I know he rubbed a lot of basketball purists the wrong way, with his practice episode but he has won everywhere he's went except for the last year with the sixers
and the nuggetts, who are so much better with chauncy its funny.
oh, and Detroit where he quit on the team with a fake injury and was told to make himself scarce from the team rather than come off the bench.
sounds like a guy who would be happy with a backup role and team play.
You are right, he WAS a good player, but his attitude has never updated itself to the fact that he is not anywhere close to being the force he was in 99-2003 or so. He is a secondary or trietary option now, but his ego won't let him accept that.
Denver won four more games this year than last year and was 2 games better against the Lakers in the playoffs this year then last year. Denver's bigs were finally healthy the whole season. Smith and Melo continued their upward progression. The reality is, Denver really wasn't much different with Billups as they were with AI, they just got lucky the west had only 1 elite team and that they faced seriously flawed teams in the first two rounds of the playoffs with home court.
Did you watch many Denver games last year and this year? not asking to be a jerk, but i watched them both last year and this year, and it wasn't just about being healthy, though that surely helped.
It was about attitude. last year, denver gave absolutely no effort on defense, and couldn't keep opposing guards out of the paint, which ruined them.
That stems from AI's inability or lack of desire to play defense. Chauncey fixed that.
Last year also consisted mostly of two offenseive plays. watch Ai dribble alot before a shot, or watch melo dribble alot before a shot. Iverson is not a distributor, nor has he ever been. He will get assists off slashing, but he routinely dribbles the air out of the basketball before finally giving the ball up with 5-8 second left on the clock.
Chauncy, on the other hand, ran there offense instead of a one on one game that sometimes involved other players.
Iverson's game is predicated on him being faster and quicker than anyone on the court, and exploiting man to man offenses. He needs to be the alpha star on a team, and he was very good at it when he had the physical tools.
but He doesn't anymore, but the head seems not to have caught up with the body's decline. so, just as he was in both places, he is a very inefficient scorer who gives you nothing on defense and very little in the way of ball movement on offense.
He's done. If i thought he had any chance of adapting his ego to being a backup scoring option or a 6th man, i would say he has some value left, but he clearly sees himself as still being an elite player, and acts as such. Thats why the pistons couldn't be happier to send him home for the year, and karl couldn't wait to be rid of him.