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If I were trying to put together a basketball team and I had all of history from which to chose, by the time I got around to picking my small forward, I’d go with Larry Bird. I’d do that, quite simply, because I wanted to win.

Dr. J is my favorite basketball player of all-time, but no small forward-led team ever won more championships than the three that Bird and his Celtics won during the 80s. Sorry Doc.

Similarly, now that Barack Obama has a choice between watching his party become weakened by an almost certain drudging in New York’s 2010 gubernatorial election, his camp chose to try to evoke some presidential gangster by asking current New York governor, current Black man David Paterson to step aside in 2010 and not run.

Obama’s team seems to believe that current state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has a much better chance of winning for the Dems, while they are also concerned that if Paterson were to chose to stay in the race, the Republicans would ratchet up a Rudy Giuliani candidacy that could only possibly mean the worst for all but the most masochistic New Yorkers.

Giuliani is a disaster. How that bozo managed, as New York mayor, to avoid 9/11 counting against his touted “crime statistics” is criminal in itself. But was the president right?

Well, my answer is yes and no. President Obama was certainly out of pocket by injecting himself into local party politics unless it’s to help. Then again, does President Obama consider himself “helping” here? Moreover, it’s not like there’s any love lost between President Obama and Governor Paterson.

When Obama gave a speech on Wall Street last Monday, Paterson wasn’t invited. Paterson also initially endorsed Hillary Clinton for President instead of Obama. And when Obama favored Ms. Clinton’s vacated Senate seat going to Caroline Kennedy, Paterson was like, “Whatever with that, Dude!” and picked Kirsten Gillibrand.

So should President Obama always stand up for a Black man in every circumstance no matter what? Not if he plans to keep on winning.