Why Is Allen Iverson Considered To Be so Great? He was a chucker..

Their career player efficiency ratings are a whole 0.9 points apart. Please find a single person in this thread arguing that he's a better player than Nash based entirely on this differential as dispositive (though in fairness, Nash is impacted becasue he was a late bloomer and his first four years weren't very good, plain and simple).

 

There's really no debate between Iverson and Nash. At his peak, Nash was one of the very few top offensive players of all time, whereas Iverson was never a particularly good offensive player.

 

3-time NBA scoring champion = never a particularly good offensive player.

 

In an all-time sense, no. Besides the anomaly of 2001 when they were average, Philly offenses consistently were absolutely horrible.

 

The issue with PER seems to be that it rewards volume almost regardless of efficiency (which is sort of an oxymoron for something called an efficiency rating), whilst there's some merit to that, especially these days high volume low efficiency isn't seen as something that should be rewarded, which in Iverson's case it is.

 

Well, we actually discussed this exact point a few pages ago in a lot of detail, so I don't want to enter a new identical discussion again. But to sum up, Iverson's efficiency by other measures - TS, off rating - was solid most of the years, above league-average. So, why would it be bad to reward it? PER does reward high efficiency. And it also rewards volume. Which in Iverson's case seems fine.

I think part of the problem is that people look at those numbers in hindsight and see things like .518 TS% in 2001. Which is pretty bad nowadays. But that's above league average in 2001. And he did it on a horrible team with practically no spacing, after they traded Kukoc. Think about it. A penetrating guard on a team with horrible spacing. Anti-Rockets, basically.

Iverson's PER isn't even high. In his best years, he's barely top 10 in the league. In his lesser prime years, he's not even top 20.
I guess some people don't think that Iverson's even top 10 offensive player in the league in his best years. With these people, I don't think there's much point to argue, there won't be much common ground.
But most people will probably agree that top 10 in his best years -- not overrating at all. So then, what's the problem? I think there's a bit of a strawman argument going on sometimes. "But player X has PER lower by 0.008 that year, clearly that's not right, so the stat is bad". Well, all stats are a little "bad", and all stats have outliers, so all stats have to be used with brains.

 

In the all-time sense no? There's only been 14 players in NBA-ABA history with multiple scoring titles.

 

And plenty of those players aren't all-time offensive greats either. Scoring titles don't make you a good offensive player.

 

Most people (both educated and non...)would disagree with you; it's a pretty good proxy, considering that the object of offense is to score points.

Seriously, I can't tell if you're obviously trolling like slow eddie, but you just sound like a complete idiot when you say being an elite scorer in the NBA isn't sufficient to make somebody a "good offensive player".

 

He was below league average for what? 7 of his 11 full years? Granted, he shouldn't have gotten the mvp, but yeah, the 01 numbers and TS in general was a lot to do with the rules, his numbers and %'s a few years later were more akin to a comparison for today's sake, average efficiency, but at least not awful.

 

You know for all the people saying the east was weak back then so the hell what you know what was weaker his teammates ability to score the basketball.

If you take AI off that Philly team they don't make the playoffs I believe.

 

. . . . by being reborn again, zantabak111

 

Iverson is 5'10, multiple seasons 30+ppg, 4x scoring tittle and league mvp.

It takes a certain kind of assembled team and coach who can command respect to build around players of that caliber the way Jackson did Kobe and Shaq.

Iverson didn't have any of that. He was an elite talent lost in the shuffle and he did the best with what he had.

the dude is fierce and fearless on the court, check out the video. and MJ among many things as we know is defensive player of the year.

<iframe width="640" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/jat0X1LJHg4" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

link incase embed doesn't work:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&list=UUUrLr7YtzUqTlTI1Q8hgqnA&v=jat0X1LJHg4

 

Again, in the all-time sense. Obviously, at any given point during his prime, AI was one of the better offensive players in the league. But the scoring title doesn't make you among the best offensive players in the league, which is needed to be considered in an all-time discussion.

E.g. Melo won the scoring title this past year, but Durant, LeBron, CP3 were all clearly better offensive players. Even a declining Kobe and Wade were better, and Harden is arguable as well. Melo was on the level of guys like Tony Parker and Westbrook: very good, but not at the top, and not even in an all-time discussion.

 

No, i don't know the exact number, I'd have to calculate every year, but definitely at least 5-6 years were above league-average by TS%, and more than that by points per possession (off rating).

Anyway, yep, handcheck period was Iverson's less efficient. After that his efficiency went up. Which I guess is also part of why '01 is typically considered the best Iverson year, even if stats may tell otherwise on the surface -- the degree of difficulty was insane. When they started calling every handcheck, and the 76ers added floor spacers like Kyle Korver, scoring became much easier.

