Allen Iverson resurrection tour

Allen Iverson resurrection tour

Posted on September 11th, 2009 by Alex Kudera

The biggest story this week was not Joe Wilson raising funds by running naked in the aisle on national television (while President Obama spoke to save the collective ass or at least the availability of an affordable colonoscopy for said single-paying, non-optional body part); it wasn’t even a long, tedious, low-scoring opening night of the NFL season.

In fact, the larger story was the culmination of the summer’s drama; Allen Iverson signed a contract to play professional basketball for the Memphis Grizzlies.

This 3.1 million over one year (with incentives for team performance believed to be worth up to an additional $900,000) is about $17 million per year less than what he earned at the end of his last contract. Ahah! That song about the rich getting richer might only be true if we discount the fact that sometimes the rich get richer at a much slower rate.

So what does it mean? Why are AI’s stacks still in the news?

For one, it means that contrary to what so many big, bloated, and ridiculous contracts seem to support, professional sports are still driven by… yes, of course, profits! Iverson sells tickets, and Memphis needs sales. For two, often the profit-driven executives of professional franchises convince themselves that aging stars can still contribute victories.

I am not a profit-driven executive, not exactly, but I am a big fan of the “little guy.” In this case, I’m not talking about the 46.3 million who go without or the illegals our friend Joe Wilson loves to dine with, particularly if they are afraid to see doctors when they spit blood over the dirty dishes they wash or cough all over the lasagna they serve.

I’m talking about the amazing 5’11” 170 pound talent who brought professional basketball back to Philadelphia and even brought Philly an improbable victory in the NBA championship series in 2001 (the Lakers’ only loss in those playoffs). Iverson dropped 48 points that night, and over the years, 7-foot Shaquille O’Neal has literally become Iverson’s biggest fan.

Iverson is a Hall of Famer; his stats defy logic, gravity, height, and just about everything else. Although he hasn’t played every game of every season very often (just twice in fact), he has averaged 41.4 minutes in the games he has played in. He is constantly called a ball hog, and yet, his career assists average of 6.2 is better than many pure point guards. Iverson’s 6.2 is higher than Kobe Bryant’s 4.6 and Michael Jordan’s 5.3. As of now, King Lebron averages more assists (7.2), but he has only advanced one team as far as Iverson has although he has been surrounded with better starters and a deeper bench. A main criticism of Iverson is that his championship-finals year was one when an entire team was built around his abilities, but this is one of the most common strategies for building an NBA team, a strategy made famous in Chicago by guys named Mike and Phil.

Speaking of Jordan, on the one hand, it is easy to say that Iverson is no Jordan, but on the other hand, did Iverson ever play with a Hall of Famer in his prime? Jordan had at least two all-stars on the court for each of his six championship seasons; most of the “starters” Iverson played with were bench players at best on their future teams. Guys like Eric Snow, Toni Kukoc, Aaron McKie, Kenny Thomas, and Theo Ratliff either started for teams that didn’t make the playoffs or came off the bench (if they played) for teams that did. In fact, nearly all had their best years when they played with Iverson.

So Iverson is 34. He is proven to be a player that makes other players better (and richer), and his team has made the playoffs 9 of the 13 years he has been in the league. Can he still do it? To be honest, I doubt it. The West is deep, and Iverson is old. At the same time, the team in Memphis is similar to the one he first won with in Philly–a lot of youth and athleticism in Rudy Gay, O.J. Mayo, Mike Conley, and Hasheem Thabeet. I’d say Thabeet in the middle allows Iverson fans to dream big this year although most of us would be shocked if Memphis makes the playoffs.

But don’t count out the Answer, and be thankful you’ll have one more chance to appreciate the little guy. Maybe, just maybe, he is the kind of little guy who can inspire the rest of us to pass the ball a little more often, purchase the bling (or other non-essentials) to get our economy back on track, and extend ourselves to family and younger teammates in need.

Note: Although his season in Detroit was counted as a playoff year, this message was not sponsored by Allen Iverson’s agent or the city of Memphis; further, it was not constructed from Shaquille O’Neal’s tweets or the official website for fans of Allen Iverson. For height and weight of NBA players, go to any “official” site and subtract one inch and ten pounds unless two and fifteen makes a better argument.

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Alex Kudera

Alex Kudera's Fight For Your Long Day (Atticus Books) was drafted in a walk-in closet during a summer in Seoul, South Korea and consequently won the 2011 IPPY Gold Medal for Best Fiction from the Mid-Atlantic Region. It is an academic tragicomedy told from the perspective of an adjunct instructor, and reviews and interviews can be found online and in print in The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Inside Higher Ed, Academe, and elsewhere. His second novel, Auggie's Revenge (Beating Windward Press), and a Classroom Edition of Fight for Your Long Day (Hard Ball Press) were published in 2016. Kudera's other publications include the e-singles Frade Killed Ellen (Dutch Kills Press), The Betrayal of Times of Peace and Prosperity (Gone Dog Press), and Turquoise Truck (Mendicant Bookworks). When he's not reading or writing, he frets, fails, walks, works, and helps raise a child.