Sweetwater Red
02-27-2009, 04:11 PM
http://www.nba.com/pistons/news/truebluepistons.html
The Official Pistons.com Blog
True Blue Pistons
Posted Friday, February 27, 2009
One last chance for the AI gamble to click
Allen Iverson doesn’t wear his heart on his sleeve – he has it tattooed on his face. He’s completely guileless. However he feels about coming off of the bench – and it’s about a 99 percent bet he’d rather sit for a root canal – you’ll know it by looking into his eyes.
Michael Curry looked into his eyes Thursday night when he broke the news to him and saw pretty much that.
“He didn’t react any different than Rip did when I talked to him about coming off the bench earlier,” Curry told reporters in Orlando on Friday morning. “Neither guy wants to come off the bench, but this is the hand we’ve been dealt. If Allen is healthy, once he steps on the court I am convinced he will give us 110 percent.”
That would be the best-case scenario all around – for Iverson and for the Pistons.
Here’s where that tight circle of friends Iverson holds so close to him – the friends who’ve been with him since the Philly days, and beyond that even, to Georgetown and to his Hampton, Va., roots – could really do him a service by pulling him aside and helping him see the sense, and the possibilities, inherent in this latest lineup switch by the Pistons.
With their losing streak at eight, having dropped 17 of their last 22, Curry is reinstating Rip Hamilton to the starting lineup. The Pistons were 4-12 with Hamilton coming off of the bench. Iverson now moves to the sixth-man role Hamilton has held.
Iverson would want to start in any circumstance, but especially this season, with his contract about to expire and his desire to land one more significant deal that will take him into retirement.
He’s been blessed a thousand times over financially for his basketball gifts, of course, making scores of times more for a lifetime than he would have had he come along a generation or two earlier.
It’s worth remembering that when the NBA first instituted the salary cap 25 years ago, the cap per team was $3.6 million a year. The average salary today – the basis for computing the mid-level exception that teams over the salary cap can use to sign free agents every year – is about $5.6 million. Amir Johnson makes more this season than the team cap was 25 years ago. Iverson alone is making about $21 million this season.
So timing has worked very well for Allen Iverson. Except this year. He’s hitting free agency with a double-whammy effect: (1) No more than seven teams, and quite possibly not even that many, are going to have anything more than the mid-level exception at their disposal this summer for free agents; and (2) the economic climate will dictate that even teams with the room to spend won’t have the wherewithal or the willingness to do so.
That’s going to be part of Iverson’s aversion to being moved to the bench, which, against all practical arguments, still is seen by the great majority of players as a repudiation of their abilities.
But here’s where some words of wisdom would serve Iverson well. GMs who might be inclined to sign him this summer – and his ability to generate ticket sales will not be lost on owners with arenas to fill – are going to look at what happened to Denver and to Detroit upon acquiring him.
The Nuggets didn’t get appreciably better and ultimately decided they needed to move him for a chance to gain traction in the Western Conference. And the Pistons, after six straight trips to the conference finals and seven straight 50-win seasons, are 25-29 since acquiring Iverson from the Nuggets.
Not many are going to come to the simple conclusion that Iverson was the sole reason for Detroit’s downturn – he hasn’t been – but it’s fair to assume several are going to wonder about the difficulties of fitting a player as unique as Iverson into their frameworks. The Pistons, despite their best efforts, have found it tough for Iverson to play his game while they’re playing theirs.
The move to the bench makes sense because it will allow Iverson to play with players similar to those with whom he had his greatest success, with the Philly team that went to the NBA Finals, role players who didn’t need the ball to affect outcomes. Guys like Jason Maxiell and Arron Afflalo and Amir Johnson fit that bill.
Staying in the starting lineup while the Pistons continue to stagger to the finish line would do zero for Iverson’s summer marketability. But coming off the bench, doing it willingly, having a positive effect on a late-season sprint to the playoffs … yeah, that could go a long way toward rehabilitating Allen Iverson’s broad appeal.
It’s also worth bearing in mind, if you’re funneling advice to Iverson, that fans who’ve lost a job, or face taking a pay cut while figuring out how to pay all those bills piling up in the corner, aren’t going to have a whole lot of sympathy for what they might interpret as pouting or insubordination.
There was always a good chance that Allen Iverson was going to be playing somewhere else next season and that’s even more likely now than when the trade was made. For the sake of his future and for the sake of the Pistons’ present, the best thing he can do is embrace the role Michael Curry has carved out for him, as Curry believes he will following their Thursday heart-to-heart.
