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

Thts true. Also with all the focus on 2000-2001 season, Ray interestingly had the highest offensive win share that year both in the regular season and playoffs (I believe highest in the whole league).

I don't think the "he took his team to the Finals" concept has much merit. For one building a team is more than just putting together superstars... Otherwise Lebron and co would be celebrating 3 in a row this offseason. For two as has been noted the East was horrible. AI took down Allen's Bucks in 7 games. Allen's Bucks were probably overrated. They had a lot of names... But offe dive names that similarly weren't that efficient (Ray aside) a d absolutely no defense. The 76ers relied on their defense which was great (not their offense). Neither team was exactly impressive by today's standards... And they met in a conference finals. I don't think Allen takes that 76ers team to the Finals... But it's probably a push, if you switched them. Moreover, If we're talking about winners, Ray goes down as a bigger winner than Allen. Not just because he has rings, but because he was pretty damn important to getting them. He's been to the 2nd round or deeper with 4 teams. Key cog of multiple championship teams, etc. and had the Bucks in the ECF... The bucks!

 

I've stayed out of this thread, because to me...AI arguments are more about your own personal tastes for the game than about the player.

Incredible amount of AI bashing here...

Let me say a couple of things...

41.1 MPGs

Can anyone tell me AI *career* average MPG.

It's an astronomical 41.1. FOR HIS CAREER
In 71 playoff games, his MPG is 45.1
In his Finals run in 2001, it was 46.2 in 22 games (that was Larry Brown as the coach)

So, you're going to now say, "what heypartner, so you're saying he's a warrior who can play at super speed forever."

No, that's not what I'm going to say.

I'm saying all his coaches who he ever played for always wanted him on the court at all times.

No one plays that many minutes unless coaches want you to
46.2 MPGs under Larry Brown?

There is a reason all his coaches left him on the court, and it's not because he's a whiner about playing time. Whiner's about playing time are willing to sit for 10 minutes.

AI is a 6' nothing true warrior. Who could outplay anybody on the court, such that his coaches wanted him on the court for 41.1 MPG for his entire career.

Quit saying MJ had less FGAs than AI
On a 36 MPG average, MJ and AI are the same. AI is a little less.

In the famous "practice" interview...I took that as this little diminutive guard with no fear needs to recover between games. The dude is beat up. His level of leaving it on the court is top 5 of all time. Larry Brown was playing media games with him, yet Larry still played him 42 MPG. And besides, there really aren't that many NBA practices during the season to make your comment "he doesn't know how much he can help the team improve via practice" carry much weight.

bottomline
Rarely, but sometimes, MPG is the best indicator of effectiveness, because the coaches are in control of minutes, and guys like Larry Brown know more about their player's effectiveness than stats do. If you don't agree with that, then say none of AIs coaches knew what they were doing better than you. Say IT!

41.1 MPG for his entire career. No coach ever benched him. So apparently, all AIs coaches disagree with people saying he wasn't effective; otherwise, they would have limited his minutes to MJ level.

 

This is pretty interesting, heypartner...

...and like you, I've tried to stay out of this for pretty much the same reasons as you have.

I liked Allen Iverson as a player. That is to say, I liked his demeanor and his approach to playing.

But I think the crux of the argument here has to do with precisely what you state about the respect for Iverson's approach to playing the game that, ultimately, forced his coaches into pretty difficult decisions in regards to building winning teams.

First, I would suppose that the best place to try to instill some game-related discipline would be in college (where the mind and body are probably most receptive to those changes), except for the fact that the NCAA is little more than a staging area for NBA prospects nowadays. If not for the "student-athlete" misnomer, the NBDL would be a better farm league than what the NCAA is currently.

I know that John Thompson of Georgetown U, and Larry Brown, both loved Allen Iverson personally and professionally. That love for him personally, and admiration for his competitive defiance and ferocity and relentlessness, did on more than one occasion have them sidestep some disciplinary measures in regards to Iverson's development as a player, in my opinion.

"Effectiveness", as you put it, heypartner, can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. As are so many things in life, the complexity of a situation does not often lend itself to a singular solution.

But in Iverson's case, I always believed that because so many people adored his personally from a competitive standpoint, there was often a resistance to introducing to him the need to conform a bit to what it ultimately takes to field consistently good basketball teams.

Iverson was willing and (some would say marginally) able to carry a professional basketball team all by his lonesome. If that was simply selfishness or competitiveness, it's not totally clear...because practically everyone who did play with Iverson have tremendous respect for him. But the force of Iverson's personally did damage team building because that personality was all too often given license...in this case by Larry Brown.

For all the P.R. gamesmanship you mentioned by Larry Brown in regards to Iverson, he still regarded Iverson as a kindred spirit, of sorts. I won't say that he gave Iverson license in Philadelphia (many other people in the organization and the community did that), but as often as he clashed with Iverson over dogma, there were still both bound to the same religion.

And as I say about pro coaches all the time: any coach worth his salt is trying to win. And sometimes, winning any way you can means more than winning "..the right way..." as Brown would say.

Would benching Iverson, for instance, have helped Brown instill just a LITTLE more discipline in Iverson's approach? Doubtful. Iverson, physically, was freakish...especially when you consider how often he absorbed massive amounts of contact and continued to play. There are some things you can't teach or coach. Toughness and tenacity are two of those things.

