how far have the mighty fallen?

feast your eyes on this iconic image of cwebb and kg before we move on.all done? fantastic.

basically that image is symbolic of the different paths that the two players chose, kg redefining the PF position and cwebb kind of trying to but not really doing as well as everyone thought he would.

no one will ever dispute certain things about webber: he's a phenomenal passer, he has awesome hands, and his knees have so thoroughly betrayed him that he looks like a particularly spry 50-year-old hobbling around the court.

as i type this, the lakes are squaring off against his new pistons on a national stage, and cwebb has 11 points/6 rebounds/5 assists at the half. pretty good numbers, especially considering he has two bad knees. he's around 50% from the field, but it's readily apparent that he is quite simply not the player he was in sactown's laker-killer heyday, nor is he even the player he was last year when the 76ers sold him as the solution to iverson's woes. we all know how that worked out.

webber is not a tragedy; he was a pretty special player before his knees betrayed him, although perhaps not all that he could be. his career was not done in by a tragic character flaw, instead done in by failing health and failing teams.

he was a great player in his prime, there is no doubting that. he could score in the post, had great court vision, and ran the floor very well on rick adleman's run-and-gun queens. he would have captured a championship in those years were it not for the meat-grinder shaq-and-kobe lakers of that time. but webber's career is somewhat defined by excuses like those.

in michigan as a member of the fab 5 he shot his own self in the foot, the infamous phantom timeout ending their shot at a national title and collegiate glory. he underachieved alongside juwan howard as part of the Twin Towers of the washington bullets, and toiled away on exciting kings teams while the lakers complacently ruled the roost. he failed to capture a championship, and will probably continue to fail unless the pistons pull off a heat-like miracle this summer, due to what can only be described as punishment by the gods of the hoop.

lord only knows what transgressions he committed to deserve such a fate.