Sports Illustrated took a deep dive into VH1 territory with a “Where are They Now” feature yesterday. One of the subjects was former Sixers owner, professional yeller, and pirate aficionado Pat Croce. There’s not much we don’t know about Croce from over the years, but SI did unveil one of his master plans that never came to fruition:

Many fans remember him climbing Philadelphia’s Walt Whitman Bridge to hang a banner before the 2001 Finals. But few know he’d planned an encore: Had his team won a second game against Shaq, Kobe and the Lakers to force Game 6 in Los Angeles, Croce says he would have rappelled from a helicopter to drape a 76ers banner over the H in the HOLLYWOOD sign. He’d already reserved the chopper.

“There was no permission!” he says. “They could have arrested me. Philly would have loved that.”

I blame Billy King. This is just another thing his failures as a GM stole from us. We could have had Pat Croce, the OWNER of the Sixers, jailed for hanging a Sixers banner on the HOLLYWOOD sign. If that’s not the greatest sports story of all time I don’t know what is. The Sixers pull out two against LA, the owner of the team gets arrested, and he gives LA the original Crying Jordan in the form of a “Go Sixers!” banner. Even if the series ends 4-2, the city of Philadelphia wins.

Instead, King surrounded Iverson with a smattering of bloated corpses which he dragged to the NBA Finals and somehow, even then, won a game. Sure we’re talking about a Lakers team that lost zero games in that whole post-season other than game one of the finals, but if King cobbled together players better than Rodney Buford, Jumaine Jones, Matt Geiger, and Kevin Ollie to surround one of the all-time greats, we could be reminiscing about the time Pat Croce was arrested for criminal trespass in LA instead of wondering what could have been. Goddamn Billy King. Goddamn Pat Croce’s clean criminal record. And goddamn Matt Geiger.