When the 76ers Fired GM Billy King and replaced him with Nets’ GM Ed Stefanski on Tuesday, most of us were caught off guard. After trading Allen Iverson to Denver a year ago, the plan was to go young and clear salary cap space for after this season. This season was expected to be a tough one, where a mostly young roster was going to have to take its lumps. King was allowed to make the Iverson deal, execute the buyout of Chris Webber, and make the 3 1st round draft picks last June, so conventional wisdom was that King would/should be around to finish the job. But Chairman Ed Snider comes from his hockey background, where an entire roster can be rebuilt in one off season. Patience and rebuilding are not words in his vocabulary, and hence King is gone. After the bloated contracts that Willie Green, Kyle Korver, and Samuel Dalembert are playing under, I’m not so sure that King was the right man to handle the new found cap space, anyway.
Let’s hope Stefanski knows what he’s doing.
Nittymaki is ok.
Going into last season, Flyer’s goalie Antero Nittymaki was expected to take over the starting job and be the long-term answer. When he suffered a torn muscle in his hip in the pre-season, the team and Nittmaki decided that forgoing surgery (which would have required 3 month’s recovery) for periodic cortisone shots would be the best way to get through the season. In the following months, however, bad defense, injury, and loss of confidence was a significant part of the worst season in Flyers history. You had to wonder if Nittymaki could ever regain the form that made him such a prospect, of if his confidence had been shattered forever. The Flyers themselves made contingency plans when the brought Brian Boucher back to play for the Phantoms.
But Nittymaki has finally gotten a chance to play recently when Martin Biron’s cooled off after his hot start. And in back-to-back road wins over Ottawa and Minnesota, Nittymaki again looked like the goalie the Flyers thought they had, and can now count on if Biron goes down for any period of time.
Bye, Bye, Aaron.
It’s hard for me to bash the Phillies for the impending free-agent departure of CF Aaron Rowand. When Tori Hunter signed with the Angels for $16 million a year, I thought it was excessive, but understandable; you sometimes have to overpay for a player. But when Andruw Jones signed with the Dodgers yesterday to a 2 year, $36 Million contract last night, I was aghast. Jones hit .222 last season with a .311 on-base %. If he’s worth $ 18 Million, what does that make Rowand? You figure he will get his 5 year deal for $14-15 Million per. And that contract could end up being worse than the albatross that has been Pat Burrell’s deal. I love Rowand, and stats don’t tell the whole story, but he had a career year, and his playing style doesn’t seem to indicate 5 years of continued high-level production.
My only concern is that instead of spending elsewhere, the Phils will just pocket the money.