Kareem Rush seen from Pacers fans

(BRING THE OLD SIXERS UNIFORMS BACK ! S4G CAMPAIGN – SIGN HERE)

Few hours before Sixers introduced Kareem Rush, I emailed Tom from Indy Cornrows, the fine Pacers blog, asking him some questions about the newest Sixer. 

Indy Cornrows had previously reported about Rush heading to Philly and at the end of the season published this review about the journeyman veteran swingman.

But I wanted to know Tom’s opinion about Rush’s possible role AS A SIXER, and he was so kind to tell me his thoughts:

S4G (strong italian accent…): do you think that you will miss Kareem Rush?

IC: When Kareem has that hair-trigger stroke going, I will miss him dearly. Kareem joined the Pacers roster last year with no guarantees so he had to earn every minute he played. Unfortunately, those minutes were pretty sporadic, but there was a time when he played a key role, even starting several games, and not because of his shot but because he was the best perimeter defender. As the season wore on a hip injury bothered him and he wasn’t quite the same player. Once the injury kicked his minutes and play were pretty inconsistent. But overall he was a pleasant surprise and I was real happy to see him sign with Philly. Once his brother Brandon was picked up by the Pacers, there was no room for Kareem, but he earned another contract with his play last year.

After Ivey, Rush: backcourt set, team almost

(BRING THE OLD SIXERS UNIFORMS BACK ! S4G CAMPAIGN – SIGN HERE)

Time to smile, Sixers fans (like in the pic).

Few days after signing free agent Royal Ivey, Sixers reached an agreement with Kareem Rush, giving the former Pacer the veteran minimum (!).

This, btw, is the sign we are attractive….

 We needed a low post presence? Ed Stefanski got us Elton Brand. 

We needed a three point shooter? Ed Stefanski got us a good, and cheap, one.

We also needed a third PG after dear old bum Kevin Ollie retired (hopefully, LOL) and we got a nice back up.

I say Stefanski did a fantastic job in these few months, something we Sixers fans haven’t seen in a long time. The Billy King era is definitely over, and it’s a sweet sensation to feel this excitement all around. Fans express their enthusiasm for the reshaped franchise in every blog, forum, site, and even being an ocean away I can join them in this optimism.

Let’s take a look at how the roster looks like now:

Old Sixers unis look great on Brand, BRING THEM BACK !

(I thought the “Brand new Sixers”, titles were played out, but I saw that still somebody was creative enough to come up with that strong imagination effort…)

Ok, how about this sequence:

1) Elton Brand signed with the Sixers

2) He posed with the old, classic Sixers uniforms we love (see the pic, thanks to reader Hawk3 for sharing it: you can take a look at his nice Sixers photos here)

3) Sixers4guidos reached its all time peak of traffic

I think the three facts are related even more than it shows. Ok, of course you don’t care about 3), but many of you care about the Bring the old Sixers uniforms back ! petition I started last February. I saw that yesterday that post had hundreds of hits, and many other fans signed up over the last 24 hrs (feel free to continue…).

As I told you back in the past months, I’ve been in contact with the Sixers franchise (marketing and PR dept) about the old uniforms topic, and that they are carefully following what is going on about this “sensitive subject” (I’m using their own words).

Well, what happened yesterday during the press conference of Elton Brand had wasn’t simply a coincidence, I guess. Sixers decide to make Brand wear THE CLASSIC UNIFORMS OF THEIR TRADITION for his first official shooting. The outcome was simply great. New, great player + old uniforms = two dreams come true.

Now can we please complete the job and BRING THEM BACK FULL TIME, dumping the horrible black/gold unis of the past years and, while we are at it, RESTORE THE OLD LOGO WITH THE BASKETBALL, flushing down the current, ugly one ???? Thanks !

Sixersholics (ugly word, I know…) will perhaps remember that at the end of the season Sixers.com published a poll asking fans to vote for their favorite Sixers logo. Guess what, the old logo won…

Good days are coming, let’s hope that Sixers unis of the 1983 can lead us to those results again…

Shockingly true: Elton Brand will be a Sixer !!!!!

It’s nice to break my long silence (not my fault, though) and take all of my lunch break at the new job to create the new “Elton Brand” category in this blog.

This morning I was simply extatic in reading that Ed Stefanski brought us Elton Brand, showing what a real GM should do. Now before I wrote my take about this move, let me remind you the major steps Stefanski took before closing this deal:

1) last season, traded Korver to Utah to clear cap space for this summer: around 4 mill off the books. Remember many fans complained then, but they should have known that the move should have been judged only some months later… 

BTW readers of this blog know I was, am and will always be a great Korver fan, but this time I was with our management, waiting/hoping for the eventual big move. I looked at the big picture, for once !!

2) seriously courted Josh Smith, involving even Philly’s mayor (!) and creating a smokescreen that probably helped him reaching the real goal  

3) traded Carney and Booth to Minnesota in order to be able to increase the offer(s) 

4) finally, signed Brand when everybody thought he was going to end up elsewhere (Golden State, Clippers etc)

I call this a great job by a GM who knows his stuff. (Ouh, and by the way move 1) was decisive in making Thaddeus Young getting some minutes… how did that turn out? Not surprisingly, he’s laughing, you see)

Now about Brand as a Sixer: