Basketball Free For All

I must admit, originally this post was intended to analyze Allen Iverson playing in Memphis and whether this was a good or bad thing (take your pick), in both real life and in fantasy basketball. But things often change quickly in the basketball world (if you want proof just ask Byron Scott)  and the Answer has left us with nothing but questions.

Take a look at the Grizzlies’ recent track record.

The Memphis Grizzlies haven’t been to the playoffs in two years – not even close – and in fact, how their last winning season (2006) coincidentally was the last time they made the NBA’s second season. There is also the fact that the Grizzlies have turned over every single player from that last playoff roster (although I’m sure they managed to save a little money by recycling those items with the last name “Gasol” on them).

So with a group of fresh new faces and young talent, the Memphis Grizzlies, along with countless fantasy managers, looked forward to a bright future in a new season. This year was the year they would showcase up-and-coming talent such as Rudy Gay, Marc Gasol, Mike Conley, and O.J. Mayo. This year was going to be the year they would make a run at the playoffs.

But a funny thing happened to Grizzlies owner Michael Heisley at the end of last season – he made a stop by his accountant’s office and saw the books. And he wasn’t happy.

The Grizzlies weren’t making money. And how does an NBA franchise go about making money in this day and age? It sells tickets. But the Grizzlies finished 29th out of 30 teams in league attendance for the 2008-09 season, both in averages and totals. No tickets – no money. Simple formula. And Heisley knew it all too well.

So, he immediately decided to become one of a dozen NBA owners who are currently tapped into a $200 million dollar line of credit offered up by the NBA (yes…that’s 200, followed by six zeros). His franchise would receive anywhere between $13 to $20 million dollars to use in any way he saw fit – no limitations, no special clauses. However he wanted.

Now he had the cash and the desire to go looking for a player – someone to help bolster this roster, to push it over the top. Heisley goes out and signs Zach Randolph, a high usage guy (28.2 percent, which is good for ninth overall among active players), but a high caliber player nonetheless.

“Ah,” thought the masses, “now he’s done. He’s found the combination he was looking for – a high quality player, with a young, up-and-coming supporting cast. Now he’s primed to make a run back into the playoffs.”

But Heisley had something else in mind. Heisley still had that account ledger burned into his memory. Heisley still felt he needed to sell tickets. And no matter how you spin it, Zach Randolph is not a high marketable ticket-selling commodity. “Z-Bo” doesn’t put warm bodies in the seats with his charm and debonair.

Enter AI.

Remember, Iverson himself said in a recent interview with ESPN, that he wasn’t happy coming off the bench in Detroit. In fact, he was very specific about it:

Allen Iverson calls his one season in Detroit the “worst year of my career” and claims team officials and coach Michael Curry “lied” to him about coming off the bench instead of starting.

“They told me, straight up, ‘Allen, we would never disrespect you or your career like that,’ by making me come off the bench,” Iverson said in an interview with ESPN.com Page 2 columnist Scoop Jackson. “That’s what they told me to my face. And after that, I never thought about it again. I just went back to playing. Then, they came to me saying that they felt it would be in the ‘best interest of the team’ if I came off of the bench behind Rip [Richard Hamilton].

“… After that, they told me that if I didn’t come off the bench, the team was going to lie down on [not play with] me. … When he told me that, that’s when I felt that this was the worst career move I’d ever made and it was the worst year of my career.”

Source: ESPN

Flash forward to November 7th of this year:

A frustrated Allen Iverson has left the Memphis Grizzlies and is not expected to return anytime soon, if at all, a source close to the situation told Yahoo! Sports on Saturday.

The Grizzlies granted Iverson a leave of absence to allow him to return to his offseason home in Atlanta. The source said Iverson wants to clear his head and is extremely unhappy about the lack of communication with Grizzlies coach Lionel Hollins over his playing time and role with the team.

Source: Yahoo! Sports

Sound familiar? Like, maybe the Grizzlies “lied” to Allen Iverson about potentially starting him in Memphis?

