Iverson was overrated. His team mateswwere underrated.

Did Vernon Maxwell get a ring?

 

LOL. What a horrible argument. Go look at Kobe's fg%. And Nash's first year in Phoenix was in 2005. In 2004, Marion shot 44% from the field. In 2005, had a fg% of 47.6%. So you're saying that 44% is "abysmal", but 46.7% is "shining"?

Basically, you tried to compare the offensive ineptitude of Iverson's supporting cast with Nash's, and that was a stupid comparison. Sure, Marion/Stoudemire were less efficient without Nash, but they were still significantly better than anyone on Iverson's final's team.

Absolutely wrong. You could give the ball to Stoudemire about ~17 feet from the basket, and he would either shoot a face-up jumper (at a good percentage), or attack the basket.

Your arguments are getting increasingly ridiculous. You think that by swapping Nash and Iverson, Philly might've won the finals in 2001 against the Shaq/Kobe Lakers?

You've essentially just declared that Nash is the indisputable #1 GOAT.

Another difference is that Iverson was surrounded by offensively challenged teammates, and Nash wasn't.

Stoudemire averaged 20 ppg in the year before he played Nash. He averaged 26 ppg in the year after he left Nash. He was definitely a more efficient player with Nash, but it's ridiculous to say that he was offensively challenged without him. Similarly, in the 4 years preceding Nash's arrival, Marion averaged around 19 ppg. Regardless of efficiency, that's clearly not an offensively challenged player.

Lebron is a transcendent player who is in the middle of his career and already in the top 10 GOAT list. If you have to resort to using him to prove a point, then you should consider the fact that maybe your point isn't very strong.

That doesn't make them offensively challenged players.

Ray Allen and Reggie Miller both relied heavily on moving without the ball. Are you saying that you consider them both to be "offensively challenged"?

That was in 2009. What do you expect? Iverson was 33 years old at that time. In fact, 2010 would end up being the last season of his career.

 

If I can't get ratings, I can't get ratings man. If I'm hurt, I'm hurt. I mean … simple as that. It ain't about that... I mean it's... It's not about that... At all. You know what I'm saying I mean... But it's...it's easy … to, to talk about ratings... It's easy to sum it up when you're just talking about somebody's ratings. We're sitting in here, and I'm supposed to be the franchise player, and we in here talking about ratings. I mean, listen, we're talking about ratings, not a game, not a game, not a game, we talking aboutratings. Not a game. Not, not … Not the game that I go out there and die for and play every game like it's my last. Not the game, but we're talking about ratings, man. I mean, how silly is that?

 

What does Kobe have to do with this, not only is he a shooting guard he also has a rep for being a blackhole and ballhog so what's your point in bring him to the discussion? Secondly with Nash's arrival Marion took more open 3's then before, this lowered his FG% but actually made his game more efficient. Using normal FG% shows how much you actually know about B-ball, it's as antiquated as your 1998 ppg argument. FG% doesn't take into account the effect of freethrows and 3 pointers in a game, when you take a 3 pointer you can have a lower or equal % than someone who takes mid-range shots, but at the end of the day you will score more points on the same number of attempts because every shot you make counts as 1.5 of his, and TS% takes that into account.

In 2003-2004 season, Marion recorded a TS% of 0.513, when Nash arrived Marion sported a TS% of 0.556, and his TS% hovered at above that rate until he left PHX and went to Miami. Rather talking crap why don't you educate yourself, here's link check it out in 2007-2008 Marion's TS% went from one of the best in 0.594 to a fairly mediocre 0.503 on the same year.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/m/mariosh01.html

Of course he can do that, the question is can he do it easily and at a high percentage? You keep saying give the ball but Amare doesn't create by himself, when Nash gives him the ball he is open and able to do his moves, Amare has no post moves so he has no way to "attack the basket" if there's a guy waiting for him underneath. Again, this can be validated just by looking at Amare's stats, he went from ok 0.536% to a ridiculous 0.637% when Nash came in, and barring his injury filled year he stayed at near the same level as when he left PHX where he went from godly 0.657 to just good 0.565.

This is the classic case of strawman argument, you can't beat me with facts so make some **** up to take the focus out of the conversation. What does Nash and Philly beating Shaq/Kobe have to do with Nash being the GOAT? Is jordan on that team? Is Lebron on that team? Is Hakeem on that team? Bird? Magic? No? Not only that I didn't say Nash would beat the Lakers, I said they MIGHT, you can't really prove or disprove that either way considering the PHX Suns reached the WCF on their own as well and should've won if they didn't get a bogus call.

Well isn't this your problem? How the hell can you look at ppg without taking efficiency into account? This is one of the stupidest arguments I've ever read, you do realize anybody can score 20 ppg if he takes 200 attempts per game? Even someone like me who doesn't belong in the NBA can score 10 points a game if I get at least 50 attempts per game. If I got 100 attempts in a game and scored 20 ppg then I'd also be an amazing offensive player in your eyes? Hey I have 20 ppg, dynamic NBA level scorer right here

Not only that basketball isn't just about putting the ball in the hole, it's also about defense, and while Eric Snow and Mutombo won't win scoring awards they happen to be top defenders at their position.

I'm not resorting to him, I just spent several paragraphs talking about Nash and a true pg's effect on his squad vs a guy who is actually an undersized SG. The point is true playmakers make others better, Iverson did nothing of the sort and the excuse that he had to be a ballhog because of the roster is just BS, as guys like Lebron and Nash proved you can dominate the ball and control the offense while letting other people score points.

