Buyer Beware: Iverson Still Doesn’t Get It
The word on free agent Allen Iverson has long been out. He’s a star in the most negative sense of the term, he’s selfish and fails to make his teammates better. For every 22 shots he takes, throughout his career, he makes only nine of them … and he will take that many shots. This is not news. This was Iverson on the Sixers, just as it was on the Nuggets and the Pistons.
But Iverson is without a team right now, despite the Knicks, Bobcats, Heat and Grizzlies all sniffing around the 10-time all-star. At first blush it seems inconceivable that a player just 15 months away from being crowned the league’s third leading scorer is so unwanted. Even for those who remember Iverson’s protestations last season about coming off the bench, surely that was a situational problem, yes? That would end in Detroit, especially if the Grizz or the Cats had a place for him in the starting lineup, right? He finished his season seven games early last season, certainly it’s been long enough for the Answer to find a few answers of his own. Certainly he’s come to the realization that the 2009 Iverson cannot be the 2000 Iverson. Hasn’t he looked at the same stats we’ve looked at?
Click pic to embiggen
Surely now, in the calm of the off-season, he sees that his field-goal average was lower than both Rip Hamilton and Rodney Stuckey. Or that his free throw percentage was lower or that even with an additional four minutes on the floor each game, he couldn’t out-rebound, out-block or out-assist Stuckey. He could, however turn the ball over more. Surely he sees all this now, in hindsight?
He doesn’t.
And in trying to convince the public, the media, the Memphis brass or whoever he expects to reach with his Twitter feed, Iverson has inadvertently proven that he’s as selfish as he’s always been … but still older than he once was.
Iverson has been tweeting lately about his rededication to keeping in shape and “playing every game as if it were your last.” The problem is, Iverson’s reputation has always been that he’s one of the most competitive workhorses in the history of the game. His claiming not to have lost that fire is of little consequence to whoever he hopes is out there listening to him. In fact, it’s almost a deficit considering that by the end of last season his other reputation was that he was a competitive workhorse … but only when his heart was in it and he was cast in the role he wanted to play.
He played for a team on the decline in Detroit and was asked at times to play a secondary role. All of this while seemingly unwilling to admit that his skills, like the Pistons, were also on the decline.
Iverson must change the record in this part of his career. His regurgitation of the work ethos of the 2000-era A.I. isn’t a good sign because the 2000-era A.I. isn’t around anymore. Even if he was, what good has he been?
On Thursday, Iverson tweeted that his plan with the Grizzlies – should they choose to accept him – is to lead by example. The knock on Iverson is that he’s always played the leader whether or not anyone was following. With the Sixers, he led … and never won. With the Nuggets, he led … and never won. Then when he left, Denver made it to the Conference Finals. Iverson led in Detroit and the team went from 59-23 in 2007-08 to a 39-43 team with 54 games-worth of Iverson a year later.
Iverson’s example doesn’t effectively lead his team to wins.
And if he wants to lead by example (i.e. I’ll do my thing, you watch and learn) on this young (and awful) Memphis Grizzlies team, how long before we see that quitter who sat out the final seven Pistons games and Round 1 of the Eastern Conference Playoffs?
If Allen Iverson doesn’t plan to change course, why expect his teams to do so?
Leave a Reply
