Anyone, insider or not, can now use Mr. Hollinger's data base at ESPN (though you still can not find his player efficiency rating formulas there). So why don't we compare Iverson the 2-guard to the designated 1-guards (point guards) of the NBA from the 2007-08 season. The assist rate is the percentage of the time a player's possession ends with an assist. ASSIST RATE <u>Allen Iverson, DEN 21.4</u> Chris Paul, NOR 35.7 Chauncey Billups, DET 30.1 Steve Nash, PHO 39.7 Deron Williams, UTH 35.3 Jose Calderon, TOR 43.4 T.J. Ford, IND 31.5 Tony Parker, SAS 23.2 Baron Davis, LAC 24.3 Andre Miller, PHI 27.2 Jason Terry, DAL 18.1 Devin Harris, NJN 27.2 Mo Williams, MIL 26.1 Louis Williams, PHI 20.1 Jason Kidd, DAL 41.6 Rajon Rondo, BOS 29.5 Jameer Nelson, ORL 32.1 Sam Cassell, BOS 23.6 Jordan Farmar, LAL 22.5 Nate Robinson, NYK 17.9 Earl Watson, OKC 35.0 Mike Bibby, ATL 27.5 Kyle Lowry, MEM 25.3 Keyon Dooling, NJN 18.9 Raymond Felton, CHA 30.1 Chris Quinn, MIA 27.4 Stephon Marbury, NYK 23.7 Roger Mason, SAS 16.1 Derek Fisher, LAL 20.1 Antonio Daniels, WAS 34.9 Beno Udrih, SAC 23.5 Rafer Alston, HOU 25.5 Ronald Murray, IND 22.6 Kirk Hinrich, CHI 30.8 Aaron Brooks, HOU 23.0 Eddie House, BOS 19.6 Carlos Arroyo, ORL 31.8 Anthony Carter, DEN 37.8 Randy Foye, MIN 22.4 Jason Williams, MIA 31.2 Jamaal Tinsley, IND 33.9 Marcus Banks, MIA 20.0 Mike Conley, MEM 27.5 Dan Dickau, LAC 30.8 Ronnie Price, UTH 23.7 Travis Diener, IND 32.7 Steve Blake, POR 34.6 Marko Jaric, MEM 29.9 Jannero Pargo, NOR 19.7 Tyronn Lue, MIL 20.1 Daniel Gibson, CLE 19.8 Brevin Knight, UTH 42.5 Luke Ridnour, OKC 33.1 Damon Jones, CLE 23.5 Anthony Johnson, ORL 36.4 Chris Duhon, NYK 36.9 Marcus Williams, GSW 26.5 Javaris Crittenton, MEM 13.3 Sebastian Telfair, MIN 33.2 Earl Boykins, CHA 28.7 Quincy Douby, SAC 11.3 Jacque Vaughn, SAS 29.9 Sergio Rodriguez, POR 31.6 Damon Stoudamire, SAS 27.6 Royal Ivey, PHI 24.1 Darrell Armstrong, NJN 30.8 Mike James, NOR 14.7 Jason Hart, LAC 27.4 Acie Law, ATL 26.5 Smush Parker, LAC 25.9 Jeff McInnis, CHA 39.4 So from this you can see that Iverson, while playing shooting guard, made an assist as often as did the lessor assisting point guards! For example, look at Baron Davis and Tony Parker, just ever so slightly ahead of Iverson in assisting. If you just wished Iverson to be the point guard he would probably move ahead of Davis and Parker, lol. If you made Allen Iverson responsible and accountable for assisting, then obviously the percentage of his possessions ending in assists would go up from 21.4. By how much, we will apparently never know, because it is apparently gospel in the NBA that Iverson can not be the designated PG, or else the basketball world will come to an end, or at the least there will be a new ABA, or something terrible like that will happen. At a rock bottom minimum, and assuming due to bad habits that Iverson would not do much of anything differently after being instructed to be the 1-guard for his team, his assist % would go to about 25%. (It would go at least that high simply because of how often the designated PG brings the ball up.) Depending on how much he was persuaded, and how much he was able to shake the bad habit of sometimes ignoring the open man, his % would, conservatively, go up to between 25% and about 33%. Theoretically, but not likely and not at all necessary, it would go higher than 33%. An Iverson assist ratio of roughly 30% would have been perfect for the Nuggets, whereas the 21.4% was not enough, given how often Iverson was marginalizing the actual PG, who was usually Anthony Carter. To a lessor extent in fact, Iverson as the 2-guard marginalized all of the other players, for that matter, as Iverson haters are fond of pointing out and exaggerating. So what would you have to do to make Iverson, at the least, a point guard who is average with respect to assisting, among the starting point guards of the NBA? Most likely, you could simply strongly request it and it would be done. You know, simply asking can often do wonders. Notice that the Raptors have the ultimate assisting point guard in Juan Calderon, even better in the basic assisting role than are Steve Nash, Chauncey Billups, Chris Paul, and Deron Williams. Very interesting Toronto; that makes you the anti-Nuggets with respect to importance placed on the PG role!
