 |
|
| Tuesday, May 7 Updated: May 8, 12:56 PM ET Iverson, Brown should shut up or part ways By David Aldridge Special to ESPN.com |
||||||||||||||
|
Allen Iverson wants to win. To him, practice means nothing. Larry Brown wants to win. To him, practice means everything.
Iverson, Brown and Sixers general manager Billy King spent all of Tuesday trying to iron out their differences, and then Iverson got in front of the Philly media, and he spewed. Man, did he spew. About Brown. About the media. And about practice. Did you catch the hundred or so references to practice? But separate the heat from the words, and what did he really say? He didn't demand a trade. He didn't demand a new coach. As much as Brown wants this to be about Iverson, it's really about him. For six years, he's told anyone who would listen about how crazy Iverson drives him. Well, it's time to do something about it. I have no doubt that Brown truly believes that practice is sacrosanct. I know his Dean Smith roots are deep, and, like everyone else in the Carolina Cult, he believes there is one right way to play. And that is his right. He has earned that by being the best coach in basketball. Not the best coach in the NBA -- the best coach in basketball. Period. But he is not being consistent here. If Allen Iverson is truly this bad, this much of a pest, this unreliable, this untrustworthy, then trade him. Now. And live with the consequences. Otherwise, you aren't serving the best interests of the fans that fill First Union Center and root with their hearts out for your team. (By the way, Ed Snider and Comcast have to know that there is no one -- no one -- in the NBA that will sell more tickets and generate more passion than the guy they have there right now. Don't give me Kobe Bryant, whom Philadelphians seem to hate, or Vince Carter, who is Smooth Jazz to Ive's Outkast.) Every year, teams make decisions. The Suns decided last summer that they couldn't live one more second with Jason Kidd. Right or wrong -- and wrong looks like it's winning by Secretariat-like lengths here. The Wizards made a decision that Chris Webber wasn't worth the trouble, and moved him. Right or wrong -- and wrong is winning by Nixon in '72 proportions right now. (Notice how big talent guys who get moved usually wind up on their feet, while the guys who rationalized trading them are consigned to the scrap heap?) I was talking with a Western Conference coach on Tuesday, before Iverson's press conference. There's a guy on this coach's team that he cannot stand. But the coach said he'd be more than willing to put up with it, like Nate McMillan did with Gary Payton, if the guy had Payton-league talent. Which he does not. This is where Brown has to show his cards. Either Iverson is worth all the trouble, or he isn't. If he isn't, Brown -- who has the juice in Philly, make no mistake about that -- should get on the phone and stay on the phone until he has a deal. If Iverson is worth the trouble, then Brown needs to stay quiet. But enough with all this talking. And this he said-he said talk covers up a larger issue. The Sixers were subpar this season, and they pointed to injuries all season long, but there was more wrong with Philly than Derrick Coleman's knee problems. This team -- assembled by Brown and King -- was not as good as the 2001 team, also assembled by Brown and King. They have to take responsibility for that. This team did not defend as well, and it still didn't shoot, and this time, it cost them. I know that the purpose of the game is not to take 3-point shots, but the best shots. Still, the Sixers have too many possessions during which they depend on Iverson to bail them out with the shot clock going down. They have to get someone else on the floor who is a scoring threat. That's not heresy; that's physics. Two people who can score spread the floor and create open looks for everyone. Iverson is not without fault. He said Tuesday that he doesn't have a selfish bone in his body, but he was the one who didn't have surgery on his elbow until training camp, leaving the team without its star player the first month of the season. And Iverson may think he's the only star player in the league to be criticized, but he's just 26: he doesn't remember when the wags in L.A. called Magic Johnson "Tragic Johnson" after the Lakers lost in the '84 Finals. Or that Isiah Thomas was too small to lead a team to a title. Or that Michael Jordan, according to the conventional wisdom circa 1990, didn't make his teammates better. But Ive should see Kevin Garnett getting raked over the coals in Minnesota for six straight first-round flameouts. Or Allan Houston getting crushed because of his $100 million contract. This is what the best player has to go through.
Playoffs stir up emotions Winning is the plasma of the NBA. You read and hear about how the league is filled with guys who care about nothing but their paycheck, and then you see what's happened the last few days, and you know that's not true.
Was he lying?
Was he wrong?
"I ran every possible scenario through my mind about this game," Stack said. "Sometimes we won, sometimes we lost." Outside the locker room, Joe Dumars was acknowledging that that one victory legitimized everything the Pistons had done this season, and that losing the game would have made the season a waste. "There would have been questions and doubts if we had not won the series," Dumars was saying. This is what the playoffs does to a man. There is a texture to the postseason. It brings out the best and worst in people. The passions are at the surface. Everyone is on edge. The chance to win is what legitimizes a man, not the bling-bling, and not the paycheck. The great players want to win with a desire that I simply cannot explain to you. "This is something that I couldn't have told them," said Dumars, the '89 Finals MVP. "I can't explain it to those guys. As much as I've been through it, I couldn't explain it to them. They had to go through it themselves ... it's a different smell, it's a different feel. The aura is different. The emotions are different. "If this game was played in February the emotions that you see around here right now, there's no way you can emulate those emotions in the regular season. You can only get these emotions in the playoffs." Which is why, I think, when Larry Brown has had time to really ponder over it through this summer, he'll realize that Iverson driving him nuts is better than, say, Vince Carter being sane and nice. David Aldridge is an NBA reporter for ESPN. |
| |||||||||||||
Full of Answers
Practice makes perfect
