YAYsports! NBA

While still (STILL) waiting for Raja Bell’s website countdown to hit 00:00:00, we’ve been desperate for the move everyone knew was coming this summer: la trade de le Allen Iverson.

Unfortunately, that event isn’t going to happen, at least according to Philadelphia 76ers GM Billy King.

After nobody would offer anything but crap a long, heartfelt discussion with his All-Star guard, Mr. King has decided to move forward with AI leading his team once again.

“I expect him to be on the roster at the start of training camp,” the Sixers president and general manager said.

Asked if this meant Iverson would not be traded, King replied: “I’ve pretty much said that I expect him to be with us at the start of training camp. Our conversations with other teams at this point going forward do not include him.”

“We’re going to keep working,” he said, “but we’re not going to do a deal just to say we did something.”

Some advice for Billy: do something. Not necessarily with Iverson, but do something.

We’re loathe to simply parrot Stephen A Smith’s column this morning, but the man has a point - the team is a hopeless mess of mediocrity, stuck at that odd little place where you’re either the 8th seed or you’re getting a late lottery pick.

There’s been no direct statement from AI as of yet, and his website was poached back in 1996 by someone from AZ, so we can only guess what he’s thinking.

That guess is as follows. In the back of his mind, right now Allen is looking at 2009, when him, KG, and Steve Nash all play for PHX, becoming this generation’s “Barkley/Pippen/Olajuwan in Houston”. It won’t be pretty, and it won’t be fun, but it will provide plenty of material for bloggers everywhere.

(By the way, if we’re still one of those bloggers in 2009, we actually won’t be one of those bloggers, since we’ll have gone suicidal at that point. We’re also 98% sure we’ve used that joke before, so you can kinda get a feel for where this is all headed, eh?)