You keep bringing up ppg this and ppg that, but take a look at Philly's shot distribution in 2001, Iverson took a whopping 25.5 attempts per game, almost the combined shot attempts of Mutombo, Eric Snow and Theo Ratliffe. If Mutombo only takes 8 shots a game how much ppg do you actually expect from him, 30 points per game? In fact looking at the shot distribution it is actually pretty damning, you have a lot of players averaging over 10 pts despite having less than half of the shot attempts Iverson has.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/PHI/2001.html

What's really damning though is if you look at Philly's offense and defense compared to opponents, Philly's offensive output is only top 15 in the league, and this is supposed to be all Iverson right. how come an amazing scorer who singlehandedly willed his team to finals can only make his team top 15? Is top 15 on offense good enought to reach the NBA finals?

On the other hand Philly had a top 5 defense, isn't this supposed to be the work of Mutombo, Larry Brown and the rest of the crew? Which do you think had a bigger effect on Philly reaching the finals, their offense which was top 15 or their defense which was top 5? And yet somehow Iverson dragged a bunch of scrubs to the finals, ok bro whatever you say

So what? Billups was 32 at the time is one year that big of an age difference to you? Detroit went from 50+ games the previous year to a dismal 39 games, while Denver actually improved 4 games despite already being a powerhouse.

It's good you brought up 2010 as Iverson's last season, because to be honest Iverson still wanted to play it's just that he was considered to be washed up and too horrible to belong on the NBA anymore. The difference is despite being old Billups has a deadly 3 pt shot, he can make plays for others and he's a solid defender. On the other hand, Iverson is undersized at barely 6'0 so he's not a good defender, he's too short to do post moves, he didn't practice so he has a broken J (we're talking about practice!!!), and he was too busy being gangster, getting cornrows and collecting tattoos to study tape so he never learned how to properly run an NBA offense.

I have a healthy does of respect for Iverson, it's pretty clear he might be one of the best 6'0 guys to ever play in the league and he was definitely someone with the charisma and excitement to put butts in the seats no matter what the record was. However I'm not blind to his faults and limitations, and just because I saw him launch off balance daggers or cross up some dudes so badly they almost peed themselves I'm not blind to the fact that he played out of position and didn't really set up his team properly, and once his quickness deserted him he got exposed for having very little NBA level skills apart from his natural talent.

 

Name another player under 6'0" in the modern era who has had the impact on the game that he had....


How the hell is he overrated?

 

Calvin Murphy

 

He disproves your logic that if a wing player (SG and SF have been interchangeable for years) shoots 45% from the field, he must suck at scoring by himself.

Looking at both ppg and a player's role in an offense is more than enough to determine whether or not that player is offensively challenged. And in case you forgot, whether or not a player is offensively challenged is the crux of the argument . You think guys like Theo Ratliff, Mutombo, and Aaron McKie were offensively challenged, and they were. But then you said that Amare Stoudemire and Shawn Marion were offensively challenged, and they most certainly were not.

I may not know everything about basketball, but I know that a player who averages ~20 ppg for a season can't be considered "offensively challenged". You can rant about efficiency all you want. It's an irrelevant strawman argument.

You're moving the goalposts of your argument.

You don't need post moves to attack the basket. Amare had a good jumper so when he faced up from 15-17 ft from the basket, he forced his defender to defend either the shot or the drive. And Amare was fast enough that if the defender contested the shot, Amare would drive around him.

Obviously, Nash made Amare a much more productive player, but even without Nash, there's no way you can consider Stoudemire to be "offensively challenged".

Do you not realize how good that Lakers team was? They went 16-1 in the playoffs. And similarly, do you not realize how bad that Philly team was? They didn't have any finishers anywhere near Marion/Stoudemire's level. Look at the stats from that Philly roster. Was there anyone who could consistently hit a 3 pointer?

So when you say that a Nash-led Philly team might've beaten the 2001 Shaq/Kobe Lakers, you're saying that he's the undisputed GOAT. That's the only way Philly would have a chance of beating the Lakers.

It depends on your objective. If you're trying to determine whether or not a player is offensively challenged, you only need to look at his ppg and his role on the team.

Tell you what...find me a player who averages 20 ppg on 200 FGA and I'll concede the point.

You are resorting to Lebron b/c of the 3 guys you mentioned (Nash/Billups/Lebron), he's the only one who had offensively challenged teammates.

True playmakers make other better? Is that the point now? It's hard to keep track since you keep moving the goalposts of your argument. Here's what I've been arguing about:

Tell you what. Each time you decide to change the parameters of your argument, why don't you some sort of special font so it'll be easier to keep track of. Maybe bold and underline it? Whatever you want....just something to make it stick out. Go nuts.

LOL. Looks like you're unaware that Ratliffe was traded for Mutombo.

But yes, when you're offensively challenged, you don't get many FGA. Shocking, isn't it?

Have we changed arguments now? Are we no longer arguing about whether or not supporting casts were "offensively challenged"?

For Iverson? Yes. He was an undersized guard who relied entirely on quickness and athleticism. He didn't have a game that would age well.

 

Iverson's scoring skills were not over-rated. He was a 6' guard (at most) who dominated and won the scoring title. He revolutionized the game with his hesitation crossover dribble.

It was his approach to the game that was flawed. He played hero ball.

To those who say he didn't have much help, he had Jerry Stackhouse, Larry Hughes, a young Andre Iguodala, and Aaron McKie. Not the greatest supporting cast overall but he did have some talent around him.

Also, what is telling is that the 76ers who were playing terrible, went on a nice run after Iverson was traded for Andre Miller.