Think about it – Iverson himself has never changed his story. He’s never changed the perception he has of himself as a starter. Compare what he said in his ESPN interview to what he said later in the Yahoo! Sports article:

“I’m not a reserve basketball player,” Iverson said. “I’ve never been a reserve all my life and I’m not going to start looking at myself as a reserve.”

Source: Yahoo! Sports

As high and mighty as we may all want to be when talking about Allen Iverson, the fact of the matter is he’s never passed himself off as something he’s not – a role player, a “sixth man”, a “glue guy”. He’s never flip-flopped, saying one thing and doing another. And as conceited as he sounds, he has never once indicated that he didn’t mind not starting.

And now, he’s extremely frustrated that he’s not getting what he wants.

Spoiled? Yes. Conceited? Quite possibly.But you know what? He may be right.

There’s that signpost up ahead – yes, we’re crossing into The Twilight Zone.

It wasn’t Iverson who went to the Grizzlies looking desperately for a job. It wasn’t Iverson who felt he needed to be in Memphis to resurrect his career. It wasn’t Iverson looking for one last opportunity to get into the playoffs, when even the snowball had a better chance in hell. It wasn’t Iverson who felt he needed to sell tickets.

No tickets – no money. Simple formula.

This recent chain of events in Allen Iverson’s “saga” should surprise no one. It certainly doesn’t surprise him. He feels written off by most of the media anyway. Posts and news flashes had him contemplating retirement and walking away from the game for good the day he left the Grizzlies for Atlanta!

But who wouldn’t walk away? After being “lied” to, what now seems to be a second time? After being used as a gimmick to simply boost ticket sales for a team that has been losing money since 2001? A team who might break even this year?

I dare say that Allen Iverson may actually be doing the right thing in walking away from the Grizzlies, and possibly the NBA. He’s standing up for something. He’s making a statement.

But it’s not a statement for egotistical, self-centered, spoiled brats to say they’re right, and we’re all wrong. It’s not a message that being conceited is good, while showing humbleness is not.

It’s a statement about the truth. And it’s a truth that has been laid out there since day one – since the first time Allen Iverson stepped onto that floor in Philadelphia – since his roller coaster days in Denver – since “the worst time of his career” in Detroit. And now, during his short stint with the Grizzlies.

“I’m not a reserve basketball player,” Iverson said. “I’ve never been a reserve all my life and I’m not going to start looking at myself as a reserve.”

We can sit here all day and debate Allen Iverson’s character with regards to that statement. But the fact is, it’s the truth! And it’s a truth that nobody seems interested in reporting – Not Yahoo! Sports, not ESPN, and certainly not Heisley and the Memphis Grizzlies.

So dear reader, since you now know the entire set of circumstances that caused events to play out the way they did, does it change your perception of the situation? It shouldn’t change your perception of Allen Iverson the person – even I have a few choice, colorful metaphors with regards to AI, which could easily get me in trouble with my editor while testing the boundaries of free speech.

But who is to blame here? Who is really to blame? Allen Iverson? A man who has worn his ego like a badge his entire career, never once trying to hide the fact – or Heisley and the Memphis Grizzlies, for trying to be something they just aren’t – a suitable fit for a player the likes of Allen Iverson.

And while you read, and re-read, and fact check, and do your own research and digging in order to come to your own conclusion, the question will remain: is this the end for Allen Iverson?

At this point, only he knows. He is, after all, The Answer.

For years now the man behind the mask, Richard Hamilton, has been a staple of the overachieving Piston’s backcourt. In 2002, Hamilton was traded from Washington to Detroit in a package deal centered around Hamilton for Jerry Stackhouse. Ever since, he has been a vital cog in the Piston’s war machine, a team that reached the Eastern Conference Finals an amazing six years in a row after Rip’s arrival and won it all in 2003-04. Now after many productive years in Detroit, it seems that a tide of change is in the proverbial air.

