2012 Sixers Player Preview: Kwame Brown

This is a link to a video of the B-52 crash at Fairchild Air Force Base in 1994.

This concludes the Liberty Ballers' coverage of Kwame Brown.

Oh, do I have to write more? Okay, fine.

Kwame Brown is a better basketball player than I am.

But apart from that, he is the draft bust to end all draft busts--a man tapped for greatness by a power-mad owner convinced of nothing more than his own invincibility, who has bricked, pouted and fumbled away the chance to convert his not inconsiderable physical gifts into something beyond being lampooned by The Onion.

If we're making an all-time Kwame power ranking, he'd be second from the bottom, with only Kwame Kilpatrick, the disgraced former mayor of Detroit, saving him from the ignominy of being called the Worst Kwame Ever. In case you're curious, Mr. Kwame, Richard Roundtree's good-natured bushwhacker in George of the Jungle, would rank No. 1.

Kwame Brown has somehow managed to forge an NBA career that is staggering into its 13th year, despite his never having built a reputation as a scorer, or even as a glue guy, someone who Brian Scalabrines his way to picking up a paycheck for being the last guy on the bench. In fact, Kwame Brown's Wikipedia page has an entire section titled "Cake incident," which would be a lot funnier if it weren't directly beneath the section titled "Rape accusation."

From a standpoint of judging production by draft slot, Kwame Brown makes Alexandre Daigle look like Tom Brady, if you'll allow a cross-sport comparison.

But you know all this, I feel. So what does he mean to the Sixers this season?

Ideally, not much. When Doug Collins named his likely nine-man rotation, Brown's name was nowhere to be seen. It's possible that the Sixers signed Kwame Brown to a two-year, $6 million contract...hang on...I need to be excused for a moment.

(leaves room)

(vomits)

(hits self on hand repeatedly with rubber mallet)

(vomits again)

(falls down stairs)

Sorry about that. Like I was saying, a two-year, $6 million contract to make sure Arnett Moultrie doesn't slide off the end of the bench. Or maybe to serve as a doorstop or a coat rack or something. Or be a sparring partner for Bynum in practice. Anything but actually play significant minutes in the NBA.

Well here's the thing--for all the crowing about Andrew Bynum giving the Sixers their first big star since Iverson, their first real franchise cornerstone in almost a decade, it's gotten lost that Bynum is hurt constantly. That Bynum only missed six games last year, but apart from that hadn't missed fewer than 17 games since he was a teenager. So Spencer Hawes as a backup at the 4 and 5 might play most of the time, but it's likely that there are large chunks of the season for which Andrew Bynum will not be available.

And as if the return of Spencer Hawes to a starting role weren't already a terrifying enough possibility, with every injury to a big man it becomes more likely that Kwame Brown gets significant playing time. You laugh, but he lurks, like Pinbacker in Sunshine, waiting for his moment to show up and undermine the mission.

This is not to say that Kwame Brown is completely useless. He can still rebound some, and at 6-foot-11 and 270 pounds, can guard the rim, even if 1.0 blocks per 36 minutes on his career doesn't exactly make him Dikembe Mutombo.

It was once said about legendary Sixer forward Kebu Stewart that "he's six more fouls to use on Shaq." Which I guess is true of Kwame Brown, too. Well, not literally on Shaq, but on Tyson Chandler or something. In fact, between Brown and camp invitees Dan Gadzuric and Mikki Moore, this is shaping up to be precisely the kind of team I used to build in NBA Live 2005--completely worthless offensively, but able to block the occasional shot and grab the occasional rebound.

But really, Kwame Brown is filler, the pretzels in this Sixers-branded bag of Chex Mix. What really makes me bust a gut laughing is that the Sixers saw fit to give him two seasons, as if they couldn't risk letting him back on the market and have someone else gobble up this paragon of stone hands, bad footwork and Montrossian free throw shooting.

Indeed, it is of paramount importance to make sure that all of those things could be had for $3 million a year. For that much money you could hire a ship and a bulldozer, dig up an Easter Island statue and bring it to Philadelphia to back up Andrew Bynum. It would probably run the floor better.

So when I'm biting my nails in January over Andrew Bynum's health and you can't figure out why, remember this post. Remember who lurks at the end of the bench, waiting like an alligator in the deep end of your swimming pool.

Kwame's coming.