A Season To Remember To Forget Remembering

I have no idea what that title means, but I couldn't decide if this most recently extinguished Sixers season was one to remember, or to forget, so there you go. What ended quietly and most effortlessly(for the other team, in this case Toronto) a few days ago was yet another season in which our lovable and gullible 76ers failed to bring us home any bacon from the store. Instead they showed up with fetid tofu and a bag of magic beans.

Will we yell at them for settling for the magic beans? Yes, we will scream expletives and cover them with flem and foamy spittle. Will we scoff at the beans and flash exasperated looks of contempt in their direction every chance we get? Absolutely, no opportunity to mutter outraged sour grapes in modulated tones will be wasted. Will we, the editorial staff at the Dalembert Report, see this tofu and bean combination as a waste of our time and effort, our devotion and pride? Will we simply throw the tofu in the trash and flush the magic beans down the toilet, thus freeing ourselves from any potential harm and heartache they will almost definitely bring? I wish the answer was yes. Sadly, it is no. We will season and then eat the tofu, we will plant and water the beans, all the while cursing our efforts as if we were acting against our own will in some way; a couple of gamblers forever stuck in a casino to whom we owe no money but where every card game is dealt by Shawn Bradley, every roulette wheel spun by Glenn Robinson, every slot overseen by Brad Greenberg. Of course we will plant the beans, and coo at them, and leave the radio on for them when we leave the house. After all, whoever sold them to us said they were magic. They might grow.

In this case, our beans are several draft picks which once upon a time seemed a death-and-taxes lock to be a steppingstone to future dominance. What only a couple months ago looked like a day of watershed potential(This is the Watershed!! for all you Steven Seeholzer fans out there), that is, the day they announce the lottery results(sometime in May), now looms as just another gloomy afternoon spent watching the Phillies lose and the Sixers getting leapfrogged by less-deserving teams who refused to not quit, unlike the Sixers, and so will become better(hypothetically) for it. As it stands the Sixers will chose 12th in the 2007 draft. Many great players have been chosen 12th and lower, unfortunately, many more great players have been chosen 11th and higher, so pardon me for feeling more than(or is it less than?) dubious towards this position. However, on the brighter side of things, our main man Sammy D played all 82 games this season and for most of it kept his sneakers laced and his paintball gun collection locked and loaded, just like his silky new jump-shot. As Sammy goes, so go the Sixers, and that leaves me, and us, in a position that I think the title of this post speaks to quite nicely. Hopeful and confused, or hopefullessly confused. We'll hit you with the season recap later this week!!