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The end for Allen Iverson?
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Allen Iverson's heart has always been bigger than the rest of his body
As other Big East alums Ben Gordon and Charlie Villanueva sign monster contracts, former Georgetown guard Allen Iverson has received the cold shoulder. Iverson, drafted #1 overall in 1996, hasn’t gotten an offer from any teams, despite his resume as a high volume scorer.
The former MVP, four-time scoring champ, and nine time all-star finished the worst season of his career, setting a career low in scoring as he struggled to integrate his game into the Detroit Pistons system. The decline in stats, combined with the atrocious (by lofty Pistons standards) .475 winning percentage by Detroit last season has made NBA executives apprehensive as to whether Iverson can help their team win games.
In the way his career developed, Allen Iverson has shown himself to be one of the most tragically flawed players in NBA history. In his prime, Iverson may have been the quickest player the league has ever seen, combining elite athleticism with a fundamentally flawless crossover that is still remarkably effective.
Unfortunately, whoever endowed Iverson with his devastating crossover was also a trickster; cramming Iverson’s elite skills into an extremely tiny frame. “AI” may be the shortest 6’0” person on earth, as he often seems much smaller than his defender, while his listed weight of 165 must have been taken after a dip in the pool and a few trips to a Las Vegas buffet.
The size issue put Iverson’s shooting guard instincts in a bind, as coaches repeatedly forced him to play point guard, despite a complete lack of evidence to suggest his ability to do so. Iverson achieved an assist-turnover ratio of 2-1 only twice in his 13 years as a pro, with both feats coming during the second half of his career.
This trend suggests that Iverson has been brushing against the grain of his skill set for much of his career. He has, however, at least made attempts to modify his playing style for the betterment of the team. AI is a much better midrange shooter than he was earlier in his career, and like Chauncey Billups (the man who he was traded for last season), he has evolved into a more capable point guard than when he entered the league.
But despite a reasonable effort to change his ways, some wild horses can never be broken. Iverson remains a gunslinger. He needs the ball in his hands in order to score, and he gambles heavily for steals on defense. His track record argues heavily that if Allen Iverson is on your team, you have to employ players who exist to serve his style.
In his 2000-2001 MVP season, in which he led the Philadelphia 76ers to the best record in the Eastern Conference, as well as his lone Finals appearance, Iverson played on a custom tailored team of defensive-minded role players who didn’t mind crashing the boards to pick up his missed shots. His backcourt mate, Eric Snow, remains the prototype accompaniment to Iverson. At 6’3” and 200 pounds, Snow was a team-first point guard who was big enough to cover shooting guards, didn’t care about stats, and could manage the Sixers’ second unit whenever AI needed a breather.
While Iverson is no longer capable of being the number one guy on a championship team, he’s certainly capable of leading a championship team’s second unit. Sixth men often operate in a streamlined role, and Iverson’s ability to score in bunches would, in theory, translate to the bench.
But any team that is considering Iverson must either be a contender with an alpha dog player and stable coaching (Lakers, Spurs, Cavaliers) or a rebuilding team that could use Iverson’s scoring and attendance-generating star power. The general league consensus is that Iverson still considers himself good enough to start, and is reluctant to accept a bench role.
So much of what’s left in Iverson’s basketball career depends heavily on AI coming to terms with himself. Reports have surfaced about Iverson’s interest in playing for Memphis, but this would probably be a terrible idea. Memphis is a young team that expects to lose a lot of games this year, and with the Grizzlies’ recent acquisition of power forward Zach Randolph, it appears that Memphis no longer has a need for a volume scorer.
And if Memphis remains the only team interested in taking on Iverson, warts and all, we may be looking at an ugly final chapter for the greatest scorer that Georgetown has ever produced.
For more info: Allen Iverson career stats.
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