SLAM magazine has been running an online series titled “Top 50: The definitive ranking of the NBA’s best players”and last Friday the 76ers Andre Iguodala popped up on the countdown at #26.

The 26^th place ranking that Iguodala received from SLAM sparked a serious debate here at the Philadunkia offices about AI9’s place among the NBA’s elite.  One thing we could agree on was that #26 was too far back from the #1 spot for Iguodala and apparently we’re not alone in our thinking.  Brian over at the Sixer loyal blog depressedfan.com posted  a piece this past Friday about how Iguodala’s place on SLAM’s list was simply, “bad” .  So to us the idea that Iguodala’s ranking by SLAM is flat wrong is a stone cold mortal lock. 

However for us here at Philadunkia it’s not enough to just say that SLAM was wrong.  So here at Philadunkia, most of last Friday was consumed by trying to determine exactly where Iguodala belongs when one ranks the best basketball players in the NBA.  Hey, that’s our responsibility to you the reader.

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The Philadelphia 76ers unveiled their “new” uniforms yesterday at the Wachovia Center in front of a small crowd of die hard Sixer fans who are hoping that the physical look of the team isn’t the only thing to change this season. 

The uniforms, a red base jersey with white stitched lettering teamed with red shorts trimmed in blue at the bottom and emblazoned with the 76ers new logo on the left leg for home games; and a white jersey with blue stitched lettering accompanied by white shorts trimmed in blue at the bottom and emblazoned with the 76ers new logo on the left leg for away, sported by Thaddeus Young and Elton Brand respectively, were introduced along with the hope of an improved season by GM Ed Stefanski. 

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That has to be the case, correct?  Because these uniforms appear to be missing an element or two that would provide a touch of game time flair.  That’s our initial reaction. 

There’s nothing “wrong” with the new unis, there’s just nothing that great about the gear either.  The majority opinion here at the Philadunkia offices is that the new uniforms look like really nice, well…practice threads.

While we certainly like the retro feel the organization put into the new unis and we all agree they have a good, clean look to them, we all also agree that they are lacking for any real style or creativity.  We’re not sure how many people are going to be blown away enough by the new look to run out and buy these uniforms, but we can tell you that none of us jumped up and dashed over to Modell’s to pick up a jersey.

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Yesterday Philadunkia participated in a conference call with Ed Stefanski for blogs dedicated to the 76ers. First let us say that we are impressed and grateful that Ed gave us the chance to speak with via the phone.  A large percentage of NBA teams still will not recognize and respect sports blogs for the great work they publish.  So we say, “Thank you” to Ed and Sixers head PR man Michael Preston for their time yesterday.

The call itself last a little over thirty minutes and when we went back and listened to the tape Stefanski told us a number of things that most Sixers fans already know like Andre Iguodala is “willing and able” to play some point, that he didn’t trade Andre Miller at the dead line last year because “we didn’t get anything we thought was even worth discussing”, that “Elton Brand is absolutely 100%” and that he “expects to make the playoffs” this coming season. 

Stefanski also dished out a fair amount of front office speak on the call which allowed him to circle some questions without really answering them.  However, when we read between the lines on some of his quotes, we found that Stefanski responded to a good number of the questions with responses that actually provided insight into the thoughts, ideas and direction of the Sixers brain trust.

Now we went into this call with one single purpose and that was to get the answer as to why the 76ers did not / have not added a veteran back-court player who can score the ball to the roster.  That has been a burning issue for us here at Philadunkia since Orlando threw us out of the 2009 NBA Playoffs.  So we directed most of our questions for Stefanski at that story angle.

 We pulled our story line quotes as well as some of the best questions from the other bloggers and posted them for you here today.

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From what we are reading and seeing on the 76ers official Twitter account and hearing from people around the City of Brotherly Love, nearly all of the key members of 76ers 2009-10 roster were in town on Friday and working out together over at PCOM on City Avenue.

With training camp still 10 days away, it’s great to know that the team is already getting to work on learning new Head Coach Eddie Jordan’s Princeton offense.  The P’ton offense typically takes some time for individual players to learn because it is so different the offenses most NBA players have run during the course of their careers.  For a team to gel and become a cohesive unit within that offense is not a short process either because of the system’s read and react nature.

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A little over a week ago Philadunkia’s Michael Kaskey-Blomain wrote a piece in disbelief of the fact that former Sixer scoring machines Allen Iverson and Jerry Stackhouse were still unemployed.  We all know that Iverson now has a job with the Memphis Grizzlies and holy cow it sure is going to be interesting to see how that plays out.  However, Jerry Stackhouse and his career average of 18.4 ppg. remain unemployed.

Here’s a thought — The 76ers should sign Jerry Stackhouse.

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From Sixers.com we have a video interview with Jason Smith who looks good at workouts and says he feels great especially with the new “smaller” brace he is rocking. However there are still no comments from Smith on his famous 2008 encounter with adult film star Mary Carey .

Andre Iguodala speaks on the team’s new Princeton offense  and wanting to play more point guard

As we all know, the Sixers officially brought by wingman Rodney Carney this week and Carney is excited to be back in Philly saying, “This is an excellent team on paper..”  By the way, first the Sixers bring back Carney. Then the Eagles bring back Jeff Garcia. Things always happen threes, so we can only assume that either Lenny Dykstra or Bob Clarke will be coming out of retirement very soon. 

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There is no doubt in our minds that Michael Jordan is the G.O.A.T. and we genuflect out of respect for his basketball skills and accomplishments at both the NCAA and NBA levels. Outside of former Philadelphia Warrior legend and City of Brotherly Love native Wilt Chamberlain and possibly Bill Russell, perhaps no individual is more deserving of induction into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame then Michael. Hoops web sites all over the world will be paying homage to #23 today and rightly so.

However, Philadunkia is a blog dedicated to the Philadelphia 76ers – the good and the bad; on and off the court. So even though we realize that MJ absolutely owned our home team during his playing days – from the 56 he dropped on Barkley back in 1987 to the “Stackhouse Game” to the 30 spot he hung on Iverson as a Wizard – we still felt that since this is a 76er loyal site, we should “flip the script” as they say and run down a list of the best moments in 76ers history that occurred at the expense of Air Jordan and his teammates.

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The return of Rodney Carney to the 76ers organization (More on that on Friday) means that Ed Stefanski’s signed player roster for the 2009-10 Sixers now stands at thirteen players. That number is two below the maximum of fifteen players allowed by the NBA  and one below the number of fourteen that Stefanski has mentioned he will carry on the Sixers roster this season.

Stefanski has said in the past that in September during Sixers training camp at St. Joe’s University  there will basically be a “tryout” for the final one or possibly two spots on the Sixers opening night roster.

With that in mind, we here at Philadunkia took the time to assemble a list of prospects and free agents we’d like to see invited to Sixers training camp in order to participate in the “tryout” process for the remaining opening or openings on the Sixers roster. Several of our suggestions may even be able to make positive contribution in this upcoming season.

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As 76ers legend and eventual Hall of Famer Allen Iverson draws closer each day to reality that he could possibly be a member of lowly Memphis Grizzlies in 2009-10 and one time Sixer great Jerry Stackhouse remains an unrestricted free agent deep into September, Philadunkia’s Michael Kaskey-Blomain took a moment to look back at the 1996-97 Philadelphia 76ers and ponder what could have been…

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