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Losing starts at the top

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03/12/2010 - Philadelphia, PA (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - March is when college basketball vaults to the top of the sports scene. It also happens to be when I really start to pay attention to the college game with an eye on June's draft.

Conventional wisdom says college hoops is the "coach's game" while the pros is for the players. For the most part, I agree with that. The real stars of college basketball are the mentors calling timeout after timeout to extend a 13-point game with the hopes some athletic director at a bigger school is so impressed, he gets offered a deal to flee from the same teenagers he recruited a year ago with the promise he would always be there for them. On the other hand, the NBA is all about Kobe, LeBron, CP3 and Dwayne Wade.

Give the worst coach LeBron and he's going to beat every Larry Brown that comes down the pike.

That said, you have to find a way to procure the talent that will give the pedestrian coach the edge over the Hall of Fame pilot and that starts at the very top of the food chain -- ownership.

Great ownership can't guarantee you anything other than competitiveness but bad ownership is a recipe for losing consistently. Look no further than a pair of cities separated by 3,000 miles -- Los Angeles and Philadelphia -- to prove that thesis.

The Clippers' Donald Sterling thought so much of Mike Dunleavy this year that he fired him twice. Sure if we play semantics, Dunleavy stepped down as head coach last month to concentrate on his duties as general manager but everyone knows he was forced out.

On Tuesday, Sterling finally showed the courage of his convictions and went ahead and fired Dunleavy as general manager with five weeks to go in the regular season.

The news stunned Dunleavy, who had no idea he joined the growing ranks on the unemployed. "Had no clue!" Dunleavy said in an e-mail to The Los Angles Times.

It was typical Sterling, a real estate mogul that is almost universally considered one of the worst owners in all of sports since taking over the Clips in 1981-82. Whether its karma or just plain incompetence, the Clips' history under Sterling is scarier than anything Wes Craven ever produced.

Brown had the franchise heading in the right direction in the early 1990s but the nomadic one got antsy and packed his bags long before anything real was accomplished. Meanwhile, Dunleavy, joined the Clippers in 2003 and led the team to their lone playoff success in 2006.

Widely criticized for his tight hold over the purse strings and unwillingness to invest in his own team, Sterling seemed to have an epiphany when Dunleavy arrived but things have reverted back to form and the Clips are bottom-feeders again.

Across the country in Philadelphia, things are a bit different.

The Sixers have a storied history, both good and bad. The 1966-67 team led by Wilt Chamberlain and Hal Greer was once voted the best team in NBA history and, contrary to revisionist history that plays up Larry Bird's Celtics and Magic Johnson's Lakers, it was the 1982-83 Sixers team, fueled by Moses Malone and Julius Erving, that was the best team of that era. Meanwhile, the 1972-73 club was the worst in NBA history, finishing 9-73.

Today's Sixers are a lot closer to the '72-73 bunch than any championship teams but it wasn't like that earlier this decade when Pat Croce was in charge.

Croce became president of the Sixers in 1996 as part of a group led by Philadelphia Flyers founder Ed Snider and the Comcast Corporation that bought the team. Under Croce's reign, the Sixers went from last place in 1996 to the NBA Finals in 2001.

Giddy with success and upset he had to report to Snider, Croce attempted what can only be described as a coup, a plan quickly quashed by Snider, a sort of real life Two-Face, the fictional Batman villain with the dual personality.

The comic book version of Two-Face was of course Harvey Dent, the DA of Gotham City and a close ally of the Dark Knight. After a criminal disfigured half of his face with acid, Dent became the insane crime boss Two-Face who would choose to do either good or evil depending on the flip of a coin.

Snider may not be a criminal mastermind but he displays a similar dichotomy to fans of Philadelphia. To Flyers fans, Ed is a hero -- a never say die owner who will do anything to win. While the Stanley Cup hasn't taken up residence in the city in over 35 years, area hockey fans generally genuflect at the sight of Snider and all agree it hasn't been due to a lack of effort.

To Sixers fans, Snider is a clod. An absentee buffoon of an owner happy to collect the riches of the NBA's massive television contract while ignoring the product he puts on the floor.

After striking out with Elton Brand two offseasons ago, Snider and Sixers general manager Ed Stefanski had one bullet in their chamber for 2009-10 -- a new head coach.

Instead of hiring Doug Collins or Avery Johnson the team settled on Eddie Jordan, an abject disaster. Most blame Stefanski since he has a long history with Jordan and loves the guy but make no mistake, the Sixers' basketball chief wasn't given the checkbook to sign a big-time coach.

Philadelphia is now back at square one in salary cap hell, weighing whether to fire Jordan right now or let him coach through the end of the season while demanding he give more playing time to younger players such as Jrue Holiday, Jodie Meeks and Jason Smith.

In the end, it's all window dressing.

As long as Sterling and Snider are at the top of their respective organizations pulling their ill-conceived strings, losing is virtually predetermined for both the Clippers and Sixers.

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