Last season, we saw Hamilton’s backcourt running mate and trusted floor general, Chauncey Billups, get shipped out to Denver in exchange for Allen Iverson. Acquiring ‘the Answer’ was one of Piston’s President Joe Dumars’ attempts (he also fired head coach Flip Saunders) to reshape his elite roster into another Championship-caliber team to compete for years to come.

Well, we saw how that worked out. Now that the dust has finally settled from last season’s implosion, Hamilton has begun to (uncharacteristically) speak out about the A.I. situation and the team’s lack of strong leadership from the coaching position.

“It could have worked out,” said Hamilton. “I just thought the coach we had at the time (didn’t) put us in situations where we all could be at our best. When you don’t have that, it makes it difficult. All the guys are trying to figure it out on the floor, on the fly, rather than putting us in situations where we could be better.”

Source: The Detroit News

Hamilton is really going out on a limb here to backup Iverson for his troubled season last year in Detroit. Iverson took a lot of heat for all of the Piston’s shortcomings and was basically a scapegoat for the franchise (and Dumars) as they ran him out of town.

Hamilton bashes then head coach Michael Curry saying he failed to maximize the potential of the team by bringing both Iverson and he off the bench at various times throughout the season.This instead of allowing them to both start together in the backcourt from day one.

Rip is right for defending Iverson. He and A.I. starting together would have made quite a potent tandem. The fact that the Pistons were intent on developing Rodney Stuckey came at the expense of their All-Star and future Hall of Famer that was ready to contribute right away. Make no mistake, Stuckey is the future of the team and does need playing time to develop, but not at the expense of hindering your star player that you just traded for. Moreover, as it’s been widely rumored, someone promised AI a starting type of role. How did you expect he was going to react when he suddenly was tossed aside.

By taking Rip and Iverson away from their customary starting roles, Curry hurt their egos and caused them to compete against each other instead of the opposing teams. When they did share the court together personal agendas seemed to be the primary goal, as each player seemed intent to show what they could do and not what the team could do (for Iverson, this trait has followed him to his new team). The result was a roller coaster ride from start to finish resulting in a playoff appearance in which the Piston’s failed to win a game in the first round of the playoffs.

Now Rip, Ben Wallace and Tayshaun Prince are the sole remaining starters from their championship team in 2003-04. No, Chucky Atkins’ corpse doesn’t count. With the Piston’s bringing in younger talent, i.e. Ben Gordon, Will Bynum, Stuckey, Austin Daye and Charlie Villanueva, one has to wonder what the future holds for the aging Piston veterans.

The fact that Rip is speaking out could spell trouble for his relationship with the franchise. The team has relied and continues to rely heavily on Hamilton for all aspects of its offense. As evidence, his career usage percentage is 28th of all time. The Pistons have also been considerably better across the board with Hamilton on the floor. There is no doubt Rip has been a loyal soldier for D-Town and has been one of the primary stabilizing forces both on and off the court.

Despite all of this, you can’t help but get the feeling that Rip is on his way out of the Motor City sooner rather than later (by the trade deadline perhaps). His production has been very consistent for years, sporting strong career averages of 17.9 points per game on .454/.853 percent shooting, 0.5 threes, 3.3 rebounds, 3.4 assists, 0.8 steals, 0.2 blocks and 2.2 turnovers.  Stats like this would be attractive to a number of teams seeking an upgrade at the two guard position.

Offseason acquisition Ben Gordon is a younger shooting guard who is ready to move into the starting lineup and can easily supply Hamilton’s twenty points a game. Emerging guard Will Bynum could then fulfill Gordon’s role as instant offense off the bench, making Hamilton more or less expendable. If the Pistons can obtain a post presence or dynamic forward in return, the current crop of Pistons guards can certainly step up and fill Rip’s shoes.

Working against Rip changing addresses, however, are both his age (he will turn 32 next February) and his salary (he is scheduled to make over $11 million in 2010 and then $12.5 million per year through 2013) may make him less attractive to potential suitors. In these oh so tough economic times, contracts such as Rip’s are becoming harder and harder to move.

