Iverson was punked by the Denver Nuggets, treated as a marketing asset and not as a weapon to try to win a Championship with. Detroit was even worse: the Pistons not only punked Iverson, but they punked all their players and all their fans for that matter. The Pistons totally threw away their 2008-09 season as they hunkered down awaiting the summer of 2010 free agency gold mine.
You never, ever throw away a season if you ever want to win a Ring, but Detroit did just that. Iverson quit Detroit late in that season, but even players who were still playing had partially quit. For example, Rasheed Wallace was only about 3/4 the player for Detroit in 2008-09 that he is now for 2010 Ring front-runner Boston. Wallace, Tayshaun Prince, Aaron Afflalo, and even Richard Hamilton didn’t go all out because General Manager Joe Dumars stupidly announced long before that season started that Detroit was in rebuilding mode, that all current Pistons might stay or go in the summer of 2010 depending on who knows what, and that the bulk of the rebuilding would take place in the summer of 2010. The coach, Michael Curry, was a rookie who never quit rearranging his lineups and rotations the whole season long; Curry literally was unable to decide which lineup and which rotations were the best. Is there really all that much to play for after that kind of announcement from the General Manager and with that kind of inept Coach (who of course was fired after the season)?
One can only hope that Dumars’ team fails to become a winning team even in 2010-11, after he picks up a big star or two, which will emphasize the points that you never ever waste a season, that you never ever announce rebuilding way in advance, and that you never ever assume your rebuilding is going to work out. Dumars needs to be taught a lesson that no one will ever forget.
So Iverson quit the Pistons in March 2009, but we know as fact that he was quitting a team that had quit as a whole. So Iverson was entirely logical to quit, which isn’t the first time he has been logical. Iverson is logical all the time, but he is not strategic. He sometimes does things that are logical in a narrow sense, but are counterproductive in an overall sense. Iverson is never going to coach basketball. He thinks well and correctly, but not strategically. He misses the forest for the trees sometimes.
If there ever was a great player who desperately needed quality coaching, Iverson is that one, but he never had a quality coach who really knew what he was doing with respect to him. He was cheated badly in that respect; his coaches all failed to coach him correctly.
Those who see the whole forest can think strategically. Coaches are supposed to think strategically, but some fail at this, either because they don’t think strategically either, or because they just are not any good at picking out the best strategy out of many possibilities. Phil Jackson picks out one of the best strategies to get things done on the basketball court and George Karl sometimes (often?) picks out one of the not so good strategies. Jackson wins Rings and Karl doesn’t. Strategies are very important.
I checked the depth charts on December 7, 2009, the day Iverson was to play for the Philadelphia 76’ers for the first time since exactly three years ago in 2006. ESPN did not have Iverson on the 76’ers depth chart at all yet, but CBS Sportsline showed Iverson as the starting point guard. Not the starting 2-guard, but the starting point guard. The media has through the years time and again showed Iverson as a point guard, but coaches making errors (by themselves or on orders from owners or general managers) have persisted from time to time in removing his point guard designation, foisting him onto the shooting guard position, and thus making a mess of both Iverson’s game and a bigger mess of the team offense.
Iverson has been repeatedly cheated and badly coached by a series of mistaken coaches, who, remember, are total dictators. A player can not refuse to play a position for any reason; Iverson is not at fault for refusing to play 2-guard; all players have to and always do play whatever position they are assigned to by the dictator coaches. Whether Iverson would have insisted on continuing at point guard had he had the power to do so is an interesting question that we will never know the answer to.
THE SPECIAL REPORT
This article is just an outline of the full treatment of this subject, which is found in a partly completed Quest Special Report: “Allen Iverson, What Could Have Been”. We are re-editing the existing chapters in that Report and will be adding many more chapters. We are going to make a complete record on how Iverson’s career and how was cheated out of a real chance to win a Championship Ring. And we are going to in great detail explain just how idiotic the Iverson haters are. Because there is so much other work going on, this is going to take a year or two, three years at the most, but I guarantee you this project will eventually be completed.
HOME IS BY FAR THE BEST PLACE TO BE
So Iverson was cheered greatly in Philly on December 7, 2009 like he was for years and years before. He was starting point guard for the 76’ers just like he was at the start of his rookie year in 1996. Before Larry Brown came along and fouled things up after he decided to fight Allen Iverson rather than meet him half way.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Iverson was jerked from 1-guard to 2-guard, which eventually led to his being jerked from Philadelphia to Denver and then from Denver to Detroit. Now he is back where it all began, and where it was always supposed to be.
There was never any position and place for Iverson that could work other than point guard in Philadelphia. Iverson could have been a point guard in Denver, but Denver did not have the quality coaching to bring that about. So Iverson was and is like a rare and extremely valuable rock in the earth that is only found in one place. Any other position or place was doomed to failure.
But Iverson as point guard in Philadelphia was gold and was priceless. Had Larry Brown not wimped out and lashed out during his temper tantrums over Iverson and made the idiotic decision to move Iverson to 2-guard, the 76’ers most likely would have won at least one Ring with Iverson at point guard in Philadelphia. When Brown moved Iverson to 2-guard, it was like a Russian czar banishing someone to Siberia.
Iverson at 1-guard was how it was supposed to be according to what basketball actually, really is: a combination of a team game and an individual game. You need both a quality team game and players who can score one on one regardless of the defending. Iverson always knew this, Larry Brown not so much, and George Karl definitely not.
While playing both guard positions at once in the 2001 playoffs, Iverson took the 76’ers to the Championship and lost to Shaquille O’Neal, Kobe Bryant, point guard Derek Fisher, and Coach Phil Jackson. That the 76’ers were even in that Championship was a miracle due to Iverson and Iverson alone. Just a few years earlier, the year before Iverson was first draft pick for them, the 76’ers were the worst team in basketball, a team that could not even win 20 games. This was a team even worse than recent Memphis Grizzlies teams. Iverson moved that pathetic 76'ers team up zillions of miles; he’ll get Hall of Fame just for that unheard of achievement alone.
Basketball was stale and kind of boring before in 2001 Iverson had the 76’ers in the Championship. The guy who lost the election was nevertheless the President, the economic boom of the Clinton years had come to a close, and in general society was teetering on the brink of disaster. In that year, most people were deciding to not believe in things anymore: to tune out and to chill out. But there was Iverson playing basketball the way anyone with historic one on one skills should play it, wrong position and all, a short 5 feet 11 ½ inches and all, bad team and all. Iverson was in effect playing with one hand behind his back, or else he was like two players in one, I’m not quite sure which is the better way to look at it.
But he was still the best and he was still taking the 76’ers to the brink of the most improbable, no, the most impossible ring you could ever imagine. It was impossible that the 76’ers, just a few years removed from 18-64 the year before Iverson arrived could even be in the Championship, let alone win it. Yet there they were, and there was Iverson; who other than the haters will ever forget it?
Iverson saved basketball from being stale, he turned on millions of fans, he developed a world-wide following which exists to this day, and he made a lot of money for a lot of people. Allen Iverson was basketball, still is basketball, and he will be basketball forever.
Now MVP, (future) Hall of Fame, and career 76’er point guard Iverson has come home. The haters are irrelevant again; they are just a bunch of jerks who don’t deserve the time of day. Meanwhile, Larry Brown is irrelevant now too; he currently is in charge of the worst offense in the League (Charlotte Bobcats) because for one thing he doesn’t fully appreciate what point guards can do.
All is right with basketball again now that Allen Iverson is back home.
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