Anthony Carter had a very high assist percentage, but did not score much, on account of, um, Iverson taking almost all of the shots, as he was instructed to do by George Karl. As a result, opposing teams did not have to worry about guarding Carter very much, although ignoring Carter did occasionally cost another team.
Now let's make a comparison that is fair to Iverson for a change. Here are the assist ratios for Iverson and for the other players who play <u>his position, 2-guard:</u> <u>Allen Iverson, DEN 21.4</u> Manu Ginobili, SAS 19.4 Kobe Bryant, LAL 16.2 Dwyane Wade, MIA 20.6 Kevin Martin, SAC 9.0 Brandon Roy, POR 22.6 Monta Ellis, GSW 16.6 Michael Redd, MIL 13.1 Vince Carter, NJN 19.0 Tracy McGrady, HOU 19.2 Jason Richardson, CHA 12.7 Ronnie Brewer, UTH 14.1 Richard Hamilton, DET 19.2 J.R. Smith, DEN 12.9 Mike Dunleavy, IND 16.3 Joe Johnson, ATL 20.1 Brent Barry, HOU 22.4 Ben Gordon, CHI 13.6 Ray Allen, BOS 15.6 Mike Miller, MIN 17.9 Jamal Crawford, NYK 18.5 Leandro Barbosa, PHO 14.9 Sasha Vujacic, LAL 11.1 Rashad McCants, MIN 12.0 Anthony Parker, TOR 15.9 C.J. Miles, UTH 15.6 John Salmons, SAC 16.1 Maurice Evans, ORL 11.5 Rodney Stuckey, DET 23.2 Luther Head, HOU 19.2 Carlos Delfino, TOR 15.8 Bobby Jackson, HOU 18.8 Kelenna Azubuike, GSW 9.6 Jerry Stackhouse, DAL 17.6 Kirk Snyder, MIN 18.6 Jarrett Jack, IND 25.7 Willie Green, PHI 12.6 DeShawn Stevenson, WAS 20.6 Rodney Carney, MIN 6.5 Delonte West, CLE 26.6 Larry Hughes, CHI 15.3 Juan Carlos Navarro, MEM 15.5 Nick Young, WAS 9.1 Marquis Daniels, IND 15.7 Cuttino Mobley, LAC 15.8 Thabo Sefolosha, CHI 18.7 Juan Dixon, DET 23.1 Damien Wilkins, OKC 15.4 Morris Peterson, NOR 10.1 Fred Jones, NYK 22.7 Charlie Bell, MIL 25.9 Keith Bogans, ORL 13.1 Matt Carroll, CHA 9.4 Tony Allen, BOS 16.5 Raja Bell, PHO 16.4 Arron Afflalo, DET 14.2 Kareem Rush, IND 12.1 Gordan Giricek, PHO 14.5 Antoine Wright, DAL 16.4 Yakhouba Diawara, DEN 18.4 Daequan Cook, MIA 11.1 Quinton Ross, LAC 18.4 Eddie Jones, DAL 24.3 Sasha Pavlovic, CLE 14.3 Greg Buckner, MEM 20.0 Mardy Collins, NYK 26.4 Bobby Jones, NYK 12.8 Dwyane Wade has stated that he does not want to play PG, so that explains him. Iverson has never stated any such thing. Iverson is way ahead of most of the 2-guards on this list in assisting. The handful of 2-guards who are ahead of Iverson in assisting are definitely all combo guards, and most likely a good number of them are playing the 2-guard only because that is best for their teams, either because their team does not have a better 2-guard, or because their team has a 1-guard who is better than they are. In other words, I would bet that most of the other teams have good excuses for playing players who get a lot of assists at the 2 rather than the 1. But the Nuggets had no player who could play PG better than Iverson, which it took them until the playoffs to realize! (Actually, I don't think they actually realized it even then lol.) And the Nuggets had one of the better 2-guards in the League ready to start if called on, JR Smith. So I hardly think that the Nuggets had any excuse other than stupidity. Or, maybe it was just Mr. Karl suffering from "JR Smith paranoia," which has been identified by basketball psychologists as a real problem.