 

i have to say the responses in this thread surprise me. someone calls allen iverson a high volume, inefficient player and everyone responds as if that wasn't exactly the book on iverson for most of his career. he shot a lot. and he was below average in efficiency (or at least not up there with where you expect to find elite offensive players, i can't look up the exact numbers at work). that's just what happened.

now did he have to shoot so much? perhaps he did. there certainly was no one else on philly with even decent shot-creating skills. would he have been more efficient with fewer shots? it would certainly seem that each marginal shot you have to get up would come with decreasing efficiency. should he get a lot of credit simply for having the endurance to night in, night out carry that kind of a load, take that many shots, create that many shots for teammates, get that many free throw attempts, and play that many minutes? i think so. and was his efficiency the worst ever? certainly not, especially given that the late 90's and early 2000's were a lower-efficiency era in the nba of recent times.

i think people (like me) who don't think as highly of AI's game as most in thread would argue that even if iverson had to play that way on that particular team, it seems doubtful he would have ever played any other way, even on a good team. he was going to take shots or dribble and dribble and dribble until he could pass for a shot to a teammate (a lot like francis). there didn't seem to be much offensive flow to his game. it was all him. in a sense, that philly team was the best and worst thing to happen to him. it forced him to take a lot of shots, but i think he wanted it/needed it that way and it certainly helped his legacy as shown in this thread. getting to take that many shots and score that many points certainly magnified the positives that his game did have.

but in terms of being overrated, i would think this thread is a good case of that point being made. we've had several people call iverson unguardable. true, he wasn't easy to guard, but when your TS% is below average/mediocre, you aren't unguardable. lebron and durant and their astronomical TS% are unguardable. someone like harden and his TS% is close to unguardable. if nothing else, iverson's poor shooting abilities did the job for the defender as much as anything a defender could do against iverson's speed. he simply wasn't that great at shooting, even when open.

and people keep saying it was amazing what he did at 6'-0". it was, but basketball isn't graded on a curve. the relative amazingness of his accomplishments is higher than the actual amazingness of his accomplishments. having to take a ton of difficult shots because you are shorter and smaller than other players doesn't change the fact that taking difficult shots isn't a great thing to do. hitting a below average percentage of 20 layups is better than hitting an above average number of 20 difficult, contested mid-range jumpers. the jumpers might be more exciting but in terms of effectiveness, you take the layups.

and as JayZ750 has pointed out, it's not like the finals trip was indicative of iverson's whole career. he did some losing in philly as well. quite a bit. and i believe that finals team was pretty easily the best team in the east that year in terms of record, or am i remembering incorrectly? given the east in those years, i would think 56-26 was tops with some margin. that was the eastern conference that francis and mobley went 25-5 against, for a 45-37 overall record rockets team.

the idea that he was unguardable seems disputed by his efficiency and the idea that he was super effective seems disputed by the W/L records of some of his teams (which admittedly weren't legendarily talented).

i agree with this. david robinson put up legitimately great regular season stats. he had 30/11/5 in 1994-95 and i think the spurs were one of the slowest-paced teams in the league. no way to get around that level of production. and the reason most people take hakeem over drob is precisely because of what happened in the 1995 playoffs. hakeem was a legitimate playoff beast throughout his career. robinson i believe was slightly below average in stepping up in the playoffs (amongst the greats). nba legacies are determined in the playoffs and while it might not have been completely indicative of their entire playoff careers, the 1995 WCF was not completely out of line either when it comes to how each played in the playoffs. and that's why hakeem is considered better. he simply played better in the playoffs and played much better in that particular series when he had to play better for his team to win.

i'm somewhat surprised by your stance based on most of your posts in rudy gay threads. the same reasons rudy gay tends to be overrated (high volume without great efficiency) would seem to apply to iverson as well.

i think JayZ is essentially right, though. PER undoubtedly is beneficial to higher volume shooters. i believe the break-even FG% is something like 31 or 32. which means if you break that threshhold, the more shots, the better. i don't think anyone would argue that going 10-30 is better than going 5-15 (assume all 2 pointers), because you used 15 more possessions with terrible efficiency. but all else being equal, the 10-30 guy gets a higher PER. and iverson is certainly at the extreme end of the "high volume" spectrum, so he would certainly benefit most. now admittedly i don't know if this effect is on the order of turning a 20 PER into a 18 or if it turns a 20 PER into a 19.9 PER, but it's certainly something to take into account.

without looking it up, i suspect iverson does not do nearly as well compared to pierce and nash in something like WS/48, which seems to go the opposite direction and overrates efficiency (see reggie miller vs hakeem). i would guess they have him beat in that category. perhaps reality lies somewhere in between. i wouldn't take him over either player and based on the responses in this thread, i would say that makes me consider him overrated.