Philadelphia 76ers team preview

well now that AI is gone the real healing can begin. it's weird that in the summer after they traded the face of the franchise to make a move towards younger, better players they made no real concerted effort to bring people in to help the rebuilding effort. now, call me crazy, but andre miller is not the ideal player around which to build your team. or even to have on your team when you're rebuilding.

he's a nice player; a point that can push the rock in transition and hit the open man and who doesn't dominate the ball like his predecessor, but he's old or getting there. how much longer will he be able to maintain even his present level of effectiveness? the smart money is on about 1-2 more years before he starts to hit a serious wall when he reaches about age 32 or 33.

iggy, or the second AI, is not exactly the type of person that i want to build my empire around either. he's a good finisher with a moderately effective offensive game that's also a lockdown defender. really nice player that could be fantastic in a few years, but he's the type of person you throw next to steve nash and jason kidd and watch him morph into richard jefferson but better, not the guy you throw out there and expect him to get buckets for you nightly. sure, he'll do it for a while, but he's more of a complimentary than a franchise player. ironically, iverson could have been a good mate for him, but ivey grew up so much without anyone else viable on offense that he ignored what he had.

at this point, the upside for iggy is that he turns into scottie pippen. by that i mean that's his high cieling that he would have to practically take a helicopter to, but that's who he could become. maybe a pairing with kobe makes some degree of sense, but unless the lakers trade bynum and their next 1,000,000 first rounders i don't see anything like that happening.

as is, the 6ers will putter along at the bottom half of the atlantic and maybe score some high draft picks in the next few years, but with billy king running the show i have a feeling we'll see an extension along the lines of willie greens' before we see the 76ers win another atlantic division championship. more so than any other team, i think they're just boned.