April 19, 2006

Game? We're Talking About Game!

For Allen Iverson, it appears, it isn't just practice that's optional. The Sixers superstar, along with teammate Chris Webber, showed up just minutes before tipoff of last night's game against the Nets- the Sixers' final home game of the season. Both players were held out, on Fan Appreciation Night, and the team sold about 5,000 more tickets than usual for the game, which many expected to be Iverson's last at home in a Sixers uniform.

The turn of events led normally mild-mannered general manager Billy King to go on an expletive-filled rant in which he cursed out the players, reporters, and local sports radio station WIP. King's rant included the season-spanning admission that "we've got a team that sucked."

Expect to see big changes in Sixer-land this offseason, starting with the probable departure of Iverson. The Sixers are in the same position as the Timberwolves- their roster consists of one superstar, and about eight mediocre players with expensive, long term, and basically untradeable contracts. Not exactly a recipe for hope, though the fact that about a third of the teams in the league are in that exact pickle says a whole lot about both the craziness of the league's rules, and the sheer mediocrity of many, many players.

I was at the game, but we left at halftime, not really enjoying the prospect of watching a boring team, without its best players, playing in front of a dead crowd- especially not from what was, literally, the back seat of the Wachovia Center. The Sixers did come back to win, however.

Posted by Stephen Silver at April 19, 2006 04:17 PM
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