But his reputation as an upstanding citizen (he participates in numerous charity events and frequently donates to local youth campaigns for his hometown in Pennsylvania), and his abilities on the court will always provide a market for Hamilton. If the Piston’s decide to really strip the roster down and completely start anew, they will look to provide more time for the youth of the future (Stuckey, Bynum, Gordon) expect Rip to be one of the first players on the trading block.

He logged major minutes in the season opener but has been MIA ever since with . For as long as he remains a Piston, Rip should see steady minutes on the court. However, the only certain thing in Rip’s future is uncertainty as the Pistons continue their quest to remodel the franchise.

It is truly rare to be able to sense a catastrophic event before it happens. However, for those carefully attuned to the recent offseason developments in the NBA, Detroit seems poised on the brink of the abyss.

Talk about piling on. It’s no secret that Detroit is in trouble in these oh-so-tough economic times (median sale price for a house in Detroit these days is $8,000; and no, that number is not missing any zeroes).

But taking a step back and examining the moves the Pistons have made to assemble the 2009-10 Pistons, it is clear that the old Pistons are truly gone. With Rasheed Wallace and Chauncey Billups gone, the perennial Eastern Conference Finalists have been forever changed, and most certainly for the worse.

It is understandable that Joe Dumars and the Pistons wanted change. After so much disappointment and so many letdowns following their 2004 NBA Championship, it was inevitable that they would overhaul their roster. But change for the sake of change is not improvement and that is exactly what the Pistons’ roster moves have felt.

The point of any change is to make the team better. Any roster move (applies to both fantasy and real life) that does not make the team better, either in the present or future, was a bad move.

So let’s break down the Pistons’ offseason moves to see if there is reason to believe this team has improved during the 2009 offseason.

Coaching Change

After a disappointing 2008-09 season, rookie head coach Michael Curry was canned in favor of another rookie head coach, John Kuester. But what do we know about John Kuester and can we expect his tenure to be different from Curry’s rookie season as a coach?

Kuester has a long track record as an assistant coach in the NBA, including working for Hall of Fame Head Coach Larry Brown on the Pistons’ 2004 championship squad and for Brown’s entire tenure as head coach in Philadelphia. More recently, Kuester worked with the Pistons’ Eastern Conference rival the Cleveland Cavaliers under head coach Mike Brown.

Kuester’s most recent, and most famous role was of Mike Brown’s offensive coordinator with the Cavaliers last season, a season that saw the team jump from 19th (and a very ugly 19th, at that) in offensive efficiency to fourth last season with Kuester joining Cleveland’s ranks.

Yes, the Cavaliers enjoyed a solid season from new addition Mo Williams, Lebron James improves, and the club also got a full year’s run out of Delonte West; but the shape of the Cleveland offense was markedly different with Kuester on board, something you couldn’t completely pin on personnel changes and internal development. Kuester had these guys in the right places.

Source: Yahoo!

No doubt about it, the 2008-09 Cavaliers were much better offensively than the 2007-08 version. That is a statistical fact. What is up for debate is how much of that is due to the continued development of Lebron James, how much is due to the addition of Mo Williams and first full season of Delonte West and how much is due to Kuester’s X’s and O’s.

Watching Cleveland’s offensive sets last season, basically every play revolved around putting the ball in Lebron’s hands and clearing out the lane. Lebron was the primary playmaker and rarely played off the ball, where his athleticism allows him to be deadly. Don’t underestimate the impact of the addition of Mo to the Cavalier’ success. With Williams on board, James had another guy he could trust to take big shots and initiate the offense instead of relying solely on himself.

One word is notably absent from discussions of Kuester’s assistant coaching gigs: defense. With all of his experience assisting Coach Larry Brown, you hope that Brown’s defensive philosophy has rubbed off on Kuester. For defense more so than any other factor is going to be the key to the fate of the Pistons’ 2009-10 season. And that is mainly due to the roster changes that were made over the last few months in Detroit.

