In these comments, do not look for the usual huge amount of detail and proof that you see in the ordinary releases here at Nuggets 1. Some of this is more like everyday conversation than like top quality sports writing. On the other hand, some of the comments do include some detailed reasoning and proof that I pride myself on in the primary reports I release.
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LATE MARCH 2008 FORUM COMMENTARY ON THE NUGGETS, ESPECIALLY ABOUT THEIR MISTAKES
With the following commentary, you can see the early discoveries that gave birth to the Special Report: "Allen Iverson: What Could Have Been," a report which due to time constraints is still months away from completion. But three parts of the roughly eight-ten parts there will be have been published already.
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Larry Brown had a CP3 (Chris Paul) type of player and he moved him to the wrong position.
And then after Iverson was back at PG for 3 1/3 years after Brown was gone in Philadelphia, George Karl jerks him back to SG again. Karl has jerked Iverson around as much as he has jerked JR Smith around if the truth were told. Iverson has been jerked around with respect to his role, and J.R. Smith has been jerked around with respect to his minutes.
Maybe someday there will be a player's union rule allowing a player and/or his agent to veto a position change, because there sure as hell should be one.
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Iverson should have been and could have been molded to be an even better NBA point guard then he was in his rookie year, and obviously he would have gotten better with experience. But how could he have become an even better PG than he was in his rookie year when he no longer played the position starting with his sophmore year?
If any player is moved from one position to another, then obviously, you will be able to criticise his ability to play the position he was moved from as the years go by, because he has different priorities at the new position. It's sort of an optical illusion. From a coaching perspective, it's kind of a self-fulfulling prophesy. Once Iverson was moved to SG, and he was more selfish, Larry Brown and others could look out on the court and say, "See, Iverson is too selfish to play PG." But that is an invalid observation because Iverson had different priorities after his position was changed.
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Iverson made 19.8 field goal attempts per game in his rookie year as a PG, 19% more than Chris Paul this year. I'll admit that is significant. But the question remains: at the beginning of the 2nd year, which was 1997-98, was the correct course of action to encourage more passing and a little less shooting, or to encourage still more shooting and less passing, as Larry Brown chose. I am sure that Brown made the wrong decision both for Iverson and for his team. To the extent that the 76er's were successful, it was mostly with Iverson playing both positions at once well, similar to what the Nuggets situation is today.
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So Iverson was the PG but he wasn't held to much of anything in terms of PG duties? I think you are right on that. But Thompson knew that Iverson transcended position to some extent, and he knew he never had and would never have again a player of his caliber, and it was only college and not pro, so probably for all of those reasons he didn't care too much if Iverson made the SG almost irrelevant sometimes.
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So Larry Brown did not immediatley, from day 1, move AI to the 2-spot? The question remains, why did he do it at all?
Since no one can know exactly what would have happened had AI remained at the PG position, you have to use logic and reasoning to make your best educated guess as to whether it would have been better or worse for the 76'ers if AI had remained at the position he was most experienced at. It's the same type of judgment that is needed now with the Nuggets.
I would like to ask, who are some guards who were PGs in college and who started out as PGs in the NBA, but were considered failures as PGs in a short time in the League, so that they were then moved out of the position over to the SG position? I am looking for players who started at PG one year and then either started or came off the bench for SG in subsequent years.
Are there any true comparatives to AI? In other words, to the extent there are examples of starting point guards losing their jobs, do any of these guards come close to how good AI was in 1996-97?
Wasn't this move by Larry Brown of one of the top players in the NBA away from the point guard position that he had played in college and as a rookie relatively unprecedented in the history of the NBA?
I would not even rule out the possibility that it was done to generate extra excitement, ticket sales, and merchandise sales for the then struggling 76'ers franchise. You could showcase A.I. much better at the 2-guard than at the 1-guard.
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The Sixers sucked period in Iverson's rookie year. That's why they got Iverson, they had the first pick in the draft that year. They were going to get better in the next years whether Iverson's position was changed or not.
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No, they can be like CP3, or like AI would have been if he had kept the position and had been molded a little. There is no law against having a PG who is an aggressive scorer while getting his PG duties down at the same time.
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CP3 is a "Do whatever makes more sense in the situation PG, without tilting too far in either the scoring or the passing dimensions overall." That is what AI could have been to a large extent if work had gone into it. Instead, Brown waived the white flag with regard to molding AI at his position, and then tried to take the easy way out in the task of managing him. As we know, Brown, ironically, did not in the least escape problems and difficulties by doing it his way.
