Practice?! Practice?! We're talking about Practice?! (Hahaha). Allen Iverson killed me with those words. Even now, I can still remember him at the podium with this befuddled look on his face and I suspect I will continue to do so into the forseeable future. Only basket-ball could give us such rhetoric.
But then I got to thinking about the fella we all comfortably know by "The Answer" and I wondered, "how would The Answer have performed if he had different coaches?". (yeah I know, I have too much time....but still, it is an interesting question. We all know Larry Brown is a great coach, one of the G.O.A.T. in our lifetime but LB also has a team concept about his coaching philosophies. Coach Larry Brown's system usually does not work to favor one particular player's statistics but it does usually improve a team's performance. So I got to thinking, how would AI have performed in a wild open system? One that really accentuates individual (and sometimes team) statistics. 2 Coaches immediately came to mind, Coach Karl and Mike D'Antoni. The 1st nominee already has history with Iverson that we can use as a yard stick and by all accounts it is fair to say that the AI-Karl association was a failed endeavour (especially considering the recent trade and subsequent relegation to bench-warmer for the Pistons). That leaves me with the latter: Coach D'Antoni.
After watching, versus the Bucks, Nate (Krypto-Nate??) Robinson put up 32 pts, 7 asts, 4 stls on 10-17 shooting(32mins); Larry Hughes put up 39 pts! 6 Rebs, 2 asts, 4 stls on 13-20 shooting (42mins); and, David Lee put up 19 pts, 18Rebs on 7-10 shooting (36mins); you have to wonder what Allen Iverson's stat line would have read. I am guessing something like, 60 pts, 6 Rebs, 5stls, 10 asts on 22-30 shooting in 42mins. I am just saying...
Smashmauf!