They’ve tried everything else to avoid that step. And everything else has left them with a losing record. It’s time to play the last trump card left in their hand.
The Official Pistons.com Blog
True Blue Pistons
Posted Friday, February 27, 2009
One last chance for the AI gamble to click
Allen Iverson doesn’t wear his heart on his sleeve – he has it tattooed on his face. He’s completely guileless. However he feels about coming off of the bench – and it’s about a 99 percent bet he’d rather sit for a root canal – you’ll know it by looking into his eyes.
Michael Curry looked into his eyes Thursday night when he broke the news to him and saw pretty much that.
“He didn’t react any different than Rip did when I talked to him about coming off the bench earlier,” Curry told reporters in Orlando on Friday morning. “Neither guy wants to come off the bench, but this is the hand we’ve been dealt. If Allen is healthy, once he steps on the court I am convinced he will give us 110 percent.”
That would be the best-case scenario all around – for Iverson and for the Pistons.
Here’s where that tight circle of friends Iverson holds so close to him – the friends who’ve been with him since the Philly days, and beyond that even, to Georgetown and to his Hampton, Va., roots – could really do him a service by pulling him aside and helping him see the sense, and the possibilities, inherent in this latest lineup switch by the Pistons.
With their losing streak at eight, having dropped 17 of their last 22, Curry is reinstating Rip Hamilton to the starting lineup. The Pistons were 4-12 with Hamilton coming off of the bench. Iverson now moves to the sixth-man role Hamilton has held.
Iverson would want to start in any circumstance, but especially this season, with his contract about to expire and his desire to land one more significant deal that will take him into retirement.
He’s been blessed a thousand times over financially for his basketball gifts, of course, making scores of times more for a lifetime than he would have had he come along a generation or two earlier.
It’s worth remembering that when the NBA first instituted the salary cap 25 years ago, the cap per team was $3.6 million a year. The average salary today – the basis for computing the mid-level exception that teams over the salary cap can use to sign free agents every year – is about $5.6 million. Amir Johnson makes more this season than the team cap was 25 years ago. Iverson alone is making about $21 million this season.
So timing has worked very well for Allen Iverson. Except this year. He’s hitting free agency with a double-whammy effect: (1) No more than seven teams, and quite possibly not even that many, are going to have anything more than the mid-level exception at their disposal this summer for free agents; and (2) the economic climate will dictate that even teams with the room to spend won’t have the wherewithal or the willingness to do so.
That’s going to be part of Iverson’s aversion to being moved to the bench, which, against all practical arguments, still is seen by the great majority of players as a repudiation of their abilities.
But here’s where some words of wisdom would serve Iverson well. GMs who might be inclined to sign him this summer – and his ability to generate ticket sales will not be lost on owners with arenas to fill – are going to look at what happened to Denver and to Detroit upon acquiring him.
The Nuggets didn’t get appreciably better and ultimately decided they needed to move him for a chance to gain traction in the Western Conference. And the Pistons, after six straight trips to the conference finals and seven straight 50-win seasons, are 25-29 since acquiring Iverson from the Nuggets.
Not many are going to come to the simple conclusion that Iverson was the sole reason for Detroit’s downturn – he hasn’t been – but it’s fair to assume several are going to wonder about the difficulties of fitting a player as unique as Iverson into their frameworks. The Pistons, despite their best efforts, have found it tough for Iverson to play his game while they’re playing theirs.
The move to the bench makes sense because it will allow Iverson to play with players similar to those with whom he had his greatest success, with the Philly team that went to the NBA Finals, role players who didn’t need the ball to affect outcomes. Guys like Jason Maxiell and Arron Afflalo and Amir Johnson fit that bill.
Staying in the starting lineup while the Pistons continue to stagger to the finish line would do zero for Iverson’s summer marketability. But coming off the bench, doing it willingly, having a positive effect on a late-season sprint to the playoffs … yeah, that could go a long way toward rehabilitating Allen Iverson’s broad appeal.
It’s also worth bearing in mind, if you’re funneling advice to Iverson, that fans who’ve lost a job, or face taking a pay cut while figuring out how to pay all those bills piling up in the corner, aren’t going to have a whole lot of sympathy for what they might interpret as pouting or insubordination.
There was always a good chance that Allen Iverson was going to be playing somewhere else next season and that’s even more likely now than when the trade was made. For the sake of his future and for the sake of the Pistons’ present, the best thing he can do is embrace the role Michael Curry has carved out for him, as Curry believes he will following their Thursday heart-to-heart.
They’ve tried everything else to avoid that step. And everything else has left them with a losing record. It’s time to play the last trump card left in their hand.