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I agree with alot of what you are saying, your post is very well written too. Based on what actually happened over the years, of course AI became an excellent SG. What I am saying is that the PG position is usually the more important guard position and, if you go back to 1997 or earlier, AI was a PG, and could have and should have remained as one, because that would have maximized his value to his teams. He should have been molded into being one of the best 3-4 PGs in the League, which could have been done with the right effort. But was he one of the all time best SG guards ever the way history actually played out? Of course.
But history could have played out differently, and that would not have changed much how famous or great AI is considered to be, but most likely would have made his teams better. Ask yourself this: if only 4-man teams were allowed, and you could only have 1 guard on the floor at once, how many teams would choose their PG and how many teams would choose their SG? The great majority of teams would have to choose their PG, because that position, is the most fundamental position; you can't really play basketball and call it basketball without a PG, but you could in theory play basketball without a SG. If AI had stayed at PG, it would have been less exciting to watch him, but he would have been even more important and valuable to his teams than he was.
And you and I are completely on the same page regarding the Nuggets, especially that they are truly in grave danger of not even making the playoffs. This is not a drill, this is a real fire. I also agree that AI would be better off on certain other teams. I am saying that the situation that the Nuggets have fallen into with the AI at SG lineup is bad enough that I have concluded that playing AI at the point was a mandatory thing for the Nuggets to do and not an optional thing, despite the fact that AI has played SG (by mistake, in my opinion) for many years. I think the Nuggets have played their best offense in games when Iverson was obviously and extensively playing both guard positions at once.
Had the Nuggets played AI at PG all season long, I am convinced they would have made the playoffs without a lot of trouble. They would have won 4-6 additional games, and would have finished between 3rd and 5th in the West at the least. Whether it would have worked in the playoffs would have depended on who the Nuggets played, the matchups, whether they had home court, whether players stepped up, and so forth. It sure as heck would have been worth a try.
Oh, and playoff success would depend on Melo stepping up his defending, point taken.
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Someone asked:
So are you trying to say that because Iverson "lost his starting PG job" that he hasnt developed into the player he could have been?
Iverson dominates the ball no matter what, so why not have him run off screens to get open and give him the advantage over the defender as soon as he touches the ball? Why make him set up the offense, when everyone know he is the offense?
My response was:
Read my post I just made for my answer to this. In one sentence, it's because PG is the more important position and Iverson can help his team more and be molded to near perfection more easily at that position. Read my previous post for more detail.
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AI was going to be famous and have a great career whichever position he was designated to. I just said above: "But was he one of the all time best SG guards ever the way history actually played out? Of course. "
And those players you mentioned did not start out at PG, did they?
I'm still waiting for an example of a player even 2/3 as good as AI who played PG in college, failied at that as a starter in the NBA in his 1st or 2nd year, and played SG after that. Obviously that would be rare. My question is whether anyone knows of that ever happening. I never heard of it, but I am no basketball historian.
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Yeah, the one thing that has been a constant throughout all the years is that AI is always asked to do too much. The 76'ers over relied on one player for scoring, and George Karl has repeated this strategy lock, stock, and barrel. But basketball is a team sport, Michael Jordan needed Scottie Pippen, and so on and so forth. Coaches have been saying througout the years, starting with John Thompson, "I'll make it easy on myself by letting AI do it." So he has been playing both guard positions interchangeably throughout the years and, of course, he often ends up playing both positions at once, which a good amount of the time is a net negative for the team.
If you and I could go through life twice, and in one life AI was the SG and in the other life AI was the PG, he would be one of the best at that position in either life. But as the PG, he would have been more valuable to his team under most circumstances. The current Nuggets circumstances are no exception to this.
Most of the teams that are ahead of the Nuggets right now are ahead largely or substantially because of their point guards: the Hornets, the Warriors, the Jazz. the Suns, arguably the Spurs. And what about all the drama about whether the Mavericks were going to get Jason Kidd or not? Would there have been all that drama if Kidd was a SG?
The shooting guards of all of those teams are less important than their point guards; those teams would not work without their great PGs.
Everyone dreams of getting a great PG for the Nuggets, but the Nuggets have already busted through the payroll limit already, so they should have made do with what was right under their nose.
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Strictly speaking I'm looking for players who were moved because it was claimed that they were a failure at PG, because that is what most of the other side keeps claiming happened regarding A.I..
However, I am secondarily looking for a correlation assuming that the player moved was NOT considered to be a failure at the position. So if Wade was a PG in college and as a rookie in the NBA, that would be a direct correlation with AI, so then what happened to AI would at least not be unprecedented.
So now I'll have to find out if Wade was a PG in college.
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Fortunately AI's gangsta was mostly an act, or else he would have ended up behind bars and I never would have been able to write about how he should have played the crucial PG position for the Nuggets.
He made a rap album once, but was forced to not release it.
