I like my team. I like my players. I like just the way we are. I'm not looking to change anything.
These infamous last words were professed over the weekend by
Isiah Thomas, when the New York City media, frothing at the thought of
Allen Iverson being available, asked Thomas if the Knicks might be interested in acquiring The Answer. And Isiah gave them a perfectly tedious answer, a deft sidestep born from years of seeing his words twisted into a pun and inflated into back page headlines.
While Isiah's answer temporarily defused talk of The Answer in Gotham, the truth is there is no other answer: Allen Iverson has to come to New York City. There's just no other way for Isiah to save his rumbling, bumbling, stumbling Knicks, and for the Sixers to regain their footing.
The Allen Iverson decade in Philadelphia has been breathtaking. Remember the Rookie of the Year award? The MVP season in 2001? The trip to the Finals where everyone was rooting for the little guy to overcome
Shaq and
Kobe? The spellbinding "practice" press conference?
The crossover dribble that shook
Michael Jordan?
The mug shot? The "40 Bars" song? All the sidekicks who never worked out? All the coaches that came and went? The 19,000 career points? The fact that even now, 11 years into his NBA career, he still leads the NBA in points per game (and is 10th in assists per game). Yet the Sixers continue to struggle. After making the NBA Finals in 2001, they've progressively deteriorated, not even making the playoffs two of the last three years.
As bad as the Sixers have been this season, the Knicks have been nearly as futile. Even though the Knicks are just a half-game out of first place in the Atlantic Division, they're 8-14, with a robust 3-8 home record. While Isiah has talked about how the Knicks are still in it, how they could easily win their division, the Atlantic is so bad that there's no room for error -- whoever wins the division clinches a top seed, but the second place team probably won't even make the playoffs.
The Knicks don't really seem to have much direction, other than sideways. A large chunk of the preseason was dedicated to promoting the idea that the Knicks were going to become an uptempo team, but the only thing uptempo about the Knicks through the first quarter of the season is their patented
Uptempo Collapse.
