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.
That is all well and good, but Denver won just 4 more games this year and lost to the exact same team in the playoffs, though did fair a bit better.
If Denver was really that much better they would have won more han 4 games more.
They were the number two seed, advanced to the WCF, won 10 playoff games, and posted a much stronger point differential. That's not a small difference.
Also using Birdman instead of Camby in the rotation is a definite downgrade. You could just look at Billups/AI's stats too. AI's are much much worse.
Nene, Martin, and the Birdman was a far better rotation this season then they had last year due to injuries and overall fit. Melo and Smith were significantly better players coming into the year, especially Melo as a result of the Olympics. 54 wins two years ago makes them the 7th seed (just one spot better than they were with 50 wins, though that might have meant a better showing not playing the Lakers in the first round). The West was just flat out better two years ago then it was last year. The Nuggets took advantage of the weaker conference and the improved play of their best player. AI was a bit of a redundancy with the games of Melo and Smith, so Billups was likely a better fit, but the overhype of what billups did for the nuggets is ridiculous.
Take a look at basketball-reference.com for the two teams.
Denver 2007-2008Denver 2008-2009They have have an differential that is better, their opponents shot worse against them and they also slowed down in pace. Their eFG% went up because their 3PT% went up.
You point out that they'd be the 7th seed last year with 54 wins. But with 58 wins they'd be the 1st seed last year. The margin for playoff seeding was in both years very tight. Four games is that important. Improving a team by four wins is very significant.
He was a better fit that is part of it. But he is also a better player at this point than Iverson.
Billups: 17.9 Pts 42 FG% 41 3PT FG% 6.4 Ast 2.2 TOs 3.0 Reb
Iverson: 17.4 Pts 41 FG% 25 3PT FG% 4.9 Ast 2.5 TOs 3.1 Reb
Meanwhile Billups is a good defensive player, Iverson is a terrible defender.