Roster Changes

The current Detroit roster marks the start of the new era (i.e. end of the Rasheed Wallace era in Detroit).

Out: Rasheed Wallace; Allen Iverson; Antonio McDyess; Amir Johnson; Arron Afflalo; and Walter Herrmann.

In: Charlie Villanueva; Ben Gordon; Chris Wilcox; and Ben Wallace.
Rookies: Austin Daye; Deron Washington.

With all the changes, the depth chart looks fairly different from last season. (Not seeing Sheed on the Pistons roster just seems strange; beware).

PG: Rodney Stuckey, Will Bynum
SG: Richard Hamilton, Ben Gordon, Deron Washington
SF: Tayshaun Prince, Austin Daye
PF: Charlie Villanueva, Jason Maxiell
C: Chris Wilcox, Kwame Brown, Ben Wallace

The main problem with the Pistons new makeup is that most of the players they lost were known to be decent defenders, especially Wallace and McDyess. And the players they took on, Villanueva,  Gordon and Wilcox, are not known for being great defenders (to be politically correct). But that is all opinion.

What do the numbers say?

In trying to compare the outgoing players, offensive and defensive efficiencies are useful for comparing players on different teams that play at different paces, which can skew raw statistics. Comparing the net difference between a player’s offensive efficiency (O-Rating) and defensive efficiency (D-Rating) to show their net impact on the court.

Looking at the minutes is very important when consulting statistics such as these because in general a small sample is much less reliable than a larger sample.  It’s probably wise to take any advanced statistics with a grain of salt for any player who logged less than a thousand minutes. Like most statistics, the bigger the sample size the better.

First take a look at the players the Pistons have added to the roster.

*Table is sortable. Click on column headers to sort data.

And compare them to the outgoing players.

*Table is sortable. Click on column headers to sort data.

On the face of it, the exchange of players seems like it would be a negligible difference (excluding players who played less than 1000 minutes last season). The incoming players are a combined +8 and the outgoing players are a combined +8 as well. Everything seems to be in perfect harmony, right?

Wrong.

There are two main reasons why: Ben Wallace and Chauncey Billups.

First, let’s deal with Big Ben. Wallace’s career is clearly on its last legs and thus he can be expected to play a rapidly diminishing role on the team as time progresses. As the single biggest positive on the incoming side, this means that the incoming +8 is actually skewed and is only positive solely because of Wallace.

The more bearish you are on Wallace’s future performance, the worse this exchange of players looks. To put it in perspective, the exchange made the Pistons defensively worse off in the medium and long term (-4 excluding Big Ben).

Continuing with the long term perspective, let’s revisit the franchise altering trade of Billups for Iverson. Yes, I know McDyess was a part of that trade but he ended up back with the Pistons after negotiating a buyout and returning to D-Town. So this trade was Billups for Iverson, straight up.

Using mathematical properties, we can substitute Billups for Iverson in the outgoing chart.

*Table is sortable. Click on column headers to sort data.

With the Billups effect accounted for as well, suddenly the outgoing players are a +20 (again excluding players with less than 1000 minutes) and the incoming players are either a +8 or -4 depending upon how you view the impact of Ben Wallace for both next season and the future. This gives the entire transaction a net impact of either a -12 overall or a shocking -24.

The Verdict

On paper, it appears that the Pistons’ recent makeover has actually made them worse off overall. The big x-factor will be rookie head coach John Kuester. Teams can overcome having poor defensive players on them through superb coaching. In some cases, however, the defensive liabilities are just too great to overcome. This might be one of those cases. But make no mistake, Kuester has a chance to be a truly great coach one day.

Regardless, it is clear that the 2009-10 Pistons have huge potential. Train wreck potential (see also Memphis Grizzlies, 2009-10). For the Pistons faithful, let’s just hope that Joe Dumars hasn’t taken the D out of Detroit once and for all.