Blueprint said:
LeBron James? He doesn't have one "clutch" bone in his body. Wade's in a higher class than he is. LeBron stinks it up every time he's asked to perform in crucial moments of a game. My list of players I'd want to build a team around includes Dwyane Wade, Kevin Garnett, & Allen Iverson.
Oh, I totally agree James isn't clutch yet. But then, he's also 20 years old. That will come with time. At this very moment, Wade's clearly a better player, but he's also, I think, 4 years older. So if I'm building a team long-term, I'm taking that into account.
KG's 4th on my list. And for the record, a healthy Amare Stoudemire would be 5th. But for the moment, that spot goes to Kobe Bryant. I have no idea how you could ignore Tim Duncan.
But Iverson?!? I can probably name 20 guys I'd rather build a team around before getting to AI. I don't believe you can build a champion around him at this stage of his career. Given his reckless style of play, waifish body and the thugs he hangs out with off the court, it's a miracle he's still playing at a high level, and hasn't been seriously injured and/or shot. I think Iverson is playing on borrowed time at this point.
Oh yeah, and he's a tremendous ballhog who has shown an inability to mesh with another scorer. Every "second scorer" the 76ers have brought in has flopped miserably. The only way that Iverson might have been able to be a champion was to take the Larry Brown formula from 2000-01: surround Iverson with 4 guys who play strong defense, don't need the ball in their hands to be effective, and are content to score on the occasional open looks and tip-ins that Iverson will get them. In Iverson's prime, that might have been enough to win a title if they hadn't run up against the Shaq-Kobe Lakers. But Iverson isn't that player anymore.
If Billy King was smart (and he's not), he would have avoided the Webber trade and instead focused on putting Iverson on the floor with Iguodala and Dalembert, find a glass-cleaning, defense-first 4 and another strong defensive swingman like Iguodala, and make Kyle Korver the Dell Curry/Dale Ellis 6th man who just comes off the bench and takes the open three. Instead, by getting Webber, he killed his cap room for a soft, injury prone 4 who can't play a lick of defense. Webber is a terrible fit with Iverson. Then again, I can't fault King too much; everyone and their brother thought he fleeced the Kings in that deal when it was first done. So did I. Only in hindsight does the flaw in the design become apparent.
Yet I digress. The larger point is this: you can build a winner around Duncan, Wade, James, Garnett, etc. in any number of ways. To build a winner around Iverson, you need an extremely specific game plan, because Iverson's abilities and his limitations demand a certain kind of teammate. That's another huge problem.
