The Bynum Post

By now, you have surely had your fill of trade analysis and heard every egregious opinion about Andrew Bynum and Andre Iguodala. If you're reading this post and don't know who Andrew Bynum is, you're probably my mom. (Hi mom!) For many weeks, this trade will be evaluated and debated up and down. I won't bore you with stats and presumptions about a player I've only seen play maybe 20 times. My analysis will be brief and succinct.

I dig the move.

I've had a sneaking suspicion for some time that Bynum will become a superstar center. He's not quite there yet, but I'd be hard pressed to find three or four centers I'd rather have on my team. He's young, experienced, and big as hell. His knees are about as stable as a third world government, so too is his psyche, but the Sixers just happen to have a cache of backup centers. Doug Collins, widely regarded as a spectacular teaching coach, should be able to hone Bynum's physical and mental attributes to be a fantastic keystone for the Sixers push to postseason success.

With the addition of Bynum, a mainstay of the most recent era of Sixers basketball had to be shipped out to Denver. Andre Iguodala had a tumultuous tenure with the team, though not for reasons common to an NBA player. He had no off the court issues, he practiced with the team, and as far as I know he's not required to pay child support. In fact, Andre is about as vanilla a professional athlete comes. His middle name is Tyler and wikipedia has this blurb about him: "Iguodala enjoys eating vegetables, saying that he used to eat raw broccoli and cauliflower as a kid and always enjoyed eating salads". He was expected to carry the team, and compensated to do so, and because of that he couldn't live up to expectations. It wasn't until his all-star season last year that many fans finally warmed to his position on the team, but it was a couple years and a couple million dollars too late. So, Andre, as you move on to more elevated pastures in Denver, a Charles Hart lyric comes to mind:

"Think of me, think of me fondly

When we've said goodbye

Remember me once in a while

Please promise me, that you'll try"

I'll try, Andre. I'll try.

The key factor of this move, the one that excites me more than any others, was the set of onions the ownership group showed off in finally moving in a different direction. For so long, the team was mired in the muck caused by jumping on the first free agent that would sign a max contract and not valuing one of the most important positions in basketball. You have to look back to an aging Dikembe Motumbo to find a Sixers center that wasn't cringe-worthy. Adam Aron and Josh Harris decided to take advantage of the Dwight Howard stalemate with Orlando, and almost every other team in the Association, by offering their services as a conduit to move Howard to LA. The move paid off.

The philosophical shift of the franchise towards winning is aggressive and genuine. Since the purchase of the team from the neglectful Ed Snider, the current ownership has made small, positive steps towards becoming respectable as a franchise. The logo, the coach, the mascot; all changes that needed to be made and have positively affected the perception of the team. To get Bynum... what a sundae cherry that was. I've been warned that I set Bynum's ceiling too high, but I truly believe he has a chance to become the best center in the league. In his current state, the team has filled a role so drastically needed to be the least bit competitive. Andre is a great player, but it was obvious that the team could not improve any more with his salary on the books. They could have taken the easy way out and replaced him with a Rudy Gay type player, a swingman who can score, but success requires risk and their risk was venturing out of their comfort zone. Their risk, and subplot of this trade, was their commitment to let Jrue Holliday and Evan Turner control the offense (at least until the free agent class of 2013).

I love this move. I love it on so many levels. I want Turner to grow up and show the world that he can play. I want to see a defensive rebound once in a while. I definitely would like to see a 7 foot center dunk once in a while (Sorry Spence!). Mainly, I want a change, and Bynum is franchise-altering. Will he win a championship here? Who knows. The better question is will he even play more than one year, but either way his stay will solidify in the minds of the owners, general manager, and coach how important a real center is, and how important it is to step in to the wide unknown if what you have isn't working.

I Hope This Kwame Brown Post Isn't a Bust

I hope that this post does not come off as yet another contrarian idea. I hope that my enthusiasm is understood as genuine. I hope that Kwame Brown still knows what a rebound is.

This Kwame Brown signing is not a set-your-franchise-back kind of signing. If the Sixers had drafted him, well then, yeah it would have been. No, this is a high reward-low risk, preparing for free-agency kind of signing. The front office found a gem slightly buffed stone with Brown. Despite the facts of the deal, nearly all of Philadelphia's sports media and most of the fan base are reacting negatively based solely on two words: "kwame" and "brown".

Sure, he was a bust as the first overall pick in 2001. Hell, he'd be a bust if he was picked 30th. This isn't 2001 though, and the Sixers are not investing the future of the franchise in him. They are investing $3 million in him. That amount of money is chump change for an NBA team. What they expect from him in return, something that he can do, is to be a good post defender against anyone Spencer Hawes can't guard (which is everyone). He'll split his minutes between the 4 and 5 positions (depending on the strength of the other team's bigs) though Lavoy Allen will get a large share as he develops. Kwame is an above average defender, though his blocks don't reflect that, because he is big and strong. He may not score a lot, but his RPG average should go up with more minutes a game.

The reaction to the signing from the public was as if he were the replacement for Dwight Howard. That's not why he was added to the team. Through the multiple one year contracts that the Sixers are adding, it would be naive to not think they are preparing for the 2013 free agency class. Doug Collins has his players meshing well, but they still need time to be a truly cohesive unit. This is not a D12-will-get-us-there team. The only thing the ownership group is looking to do is to move up to maybe the 7th or 6th seed next year, when they'll have one more year of experience together, and a Liberty Bell filled with money for a free agent.

Kwame signed a two year deal, with the second being a player option. You might ask why they would give him the option, rather than keep it as a team option, and the answer is simple: if he outplays the contract, he walks. Imagine Kwame contributes 9 pts, and 6 boards a game. That would far exceed the money he earns, and would be a similar season to what a 49 year old, $16 million Elton Brand could offer. If he does that, he may get an offer from another team and opt out. And if he doesn't, well then it'll be just a tiny portion of next year's cap with multiple contracts falling off, and he'll stay firmly planted on the bench.

Kwame won't have to contribute much for this to be a solid signing. This isn't the Sixers' all-in year, and he's not the savior center. If we can just see past his history and his name, and look forward to what $3 million bought, we can be a happier fan base. And then...Chris Paul!