By John McMullen, NBA Editor

Philadelphia, PA (Sports Network) - As the NBA editor here at The Sports
Network, I was all set to pen a piece explaining that there would be no phony
things-to-be-thankful-for-Thanksgiving columns coming from this department.

Then it hit me, despite my salty reputation I am actually thankful for a few
things this Turkey Day.

I am giddy that I have to work on Thanksgiving, so I don't have to act like I'm
riveted by the kid stories emanating from pseudo-relatives and "friends" that
inevitably keep me from drinking beer and watching football. Meanwhile, I'm
really jacked up that I am not going to be forced to wake by at 4 a.m. on
Friday so I can save a couple hundred dollars at Best Buy's doorbuster sale.

It all falls apart Friday night, however. I'll still be a safe distance away
from the holiday nonsense that doubles as the bane of my existence, but I will
be at the Wachovia Center in south Philadelphia, taking in a Sixers' game.

If you haven't been subjected to it, Sixers' basketball has been virtually
unwatchable this season.

New coach Eddie Jordan is a "system guy" that brought his Princeton offense
to the City of Brotherly Love, with no intention of tweaking anything for
anybody.

He's not alone. In professional sports, "system coaches" are becoming
more of a pandemic than the swine flu.

To me, great coaches in any sport slowly add talent that fits into what they
want to accomplish (the system), while maximizing the strengths of their
current players and masking as many of the deficiencies as possible.

Coaches like that are virtually extinct these days.

It's all "my way or the highway" thinking and Jordan is the poster child for
the "system coach."

Before Philadelphia played Jordan's former team, the Washington Wizards, on
Tuesday, former All-Star guard Gilbert Arenas took the time to speak with
reporters about Jordan's offense.

"You need five passers, five shooters," Arenas said. "Athletes don't work in
that offense, to be honest."

Of course, the Sixers have one upper-echelon shooter, Jason Kapono, and a host
of superlative athletes in Andre Iguodala, Lou Williams, Thaddeus Young,
Rodney Carney and Jrue Holiday.

But, instead of playing transition basketball, Jordan keeps hammering the
square peg into the round hole.

"I call it the thinking man's offense. If you don't have a very high IQ,
you're always going to be lost," Arenas added.

Some might call that an indictment of players like Iguodala, Young, Samuel
Dalembert and Elton Brand, who have all taken a step back in Jordan's system.

I'll call it an indictment of a coach who doesn't have the IQ to figure out
his players are better suited for something else.

Uptown wrote:

CrushAlot wrote:It is easy to be a System coach if you have Kobe or Jordan to bail you out when the system isn't working.

Because Stars win Championships in this league. The best players at the time always win Chips...Jordan was the best in the league when he was winning, Hakeem was the best when he won, Magic, Bird, Kobe, Shaq, etc....It doesn't matter what system you implement, or what BB philosophy you embody, if you dont have one of the top players in the in the league on your team, its gonna be very hard to win a championship.

u need at least 2 stars to win championships... recent history has shown this over & over... Rockets had Hakeem & Drexler... Lakers had Magic & Kareem (& Worthy), Shaq & Kobe, Kobe & Gasol (& Odom)... Heat had Shaq & Wade... Celtics had Bird & McHale, KG & Pierce (& Allen)... this is why i've been saying all along that clearing cap space to go after 2 max FA's in 2010 should have been our priority right from the very beginning... u get those 2 stars to form the core & u can build a championship team from there w/fillin role players... u can't form a core w/o those 2 star players to anchor your team.