MVN - Most Valuable Network

Thursday Thuggets

Today is an off day for the Sixers, so it’s time to step back and take a look at the trade that went down around 48 hours ago.  According to Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Phil Sheridan, Iverson is leaving town too soon.  For almost everyone else, the infatuation was gone.  Both sides knew it was time.  Yet, Iverson has made it public today that the changes he was seeking didn’t necessarily mean facilitating a trade.  He was unprepared to deal with the growing pains of his supporting cast.  That included Billy King and Mo Cheeks.  When pressed to ask what his problem was, it came down to a failure to adjust.  That can be said of both sides.

When measuring great players in Sixers history, I’m going to argue that the rankings of franchise marks show the value among those who played the position of “franchise player”.  Iverson was the man in Philadelphia for 11+ years, which is a typical franchise run for a Hall of Famer in his prime.  Without weighing the totals for games and minutes played, a simple comparison can be made to show that Hal Greer and Mo Cheeks were better guards.  Iverson finished second on the Sixer’s all-time scoring list behind Hal Greer.   He also finished second in the steals category to his former coach, Mo Cheeks (wow, didn’t that sentence sound bizarre!).  For all his ability to get to the line and make free throws (something I point to in his defense), he finished second in both on the all-time list to Syracuse Nationals star Dolph Schayes.   He finished third on the career assists list behind Cheeks and Greer.  The categories he leads are turnovers and 3-point shots (both made and attempted).  So, what the record shows is that Iverson was a shooter and a ballhog.  It’s insane to hold the team hostage for one player.

One could say that others had a better supporting cast and that would be true.  Cheeks had Erving, Malone, and Barkley.  Greer had Chamberlain, Schayes, and Cunningham.  Iverson had no one good for more than a couple years at a time, and Derrick Coleman two times.  It was with his trusty sidekick, Eric Snow, that the Sixers rode all the way to the NBA Finals.

Last Thursday, I mentioned the book Wages of Wins.  Head over to author Dave Berri’s Wordpress blog and see what his first impressions of the trade are.  He uses a statistic called “Wins Produced” that weights the statistical categories against par and credits each player with the amount of games effectively won or lost by their efforts.  Hockey uses a +/- to show this, which is also called the lenovo stat on NBA.com.  Another way to measure effectiveness is to credit points for a player instead of wins.  After all, it’s the most points that win.  Right? 

Statisticians/Sabremetricians all agree that Iverson is average at best, despite all the points scored.  Berri argues that Miller has been above average for most of his career.  So the moral of the story for Sixers fans is don’t count your lottery balls until they’ve hatched.

As for Denver, they can now return to the run-and-gun style of their franchise roots.  Those great Nuggets teams of the 80’s scored a lot of points and gave up a lot too.  In 1981-1982, they averaged 126.5 points per game, but also gave up 126.  On December 13, 1983 - the Nuggets scored 184 points, and LOST.  Remember the days of David Thompson, Dan Issel, Alex English and Kiki Vandeweghe?  Who can forget Doug Moe?  They won 52 games in ‘84-’85 and 54 games in ‘87-’88.  Defense was an afterthought.  That should suit Iverson quite well.  They were already considered an uptempo team, but will go into overdrive with Iverson at the point instead of Miller.  Whether they can win with this model will be the question.  George Karl is the perfect coach to make it happen.

The main problem I now have here is who to turn to for a soundbyte on this team.  Outside of Kevin Ollie, who has the professionalism to deliver the timely and true word?  Chris Webber may be more inclined to acquiesce, but his doggin’ it style would only match the substance of his own words.  Let me lay the first house rule, post-Iverson:

No more talk about “effort”.  Just give it.  And in honor of Iverson, we won’t be talkin’ ’bout practice either.  You know you need it.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 21st, 2006 at 2:38 pm and is filed under Hal Greer, Dolph Schayes, Dave Berri, Wages of Wins, Julius Erving, Billy Cunningham, NBA.com, lenovo stat, Wins Produced, Wordpress, Phil Sheridan, Moses Malone, Wilt Chamberlain, Eric Snow, Charles Barkley, Hockey, Philadelphia 76ers, Hall-of-Fame, Allen Iverson, NBA Finals, Philadelphia Inquirer, Derrick Coleman, Mo Cheeks, Billy King, Sixers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.