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

you are right compared to the west the east was watered down but the numbers dont lie. You cant be a chucker averaging 30 a game. I believe someone made this point earlier that teams are game planning for YOU and you still manage to score 25 to 30 every night that what makes you a superstar. Its also the dynamic of the rooting for the little guy that plays with all his heart.

 

Well, yes, that's ridiculous. Even comparing AI to Haveitall, like I've seen some people do, is ridiculous. Iverson was an all-time great. A terrible players by the standards of the all-time greats thanks to his many, many flaws, but still one.

 

There's a Hollinger response somewhere, where he disagrees with that criticism. I don't know which one of them is right, I never spent the time to study the formula.

Either way, this doesn't seems very relevant, since Iverson had an above league-average scoring efficiency for most of his career, in terms of TS% or points per possession. Your criticism would apply to cases of extreme inefficiency. So it could be relevant for a few of his years, I guess.

Or should we "penalize" above average efficiency too? It's an interesting topic, and I don't know the answer to that question, but right now it all seems based on subjective notions of how efficient a player should be.

I don't like to use PER for a different reason -- it tries to reflect the defensive side of basketball, which seems pointless.

Re the final paragraph, I don't think there's some "appropriate usage" based on the level of awesomeness. If Bird was on a bad team, he'd probably carry a bigger load and would end up taking a few lower quality shots.

Regardless, I think there's clear value in that ability to create a lot of shots, score against double teams, and stay (relatively) efficient.

The 76ers sadly didn't take full advantage of it. Replace George Lynch with Danny Green, Tyrone Hill with Bosh, Eric Snow with George Hill, then we are talking. The way they were built, I think they overachieved to win 50+ games.

 

OK thanks for clearing that up Easy. And I do want to apologize, when I made those posts, I was at work and didn't properly go through the thread. Afterwards I saw your posts, you made some good points about his Denver days. I had already moved abroad by then, so can't really comment on that time, but your posts helped fill-in some gaps.

I did not try to argue from objective statistical measurements because so many of you guys were already doing it quite well, even had I tried, I don't think I would have added anything meaningful in that regard.

I wanted to try and add something new to the discussion, the perspective of a Sixers fan that watched hundreds of AI games growing up. I think we agree that greatness is a very relative term. And based on the back-and-forth of this thread, I am not sure if you can even really quantify greatness with any number of stats. But I do think, "impact on fans" should be considered when talking about "greatness," whatever that may be.

Also AI is my all-time favorite player, but I do not think he was one of the greatest. I posted my "Top 10 players of the 00's List" later in this thread and I put him at 9. Unfortunately a lot of the criticism he got was well warranted. But it is really hard to describe just how much he meant to Philly. There are very few athletes that "fit" a city as well as he "fit" Philly.

On a side note. Who does get into your All-Time Top 10? I think I'd put Kobe somewhere in the 12-15 range myself. I also hate Kobe, even though he's from the area (my cousin even went to high school with him). I've never tried to tackle the all-time top 10 list because I got a thing against rating players I never actually saw play. But you seem to know a thing or two about NBA. So who makes your all-time Top 10?

 

Hollinger would disagree. He created the formula. It ends up being math. Because the formula is math. There is some shot % where shooting more increases your PER. If its 33% as suggested by the criticism, the. Clearly that's a flawed formula.


I like TS%... A lot. And even a lot more for a guy like Harden... But with high volume shooters i still think you have to take it with a little train of salt. Harden literally doesn't take mid range jumpers. It's 3s or 2s/fouls at the basket. AI took a ton of those, too, but he also took a ton of mid range shots. And wasn't always the best at threes either. That's how he has he low fg%, and was a high volume shooter. I think in those cases, despite his TS% creeping up to respectable (still not great), it is counterbalanced a bit by the fact that he just missed a lot of shots from an absolute numbers perspective, which I think has negative effects in a variety of ways.

Even wih Harden, who had a better TS% year than AI ever did, you could tell a clear difference in efficiency when he'd miss an extra 2 shots a game instead of make... Even if he was still getting to the line a ton.

I agree with you in usage. I just think it has to be considered.... Especially if you are going to look at per and how per effectively goes up with usage.

As I've noted, dude is a clear hall of famer.

He's just below a ton of other great players, and to me, is below some of those other HOFers other people might rate him above.

