I have to laugh when some posters start trumpeting Vin Baker's return to "all star form". Didn't he have something like 4 rebounds & 4-10 freethrows in regulation against Golden State? Vin has games like this all the time. Granted he's done better this year, but you never know when he's going to forget to take his medication & disappear for a game or two. Even in the games he plays well, you never know from quarter to quarter what kind of production you're going to get from him; or how much foul trouble will limit his aggressiveness. I can think of one Vin supporter -- who I'm sure sleeps with a blowup doll of the doughboy -- who will probably have a fit when I say this, but REAL all stars consistently produce. Karl Malone recently played his 1,300th game in a career that has spanned 17 years. During that time he has averaged (AVERAGED!) over 52% shooting from the field; 74% from the charity stripe; 25.8 points, 10.4 boards, 3.44 assists, & 1.4 steals per game! I'm not even going to dignify Vin's numbers this season by mentioning them next to these awesome stats. And for those of you thinking, "yeah but Karl has slowed down a lot lately", check out these figures from the recent Boston box score: 22 points on 8-15 from the field & 6-8 from the line; 13 rebounds; 4 assists; & 3 steals.The next night Karl followed those numbers up with 31 points, 8 boards, 4 assists, & 3 steals at New Jersey.Don't those figures sound almost exactly like his career averages? Put on your thinking caps & tell me when was the last time you remember Baker having back-to-back games like that? Amazing! Here's a guy that's how many years older than Vin & he's still got the moxie & consistency to bring it every night.And you think Vin's good enough to replace him on the allstar team? I don't think so -- not any time soon.And what about Wallace & Duncan, just to mention another couple of the names in the west that just happen to play Vin's position? Which one of THESE guys would you hold back so that Vin could play in the all star classic? No, you're dreaming if you think Vin's in the same league as these guys. Only his salary & the fact that he DOES play in the NBA make him worthy of mentioning in the same breath.

But the main thing that keeps Tin Man Vin from the elite ranks of Power Forwards in the NBA is durability. In a previous column I questioned whether he was accident prone, just unlucky, or whether perhaps he was "a bad machine". It's a bit of a touchy subject right now, but for a guy whose "finesse" game seems to preclude contact, Vin is sure saddled with the most amazing variety of injuries. This year alone we've seen the knee; the less well known bruised little toe -- the lame excuse which nearly kept him from dancing in the Nutcracker; & the fingernail scratch above the eye requiring no stitches & only a butterfly bandage which the love object of the aforementioned blowup doll insisted proved Vin was NOT soft. After all he could have laid down right there BUT NO! Vin heroically picked himself up off the floor & after only 10 or 15 minutes in the lockeroom,returned to the bench. Hell, I've literally had worse injuries taking out the garbage! Now we have the devastating thumb injury which begs the question: why didn't Vin just pull out a plum instead of his injured digit? Is the guy really an injury prone nightmare, the next accident just waiting to happen; or is his problem perhaps CAUSED by the tentative nature of his finesse game? I remember in football our coaches were forever telling us we were much less likely to get hurt if we were DELIVERING the blow instead of RECEIVING it. Is something of a similar nature at work here? Instead of floating up a soft layup in traffic, would Vin be less likely to get injured slamming it home? All I know is that Vin's game suffered for most of the second half of last year with the same kind of injury. And now here we go again with another nagging injury possibly causing another lost season just when, we're told, he was getting it all back together.

In conclusion please don't think I hate Vin. I don't wish injuries on my worst enemies ... well maybe some of them like Osama bin Laden. I just think it's ironic that some people want to compare Vin with the ironmen of the league who play through pain & adversity without uttering a word. Then there's Vin -- the Brock Huard of basketball. I cried less when I had my collarbone broken in second grade than he does every time a foul is called on him. Just as there are incentives in contracts, I can't for the life of me figure out why guys don't get docked at least SOMETHING for not playing -- especially when they show a pattern of recurrent injuries. I know Vin's not sitting on the bench whispering "I'm Batman" to Antonio Harvey, but for all the good he & his large salary will probably do us the rest of the season, maybe we'd be better off if he was. We did pretty well without him against Detroit, didn't we?

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