What Philly wants... (or "On Being a Gangsta...")

[Kim Malo]

At 08:43 PM 7/2/2006, jozersky at optonline.net wrote:
>I've thought about it a lot, and I am hoping the Iverson trade
>doesn't happen.  I don't care about his character, his love of
>the nightlife, his aversion to practice, the example he might
>set for impressionable youth, or the fact that he has a hip-hop
>style.  I don't mind how old he is or how fragile or how big
>his deal is.  His talent and game more than make up for all of these
>flaws, and a few others that haven't been mentioned.  (He stopped
>playing defense a long time ago.) But
>we've already added another great one-on-one scorer to the
>team in Ricky Davis, and the result was painfully constipated
>and predictable offense.  Wally was a great find because he's
>one of the few prime-time scorers in the league whose game
>really complements Paul's.  Iverson's doesn't.  He needs the
>ball a lot to succeed, and on this team, that can't happen.  How
>would Iverson be different than Ricky in terms of offensive
>chemistry?

Wow. Josh, I can't remember the last time we were this thoroughly in 
agreement. There would be some difference - Iverson is a better 
passer, defender, and takes it to the hoop more than Ricky. And 
maybe, just maybe, Paul would be more willing to pass out of a double 
team to an Iverson (the problem with the double teams - minimization 
of which would be part of the justification for the trade - isn't 
that they occur, it's how Paul handles them). And I'm not quite so 
quick to brush off things like wear and tear on him, given the amount 
of money we'd be investing in him that we couldn't use elsewhere. But 
my guy feeling is that it essentially returns us to the Me and Paul 
offense, with everyone standing around uselessly watching, which just 
isn't pretty or effective. Iverson adds excitement as an individual 
player, and injects significant talent, but I'm not so sure he makes 
us a better team.

>Keep telfair and ratliff, and start the season with a healthy
>Tony Allen and Al Jefferson.  It's not like we are anemic
>offensively, even with last year's train wreck.

Nope. Shot with the best in the league, just too often weren't very 
good about the other aspects of offense like movement without the 
ball, moving the ball, spacing, etc. The sorts of things that having 
a true floor general could really help.
Kim