 

I owe you an apology too, for misrepresenting your view. I totally understand adoring the hero of your home town team. There are many kinds of greatness. Impact on fans is one kind, which is more akin to the kind of greatness an artist has than the kind of greatness that wins basketball games. I think the latter is what mostly discussed here. Good for you add another dimension to the discussion.

To be honest, I am never fond of comparing players across eras. It is also very subjective. Each era has a unique culture and the game has evolved. For example, I heard a guy comment how the old basketball players in the 60's bounced the ball in their dribbles. That's because they called much more strictly on carrying. The kind of "sick" crossover done by Iverson and others would not have been allowed back then.

Rules change. Offensive and defensive strategies change. Scouting techniques change. Training methods change. Living conditions change. Medical technologies change. So at the end of the day, the so-called "all time greatest" is pretty much impossible to be justified on objective grounds.

That said, my top 10 would be (in chronological order):
Wilt, Robertson, Kareem, Magic, Bird, Hakeem, Jordan, Shaq, Duncan, LeBron.
Like I said, It's a subjective list.

 

Jayz750's kitchen sink school of harebrained debate:

PER is invalid because David Robinson had a better regular season than Olajuwon in 1995, therefore Iverson was an inefficient chucker

PER is invalid to cite with regard to Iverson's offensive production because it doesn't measure defense and Dennis Rodman had a low score

Since PER wouldn't adequately penalize somebody who hit 3/9 shots in 1 minute, scoring at a pace of 240 points per game, its invalid and therefore Iverson is a low efficiency chucker

 

Obviously, it's a disagreement about how the formula is meant to work. I found that discussion, with Hollinger's reply and a counter reply.
http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/post/_/id/2643/john-hollinger-responds-to-david-berri-and-malcolm-gladwell

Anyway, your argument isn't really mathematical. You aren't arguing what the %s should be. You are appealing to Iverson's image as a chucker. You start off with a subjective idea that Iverson was too inefficient: "As inefficient a shooter as even AI was, if he just shot the ball every possession, his PER would go up."

But a chucker =/= a chucker. In theory, if Iverson shot the ball every possession (with the same TS% / points per possession), his team's offense would be significantly better, aside from a few poor years. So why shouldn't his PER go up?

Lets assume those critics were right. We have another reason not to use PER. However, is it more flawed for Iverson than it is for Ray Allen or Paul Pierce? I don't know.

Well, TS% shows if you use your possessions effectively or not. In the end, it's about putting the ball in the basket. 3s, 2s, free throws. If you miss a few more 2s but make up for it with a lot of free throws, what's so bad about it?

In the end, I think the question is do you help or hurt your team, not do you take inside or outside shots or draw fouls.

 

No point in responding to SF. He's doing his typical act like a child response when he doesn't care to engage in valid argument.

DRobs peak year was a higher PER than Hakeem's peak year. If tke HKeem at his peak over DRob. Not complicated. I'd take Nash over AI, despite what PEr, ppg or other stats say. Not complicated.

Unfortunately SF has to act like my toddler.

His PER shouldn't go up because the crux of the argument is he ISN'T being efficient. If he's shooting, at his percentages, and not making shots (or getting to the line)... That's not efficient. That's he point. It doesn't correlate highly to wins.

Wrt fg% vs ts%, IMO there are a lot of negative consequences of missing fg's. lead to opponent fast breaks. Can hurt team offensive chemistry and morale. Can increase could on your bigs fighting for board, etc, etc. again, I like ts%, but also recognize that a bad fg% combined with a crazy high number of shots means a lot of missed shots, in the absolute sense... Which isn't good.

Moreover AI's ts% is t great. It just isn't as bad as his fg%'s

 

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Please - you're the one arguing based solely on emotion and gut like a child.

Your argument is invalid on its face. You're basically saying that the objective *fact* that Robinson had a better regular season than Olajuwon on offense1995 is enough to invalidate a specific metric.

This is just plain dumb. Worse than a toddler because its more like petulant 6 year old. You obviously know better, but you're forced to bring up extraneous facts to hold on to your e*pride.

The issue is very narrow. PER gives Iverson a better rating than Gary Payton because Payton wasn't any more efficient player. Rather he was a career 17-7 guy, and not a great shooter and didn't get to the line. Of course Iverson was better on offense.

 

Rudy Gay and Monta Ellis have higher TS%'s than Iverson, to put him in the conversation with Harden is sort of insulting, there is nothing respectable about Iverson's TS%, it was terrible.

