players for a great one, an exchange rate that never pays off. The flip side is the 76ers are going nowhere fast with Iverson. Ten years in, his career follows a perfect arc -- five years of rising, culminating with Game 1 of the 2001 NBA Finals, and five years of falling, commencing with the Los Angeles Lakers' sweep of the next four games in that series. Iverson is just about the only person in the entire organization remaining from 2001. And there's no hope that King will be able to surround his signature superstar with the same kind of complementary talent, nor that coach Maurice Cheeks will ever replicate Larry Brown's special touch from that season. Those days are long gone. Is it any wonder attendance for the 76ers has plummeted like the Winter Olympics' television ratings? Or that 76ers chairman Ed Snider has been snarling on WIP about the team's finicky fan base? Then again, Snider might just be in a bad mood because Sweden is still playing in ice hockey. </div> link: http://www.courierpostonline.com/apps/pbcs...406/1050/SPORTS
The only problem is, the 76ers are a sub par team with Allen Iverson playing 40+ minutes a night. The 76ers either need better role players, or they just need to start from scratch because it doesn't look like this team is going to be able to contend for a title.
I have not wavered from my stance since day one, and I will continue to say it, we are in a much better position to win with AI then we would ever be with whatever we would get back for him in a trade. AI is not the problem, trading him is not the answer, I think all true 76ers fans know what the problem is, and who needs to leave for us to really start winning again consistently (need I say his name). Once that happens I have no doubt the pieces will fall into place. King just takes to many risks with this team, like I have said before he is not a bad GM, but he is a bad gambler. He makes too many questionable moves that come back to bit him in the behind. I think this summer the 76ers need to get their front office personnel straight, and from their fix the team inside out. They need to trade players like Korver, Hunter, Webber (if at all possible), etc. for defensive minded players. We have an all star, a former MVP, and a four time scoring champion, if teams like the Heat can reconstruct their team in one off season into contenders why can we not do the same? One thing that I have been wondering about for a while is why did we use the amnesty rule which was granted by the league to be used on one player, only once I believe on Mckie. I know that Mckie had a bad contract, but at the time we had no idea what Webber?s health would was going to be, and if we could even win with him, which we now know we can?t. So why did we not hold on to the amnesty exception, and use it on Webber at the end of this season seeing as we have seen that the Webber/Iverson experiment is a failure. I am hoping that the 76ers stick by AI he has done too much for Philadelphia sports to be traded at this point, unless it is by his request. He is the heart and soul of this team, and along with Brian Dawkins has the second longest tenure with a Philadelphia sports squad. We need to get another young star to play along side him possibly trade a package of players for Rashard Lewis to play with Iverson and Iguodala. That trio would be hard to deal with. We have seen how other teams have turned out after trading the face of their franchise in the past years Orlando? Los Angeles? It is not pretty I think we our bound to go down the same path if we do the same, and although it might speed up the rebuilding process. I shutter to think what attendance will look like without AI when it?s already as horrible as it is right now.