So to summarize and simplify, you had Iverson playing both guard positions at once, which ended up putting him a little above average among all 1-guards and 2-guards in assisting. Iverson was like the man without a position. He had too many assists to be a good 2-guard, and not as many assists as he could have had if he had been the 1-guard. He was like a character on the show "LOST". As explained above, the correction for this was obvious: Iverson had to be the PG all along if the Nuggets really wanted to contend.
AI was 74th in the NBA in Assist Rate (Ratio) Assist Ratio = (Assists x 100) divided by [(FGA + (FTA x 0.44) + Assists + Turnovers]
The number is important, the rank not very important. But for the record, Iverson was #57 among actual point guards in assisting, while being instructed to NOT in the least be the point guard by the twisted George Karl. Had he been instructed to be the point guard, his rank in terms of assisting would have been between #17 and #45. His rank among point guards in scoring would have been top 10, obviously. And then the rough approximation of Chris Paul, together with JR Smith at 2-guard, would have made the Nuggets about the best offense in the league, instead of only about 10th best, which in turn would have made them a real contender. <u>Advance Rejection of Cpawfan's Next Comment:</u> Anyone with a brain can make accurate estimates like I just did and be correct, so don't get it twisted or try to make it seem more complicated than it is. Don't embarrass yourself by saying that this kind of stuff can not be predicted, because anyone who knows basketball and has a brain could make large range estimates such as these, that are obviously valid. Don't embarrass yourself by hiding behind what did not happen due to management mistakes. The only way Iverson's assisting would not have gone up had the Nuggets requested it would have been if Iverson is retarded, with an IQ of about 60 or something. Which is about what Larry Brown thought Iverson's IQ was when he put him at 2-guard in the first place. The Nuggets blew it, and essentially wasted every dollar they spent on Iverson, given that the Nuggets were supposed to be a real and not a pretend contender once they drew him on to their team. (How's that for defense, I rejected him before he even gets into position for his next shot, lol.) That's it for now, but I will be back soon of course.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (tremaine @ Jul 29 2008, 09:41 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'>The number is important, the rank not very important.</div> That is hilariously stupid. The context of the number is extremely important. Otherwise, stats are meaningless. <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>But for the record, Iverson was #57 among actual point guards in assisting, while being instructed to NOT in the least be the point guard by the twisted George Karl.</div> Wrong, AI was expected and instructed to play PG when Anthony Carter was off the floor. What really cracks me up is that you are missing very obvious stuff that could possibly help your case (if you applied them properly). Go to this link http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/i/iversal01.html Look at the Advanced Statistics then under the column AST% (To be very clear, this is a different formula than what ESPN has) and look at the fluctuations in that number over his career.
AI really isn't a pg. He could play it very well, but the bottom line is he can put the ball in the hole better than just about anyone in the league. Karl actually told Iverson that he can shoot as much as he wants as long as he gets around 7 assists a game. So he really didn't tell him not to be a pg, he just said you can play your game as long as you pass the ball too. I think on this team, AI could play pg very well if he could just take his scoring to around 23 ppg, but then that wouldn't be AI. The trick for this season is for Karl to convince the team to play D and to get Iverson to play a more traditional role for someone his size.
capawfan, believe me, when I prove my case for real, no stone will be left unturned. This topic is more of a "lay the groundwork" type of topic relative to the ultimate objective of proving that basketball and Allen Iverson were cheated and harmed by the beliefs of key managers of the Philadelphia 76'ers, as well as by a good number of fans, back in the late 1990's. Specifically, this topic here was simply to show that it is not correct or fair to say, as so many do that it is like a religious chant, that Iverson "can not play point guard because he does not have the mentality of a point guard ." I am so sick of that I could vomit. As you can see above, Iverson while playing 2-guard, has way more of his possessions end in assists than most of the other 2-guards. Furthermore, while not responsible for the position, his assist ratio is only marginally less than the assist ratios of quality (but relatively modest assist ratio) point guards such as Tony Parker and Baron Davis. Well, Iverson, Parker, and Davis share another obvious feature: they like to score and they can do so well. And there is no law or regulation against having a point guard who likes to take a good number of shots and to score a good number of points. The Hornets, with the high scoring PG Chris Paul, were probably the biggest surprise this past season, while Tony Parker has won several rings with the Spurs over the last several years. There is simply no serious argument to be made that it is necessary or even just highly advisable to have a low scoring point guard rather than a high scoring point guard. There are certain athletes who can walk and chew gum at the same time and Iverson is obviously one of them. You can win with, if you know what you are doing, either a high scoring or with a very unselfish, moderate scoring point guard. What cpawfan referred me to is already very well known by me, and constitutes some of the strongest evidence that I will have when I do the heart of the Allen Iverson Special Report. Thanks sincerely, and I mean that, but if you really knew me, you would know that there was no need.