After Jordan, Hakeem etc left, the league went through that bizarre period of hero ball inefficient volume chucking (didn't help that 40 yo Jordan did it too) and Iverson was the poster boy for it, there was a major dearth of high end talent in that period that may have been partially responsible (99-03 was the ****tiest nba since the ABA days, and until 07 wasn't much better, but the league has been adding 3-4 all star talents for every one that's retired the last few years).

 

SF, Not my fault you can't understand an argument. What your saying isnt what I'm saying. This is your MO on these boards

 

It sounds like a stereotype, not an argument. Except for a few years, Iverson was above league-average efficiency wise, sometimes significantly above average, and he was making his team's offense better, so I don't see why it wouldn't correlate to wins.

This seems shaky. Maybe you are forgetting free throw shooting?

To put it in an example. Lets say there are two guys. Their scoring is similar, their points per possession and TS are similar. Both miss 20 shots a game. Player A makes 20 shots a game and draws no fouls. Player B makes 10 shots but draws a bunch of fouls, and he's a great FT shooter so he scores that way. Where are those extra fast break opportunities? Off missed free throws? Possibly, once or twice a season, I'd love to see these "fast breaks off free throws" numbers, but I suspect that it practically doesn't happen for good defensive teams..

This is all very speculative. Maybe made shots would help team morale. Maybe it would slightly reduce the chance of a fast break, compared to free throws. Or maybe all the fouling will hurt the opponents morale. Maybe foul trouble will change how the opponent defends.

That's so speculative and multifaceted that I don't see how we could claim that a certain way to score is clearly superior.

 

I'm usually sympathetic to guys who I feel are misunderstood, but Iverson was definitely one of the most selfish players. He may have wanted to win, but the guy was all about himself in doing so. He had many incredible games but when his shot wasn't falling he selfishly kept shooting. He was never a leader and when his quickness advantage went away, his game rapidly disintegrated because he was never a great shooter

 

We're not comparing those two hypothetical players. Of course all else being equal someone who gets to the line more (and makes them) is more efficient.

We're comparing AI - who few would argue isn't hall of fame worthy - to other HOFers, and arguing with those who overrate him.

Moreover how is AI above league average from an efficiency perspective. Hard to find TS% averages but what I can find has it around 54%... AI was at this level only twice and more often than not hovered around 50% ts% (sometimes less, sometimes more).

Was AI above league average PER? Sure. And I'm not even saying he is a bad offensive player. He's a HoFer. I agree. And not for his defense... Lol. Great playmaker. Fearless driver and finisher.

But he was indisputably a high volume, low efficiency scorer. Not only do all the stats prove this out... Watching him play proved it out.

 

I am surprised that anyone would be dumb enough to post something like this and have the audacity to say they have seen AI play. If you really had watched AI play, you would never have wondered why people think he is a great player.

 

In my example, all else wasn't equal. You misread.

Whatever we are comparing, you questioned value of TS%. I disagreed with your thinking, and made an example to simply illustrate what i mean and hopefully make it easier to understand (unfortunately, it didn't work).

If you don't want to discuss it, that's fine, but it wasn't off topic.

I was looking at basketball reference season summaries, like here.
http://www.basketball-reference.com/leagues/NBA_2006.html

Go to stats tables, rank by specific stat, and it will show you the average. The easiest thing to get from there is points per possession (Off rating). For example, Iverson off rating is at 111 in 2006. League average was 106.2.

There's no TS% directly in those tables but it's very easily to calculate, the formula is very simple.

For example, 2001, league average TS% and Iverson TS% are both basically .518 (Iverson's higher by like 0.005).
2006, Iverson at .543, league at .535.
2005, league at .529, Iverson at .532.
1998, league at .524, Iverson at .535.
1999 (lockout year), league at .511, Iverson at .508.
2008, league at .540, Iverson at .567.

We can call him low efficiency, that's fine. Compared to a Durant or Bird, he is inefficient. The problems start when you use this subjective notion of "inefficient" to criticize a mathematical formula that's trying to compare players to league average, and not to Durant or Bird.

 

imagine if we had a prime AI instead of our Beard. We would win the championship for sure. AI is very good at defense also and he and Dwight would be an absolute nightmare for teams

 

On paper, he is one of the most overblown players in NBA History. Then you watch him play, and you see this guy 6 foot on a good day just relentlessly attacking defenses to the point where you just think "Wow." in amazement. Sure, he wasn't the most efficient player in the league by any means but to watch that fire he brought, good or bad, was something else.