Sixers Sign Elton Brand!

It finally happened. The Sixers put years of frustration and terrible contracts behind them and pulled some big moves to drastically change the future of this franchise....quicker than most expected. Today's signing of Elton Brand was one that will go down as a great moment in Sixers history. I know not to rush into anything before we have even gotten on the court but this signing is huge. With this young nucleus, our glaring weakness was a post-playing power forward who is reliable. We solved that by signing Elton Brand, a proven 20 pts, 10 rebs player. Many people feel that the most important positions on a basketball team are point guard and power forward. Our PG was team MVP last year and now we just signed Brand. I just love saying it over and over. The Iverson trade, with it's taking on of new players and expiring contracts, as well as the Korver trade and the last minute Carney/Booth trade were what made this possible. It was a long time coming and it needed to happen this way. We could not settle for anything less than Brand. This year we controlled a good portion of the free agent market as buyers and we landed the best available free agent, one who also just happens to fill our primary need, fit in with our style, and is one of the best players in the league. Anyone else wish the season was starting much sooner than the fall??

It will be interesting to see if we play a typical post-style with Brand and let him create or go more for the old-school Kings look with a fluid offense that uses the athleticism of our team and allows for drives more so than kick outs with outside shooting. We still need a good shooter if we decide to play that way so we'll have to see. Brand does not detract from our fastbreak in any way. We don't necessarily need him running the floor with all the others we have. He in fact improves it by being a great rebounder and smart player. Brand now gives us the halfcourt offensive piece we were sorely lacking and one that was exploited by the Pistons in the playoffs. Dalembert should improve from this because he can feed off Elton's propensity to attract better defenders. Iguodala can settle into the role as glorified #2 man that we've all seemed to say he's better suited for. Evans can now come off the bench and play 15-18 minutes a game and maximize the type of role he is best at - keeping energy high and pulling down rebounds....doing the dirty work while Brand sits. Young settles in and develops at the small forward position and hopefully blossoms there.

It's really, really hard to find a negative with this but in the sake of parity I will try to identify one..... Hmmmmmmmm. Ok scratch that, we all know that not one jumps out and this is a day to enjoy a great signing and an optimistic look toward the future. No one says we are going to win it all this year but this is a huge step in the right direction. Don't you like being under the radar anyway??