Thaddeus Young and Doug Collins Bickering Now Too

Somebody has to put Doug Collins in timeout. Or at least all the reporters that are breaking stories in the past few days that the Sixers ship is sinking, Collins is a nagger, and everyone but Tony Battie has deleted Doug's number from their phone (he doesn't have one) need to cool it. Sparse it out over a month or so, don't pummel the guy. Well, in keeping with beating a dead horse and spitting on its innards, Bob Cooney reports that Thaddeus Young has beef with the coach as well.

Observe beef after the jump.

"I keep telling coach I'm fine but he keeps telling me I'm worn down. I know how my body feels. I'm good. Coach says that I'm worn down, so I can't change what he's thinking. All I can do is go out there and keep continuing to play and not worry about what coach is thinking about being worn down."

And this one:

Young laughed it off when told his coach had brought up keeping his minutes reduced.

"I can clearly see he's been doing that. I can't say anything about it. I can only keep saying 'Coach, I'm fine, I'm good.'

We all know that Thad is the sweetest boy on the team (Jrue Holiday 2nd, Jodie Meeks 3rd - yay blog dad!) so it's his word I'll be trusting. He doesn't sound angry about it - bemused is closer to the right word. Doug is like his mom who can't help himself but to fuss over the state of Thad's knee after he scraped it on the blacktop.

In Collins' defense, Thad's minutes haven't been down much at all. He averaged 27 in January, 29 in February, and 28.5 in March. On top of that, Thad has been bad lately. Is FG% the past month is a full 5 percentage points lower than any other significant stretch this season. His defense has been its normal spotty self, occasionally great and pesky, the other times soft and confusing.

Thad just signed a 5 year, $42 million deal back in December so he'll be around and around unless the house is not only cleaned, but completely bulldozed and rebuilt. Collins, however, is looking like a stronger candidate to put down his clipboard and pick up a microphone again this offseason. For me it's as simple as this: If they make the playoffs, they'll retain him. If not, he's gone. That's not what I think should happen, just what will.

Have at it, jackals.