No, I Do Not Want the Sixers to Re-Sign Andrew Bynum

In your hand, you hold a cookie. You are really excited about this cookie. The perfect amount of softness and warmth and cookie-to-chip ratio. You never imagined you would have a cookie so fantastic -- so fantastic, in fact, that you don't want to eat it yet. So you're walking around with the cookie. You go to the bank, the grocery store, the gym. Everyone's very impressed. Then you, high off your cookie ecstasy, drop the cookie in your bathroom trash can. You're devastated. The cookie lost 25% of itself in the trash and there's no way for you to know if the cookie made contact with your roommate's used tampons or the mucus you phlegmed into a handful of tissues last week or the crusty razorblade you finally threw away. There's just no way to know. So you could eat the cookie. You could take that risk that somewhere amongst the period blood and flu snot, your beautiful cookie is 75% of what it was. That it'll taste almost as delicious as it would've when you bought it. But are you willing to commit to what happens if it's not the same? If it's a shell of a fungus cookie? As you're debating that, you start dating somebody who works at a bakery. And the pube cookie doesn't seem worth it anymore. Throw the cookie away, friend.

Before Sam Hinkie, Andrew Bynum was the only chance we had. Now that we know the Sixers owners have their priorities in order, the overwhelming need to get a superstar Right Now before they trip and fall and max out Al Jefferson is not quite as suffocating.

The Andrew Bynum Aftermath

A month ago, I poured my heart into a sad but hopeful Andrew Bynum article. Now, we have reason to hope.

That's not to say the Sixers don't need a superstar -- they do. I'd just rather Hinkie give himself a blank page to work with than one in which Bynum's contract and arthritic knees saddle them for however long it would take it sign him. I'm sure the front office will offer a year or two, which I'm fine with, but one team's going to blow that offer out of the water, and I don't want it to be the Sixers. I can't wait to see what's next for this team.

The decision on what to do with Bynum is of tantamount importance to the Allen Iverson trade in 2006. It will define this ownership, one way or the other. There are hundreds of points and counterpoints to make for both sides (HORSE! MULE!), but after locking myself in a closet for 24 straight hours without much oxygen and "Safety Dance" on loop, I'm finally confident in my decision.

Andrew Bynum will never play a game with the Philadelphia 76ers. And that's okay.