Bradley: 90 Inches Of Nothing

The worst sight in professional sports is Shawn Bradley masquerading as a small forward. He is a 7-6 Tin Man good for one fastbreak trip down the floor, followed by a gasping retreat on defense.

At which time the man who turned center, the position once played here by Wilt Chamberlain and Moses Malone, into the missionary position, would be two-and-through. Oh, he’d make sure to commit a stupid grabbing foul away from the ball, and John Lucas would turn to his consomme-thin bench.

Lucas has been through 12-step programs himself. He has become the Mother Teresa of the NBA’s substance dependent, a halfway house for guys one step from either the Continental Basketball Association or a crack house.

But there is no 12-step program to cure gutlessness.

This kid is more than an empty uniform. He is a thief who turned the bad judgment of everybody with a dream of what he could become into the biggest daylight heist since the Brinks Robbery.

The White Man’s Burden …

Missionary Impossible …

The Great White Nope …

These were some of the astonishingly creative and brilliantly cruel nicknames that flooded into a radio station the other day when the midafternoon hosts decided to kill a slow hour with Shawnster fun.

It did not take long for Shawn Bradley, who was physically, socially and philosophically out of his depth in a Sixers uniform, to become the most scorned and vilified athlete to play here in modern times. The only guy close I can remember was Phillies catcher Lance Parrish.

Parrish just did not want to be here after fans booed and heckled his wife. With Shawn Bradley, it was different. He simply did not belong here, not even if he had volunteered to stand atop City Hall wearing Billy Penn’s hat. That Bradley was here at all for just over two years to write such a relentless chapter of futility calls for a lot of soul-searching.

Harold Katz is a small-time Jerry Jones who has spent the bulk of his mostly downhill stewardship looking for Troy Aikman, Emmitt Smith and Jimmy Johnson. What he got was Jeff Ruland, Hersey Hawkins and Doug Moe.

Charles Barkley, the third-best player in the history of the franchise behind Wilt and Julius Erving, couldn’t wait to get out of town. There’s something terribly wrong with that picture.

But Katz had a whole lot of help on this one. Help from friends. Help from enemies. Help from guys like me, who can’t handle the loud music and general tackiness that turn a Sixers home game into the aural ordeal of a Project Mercury astronaut during launch.

It’s easy to look back at the draft that produced Penny Hardaway, Chris Webber and, aaaaaaaargh, Shawn Bradley, and second-guess the Sixers’ decision to select the spindly Brigham Young player. Draft him even though he spent what should have been his sophomore and junior years in Australia, canvassing door-to-door for the mission of his church.

From a sports columnist who has been out of the basketball mix since his days as a Big 5 writer, to coach Jimmy Lynam, who always thought tall, to Katz himself, who should bulldoze his private basketball court, it became a no-brainer.

The party line went something like this: Sometimes in life, you have to roll the dice and take a major risk that you will be wrong. Shawn Bradley is that time. During his brief career at Brigham Young, he showed the ability to play facing the basket, shoot from medium range, handle the basketball and pass. He is 7-6, taller than any American collegian in history. He can only get better. Bigger. Faster. Stronger.

I called for the Sixers to draft him. It is a tough thing to admit, it really is. But it’s right there on my record, inescapable and damning. To trash the Shawnster after just two-plus seasons is front-running at its worst. I am guilty as charged. Because this alabaster wimp had to go. And let the chips fall where they may.

So, he is gone. The New Jersey Nets are not far enough, of course, but they will do in a pinch. If Bradley was miserable here, wait until the guy from the New York Post digs his fangs into that blue-veined flesh. Wait until Mike and the Mad Dog work him over on WFAN.

Doing the same Zombie number in the Meadowlands Arena will not be fun for Shawn. I think Bradley got a lot of slack here because the team around him was so bad it was never possible to label him the entire problem. Shawn had more than a little help from his friends, a term I use only for reference.

The trade that ran Bradley out of town before things got any uglier drips with irony, of course.

Both Bradley and the “throw-ins” from the Sixers’ end of the deal, almost-worthless Tim Perry and guard Greg Graham, have much better numbers than Nets forwards Derrick Coleman and Sean Higgins.

There’s a good reason for that, of course. Coleman and Higgins are damaged goods who have yet to play this season. The ambulatory athlete from the Nets’ side is Rex Walters, a “two” guard with a 3.0 average. And isn’t that just what the Sixers need, another “two” guard?

The ultimate irony, of course, is that this trade basically exchanges an athlete with no heart for an athlete with a heart condition.

Every time you think Katz & Co. can’t top themselves, they reach into memory and do the impossible.

And for those of you who complained that Shawn Bradley was an athlete with the personality of vanilla yogurt, Coleman has enough attitude to make Ricky Watters sound like Tony Gwynn.

The former Syracuse prima donna was amazed that the Big East did not collapse after he came out to the NBA. Hopefully, John Lucas will inform Coleman that practice here is more than when he feels like it.

It never ceases to amaze me that so many coaches feel they owe players making $5 million a year an apology for imposing so many restrictive demands on them, stuff like being on time and playing hard.

Kiss the Shawn Bradley Error goodbye. Thankfully, it did not last long enough to become the Shawn Bradley Era.