voting

[krai@gis.net]

I vote for Mercer - he is a (much?) more talented version of Reggie Lewis,
and a solid, dependable individual. Walker has simply too many undesirable
(IMO) character traits to be given the franchise.  His body language (and I
don't mean just the wiggle) clearly reveals what kind of person he is.  His
ilk - Kemp, the crotch-grabbing L. Johnson, C. Webber, I. Rider et al. -
have never achieved the greatness their talent would allow, and they rarely
become anything more than tantalizingly gifted underachievers. That is not
to say that Walker necessarily should be gotten rid of, although I would
trade him for, say,  Vin Baker in a heartbeat (I doubt that the Sonics
would be interested, though).
 One might summon the usual excuses of young age and emotional nature, but
NBA history shows that such personality traits 1) only attenuate somewhat
with age, but never really go away (I'll be proven wrong if the current
core of Wash Wizzers makes it at least to the conference finals in the next
several years), and 2) prevent such players from performing effectively
when it really counts. With respect to the latter, I don't mean making a
game-winning shot once in a while, but *avoiding* the necessity of such
heroics by making smart, cool-headed decisions in the waning minutes of
crucial games.
To sum up, I think it would be great to have Walker on the team because of
his tremendous talent, but making him The Man (which a 100+ mil contract
would do, at least in his mind), and relying on him the way Chicago relies
on Jordan or Utah relies on Malone and Stockton, would be foolish.

K. Kveraga

K. Kveraga