Allen Iverson doesn't deserve to have his name up there imo. Not because he lacks athleticism it's because his NBA career got ended due to his image rather than his basketball. Fact of the matter is there was a legit plan to downplay his talent and he was aware of it.
How exactly does a guy go from averaging 26 PPG on a 50 win team to being told to either be a 6th Man on a borderline Playoff team or go home within 10 months?
How exactly does a guy go from averaging 26 PPG on a 50 win team to being unable to get a contract outside of a partial MLE from a Lottery team within 15 months?
How exactly does a guy go from averaging 26 PPG on a 50 win team to being used as a "fill-in" for Lou fukkin Williams within 18 months?
Seriously he was 33 and putting up 26 PPG 7 APG in 42 MPG.
When exactly was he supposed to "decline" unless he blew out his knee or something?
Everybody knows he was a ball dominant volume scorer, but so is Kobe.
Yet Kobe's still in the NBA and has an organization that views him as a #1 option.
You see, the perception of Iverson was that he was a ballhogging chucker who could not co-exist with another star. But when he went to denver, he and carmelo immediately became the highest scoring duo in the league and led denver to 50 wins (top 4 ppg team in the league) their FIRST year together, and second, in the LOADED west. With a paperthin 7-8 man rotation at that. Melo statistically had his best years with Iverson, shooting at a 50% clip and 35% from 3. While AI averaged 26/7 (35% from 3)on his lowest FG attempts in years.
But guess what...they could only barely get the 8th seed and had the unfortunate luck of meeting the spurs and the lakers (the year they won the chip) in the first round.
The perception of him being a team cancer was ultimately drilled home when AI was traded for billups to detroit. Little did AI know detroit's new coach planned on tanking the team and giving younger players burn, while benching rip hamilton and iverson. After an enfuriated rip, sheed, hamilton, turned their back on the coach mid season, detroit ultimately disbanded and the coach curry was fired that same off-season. Meanwhile...billups and melo had made it to the WESTERN CONFERENCE FINALS. So low and behold, theres your PROOF!
IVERSON IS A CANCER!
But wait a second, what was different about denver that year? Well, after deepening the tiny bench and acquiring key defensive role players like Birdman chris anderson and their key big man Nene coming back from injury healthy after 2 years.
And their record? With only 53 wins(3 more than with iverson)....Denver secured 3RD PLACE IN THE WESTERN PLAYOFF standings. As opposed to the 8th seed a year earlier...only 3 less wins in the regular season.
Jewbag Stern ran with this....told his little ESPN buddies, and thats all she wrote. Iverson somehow went from 26/7 on a 50-win team to a washed up ballhogging chucker who lost a step in less than a YEAR
You see, that just goes to show you the power of the media. The theme that iverson had "lost a step" was so repeatedly forced that people began to believe it. And with that, in less than a year iverson was beginning to be told he had slowed down...without actually being given the chance to slow down. As soon as he got to detroit, media outlets began repeatedly sprending the idea that Iverson needed to come off the bench.
