Shawn Bradley did not have much to get pumped up abour during his career, but that wasn't entirely his fault. Layne Murdoch/Getty Images

So it's almost over for Shawn Bradley. After 12 NBA seasons, Bradley and the Dallas Mavericks are negotiating a buyout of the remaining three years of his contract. You may have missed the news; it came during the lead-up to Game 7 of the NBA finals. Judging by the timing, the 7-foot-6 Bradley may have wanted to slink away unnoticed.

I have always rooted for Bradley. He was taken second overall in the 1993 draft by my hometown team, the 76ers. I was among many with high expectations. The NBA had seen centers as big as Bradley before -- Mark Eaton, Manute Bol, Chuck Nevitt -- but Bradley was touted as the first supersize center with basketball skills. Back in the day, some thought Bradley would dominate so effortlessly it wouldn't be fair to the other teams. People wondered: "How can we lose with this guy?"

Many ways, it turned out.

But even after it was clear Bradley's skinny shoulders couldn't carry the weight of expectations -- and it took me a long time to come around -- I still pulled for him. In part because Bradley was something of a patron saint of uncoordinated tall guys, of which I am one.

But more than that, was this:

I thought the 76ers messed with him. I didn't think Bradley ever had a fair shot.

Bradley came to the NBA directly off a two-year Mormon mission during which he didn't play any organized basketball. And that first year, it showed.

But the Sixers were not content to let him find his way. They brought in teachers and created programs. Before his rookie season they had him eating 7,000 calories a day, a process Bradley back then characterized as "force-feeding." In mid-season the Sixers brought in 38-year-old Moses Malone to be Bradley's backup/mentor. Then in the offseason they hired Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to spend 10 days coaching him on post play. Then they brought in a former Mr. Olympia, Lee Haney, to help him bulk up, and had Bradley work with nutrition experts. The team was supposed to be helping him, though you couldn't help but feel like Bradley was being punished for not being what the Sixers wanted. The special attention certainly didn't help his confidence on the court. You can't coach height, but you can overcoach it.

If Philadelphia had handed him an extra-long jersey and a basketball and left him to fend for himself, he would have been better off. How much worse could it have been?

Bradley tantalized fans for years. He could run the break, dribble through his legs and hit an open jumper. Just not all in the same quarter. Fans interpreted each put-back basket, each baseline drive, as a sign of hope. But as Hall of Fame coach Chuck Daly once observed about Bradley, "you can only talk about a person's potential for so long. After a certain point, you have to recognize that he is all he is ever going to be."

In Bradley's third season the Sixers traded him to the Nets. The next year the Nets traded him to Dallas, which would turn out to be his final benching place.

Bradley's unhappy tenure with the Sixers had one perfect irony. Bradley did not turn the franchise around, but the player who did was his perfect opposite. And it's not just that Allen Iverson is 18 inches shorter than Bradley. The difference in attitude was as great as the disparity in height. It's hard to imagine anyone force-feeding Iverson anything.

Should Marvin Williams Worry?

Bradley isn't the only No. 2 pick to not live up to expectations. If you look at the last 25 years of NBA Draft history, you see some unhappy stories coming out of the No. 2 spot. There's tragedy (the late Len Bias, '86), horrid injury (Jay Williams, '02), the worst pick ever (Sam Bowie, taken ahead of Michael Jordan in '84), and a couple of "next Larry Birds" whose resemblance ended with their skin color (Danny Ferry in '89, Keith Van Horn in '97). There's temptation to add Darko Milicic to the list. But he's only 20 years old, which is too soon to write off anybody.