Iverson was the living embodiment of those ideas. But those ideas alone, while certainly endearing and captivating for some fans and commentators, are not enough to win consistently. It's a lot like what love can do to a person in overlooking faults becasue of your infatuation.

At some point you have to establish a balance between what you want and what you have. I don't believe Iverson ever understood the need for that balance himself...understanding his background (and coming from similar straits myself), I understand the mentality of charging hard in one direction until you drop or "they" drop you, bacause whatever's in front of you is a whole lot better that what you may have now. Desperation breeds a single-mindedness like few other instances can.

But I always feel that love and admiration is a two-way street. I believe Brown loved Iverson. And he may always love him. That's why I felt he should have done more to reach him professionally. Despite what people tend to think, Iverson responded favorably (if a bit slowly) to Brown's direction whenever Brown tended to push. That would have one out over time, I think.

But the clock is always ticking in pro sports. There are no guarantees, and even less time to make any guarantees.

It's hard for me to think of Allen Iverson as a great player, heypartner, partially because I tend to be a basketball purist, and the iso-ball Iverson played offensively didn't particulary appeal to me, whatever the reasoning for it. But I suspect that that's what Iverson was.

There IS more than one way to be great. What we have to do is determine if being great includes winning anymore...

...and Iverson's Sixers did win...

 

Iverson's raw talent was absolutely undeniable. Not only that, but he's in the Charles Barkley class of requiring mad respect for doing what they did given their size disadvantages. He was also one of the toughest players that I've ever seen.

That said, I view Carmelo Anthony and the 2013 Knicks as the closest thing we've seen since to the AI Sixers team that made the Finals. You have primarily a defensive team led by a one-on-one scorer that gets accused of being a black hole/chucker also despite their tremendous talent.

 

mdrowe00,

Good read. Consider also that "effectiveness" (as far as coaches are concerned) can be tied to how your teammates respond to you on the court. Are you a leader? AI was. Maybe not by the time he got to Denver, but certainly in Philly.

In football analogies, sometime is really doesn't matter what kind of offense or defense you run, it is how determined and fockass'd the entire team is on one mutual goal and game plan.

In basketball, this is vividly demonstrated every year in the way teams rise their game during the playoffs. The difference isn't a change in Xs and Os; the difference is shear focus and effort.

If a born leader like AI can get his teammates to focus and leave it all on the court like he does, then that's a intangible that leads coaches to leave that player on the court for 41.1 MPG his entire career. An undeniable leader on the court makes it easier for coaches to demand things from the other role players...like FOCKASS and NO LAYUPS!

AI's effort on the court was a huge team intangible.

 

Well, the Knicks are one of the top offensive teams with below average defense.

But I agree that it's comparable in talent level, and both have that high volume decently efficient scorer. If someone combined 76ers defense with the Knicks shooting ability, it would be a great supporting cast for a player like that.

That said, the 76ers did make the Finals. They overachieved, and they played through broken fingers and fractured feet to get there. And that will always separate them from many similarly talented teams.

 

Touche, sir.

That was precisely what happend with the Sixers in 2000-2001. Iverson led and the team followed. Larry Brown knew exactly what kind of team he had and more importantly, what kind of team around Iverson it would take, for the Sixers to win.

Which is why, again, I personally feel that if Brown could have gotten Iverson to accept diversity in the offense, he, Iverson and the Sixers might have enjoyed more consistent success.

In a way, the way Iverson played worked against the team growing BEYOND what they were, or what kind of leader or how effective a leader a player like Iverson could be going forward.

I think without some proper chastising (which couldn't be proven would be effective, given Iverson's overall personality), what you saw happen iwth the Sixers...and Iverson's and Brown's relationship...became so strained.

Perhaps Brown gambled that, in allowing Iverson to set the tone attitudinally for the team (and with the positive results it brought), it perhaps would serve as a litmus to coerce Iverson into other things that would help the Sixers continue to progress.

Great leaders consider their teammates' well-being as well as the outcome of the contest, heypartner. I think if Iverson could have understood that, it could have made the tasks of improving the team around him easier, which in turn would have alleviated some of the "chucker" mentality Iverson had adopted as his response to the challenge of winning.

If you have Iverson on the floor for so many minutes, you're right: the message is that the team isn't going to go away quietly, and is going to fight you tooth-and-nail to whatever end. That I don't have any problem with.

But there's more than one way to skin that cat, heypartner. I don't think there's ever been a question of Iverson's ability to lead, and to win, especially in Philadelphia. It's whether he understood how much of a TEAM effort it was outside of him to do that that he couldn't seem to grasp. And that, I think, is what has people measure Iverson's career (and Iverson himself) so critically.

I get that you think of Iverson as an all-time great player. I do, too, grudgingly..again, only because I don't think that Iverson's mentality did as much as it SHOULD have (even with the team he lead to the NBA Finals) to make the game easier for his teammates and himself.

I understand Iverson's hard-headedness completely, heypartner. Got a lot of that myself.

But I learned that, sooner or later, no matter how hard or how often you beat your head against a brick wall...
...and no matter how heroic or tough you look doing it...

...sooner or later the wall wins that fight.

Guess that's why it may not be such a bad idea to go around it once in awhile