Dude, Where's My Iverson?

To no surprise this past Friday, the news that Detroit Pistons' Allen Iverson will miss the remainder of the season was announced. This comes a day after he told media reporters he would much rather retire then to come off the bench and play spot duty.

Before Iverson's season came to an end, he had not played a game nearly the entire month of March. He was sitting out do to a sore back. Iverson is one of the greatest warriors this game has seen and it was odd for him to miss that many games due to a sore back.

It was speculated his return was prolonged due to the rotation announced by coach Micheal Curry that, Iverson, would have to come off the bench. Something he has never done in his entire career.

Many analyst and reporters seem to have placed the Pistons' woes on Iverson, especially after the trade that brought him to Detroit and exchange for point guard Chauncey Billups. It is not fair to blame Iverson for dramatic downfall of a team who was losing it's edge way before Iverson entered the picture. It goes back to former coach Larry Brown.

Before Brown was the Piston's coach they were a title contender who were missing a piece. Larry Brown was that missing piece and turned them into a championship team.

The Pistons' calling card was their stingy defense and tenacity, but after winning an NBA championship, reports of Brown butting heads with President of Basketball Operations Joe Dumars surfaced.

In the end Brown ended up leaving the Piston's, and that was the snowball that caused the avalanche of problems they face today.

Dumars ended up hiring Flip Saunders, the Minnesota Timberwolves' former coach. Saunders was a solid coach for the Pistons but his dreadful playoff record followed him to Detroit, and they became more of a passive team offensively. More noticeable on defense the Pistons played more zone then they ever had under Brown and it led to him getting the axe.

Now there is Michael Curry, who is the present head coach. It seems like Dumars was following the NBA trend, when he hired Curry, of hiring recent former players as the Dallas Mavericks, Toronto Raptors and Phoenix Suns had done with Avery Johnson, Sam Mitchell and Terry Porter respectively.

From day one it did not seem like the Pistons' were still the team to beat in the East or if they were buying into Curry's system. They still had the main nucleus and were a formidable opponent.

Minor problems started to become major, because it was obvious Dumars wanted to eventually build the team around their young stud Rodney Stuckey, and their glaring weakness of having no true center was starting to show.

So Dumars pulled a blockbuster trade that brought them Iverson who was suppose to help ease the transition of Stuckey from backup to starter and also be the teams go-to scorer.

With impressive wins over the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Los Angeles Lakers, who have the top two records in all of the NBA, things were looking good for the Pistons as a team.

Stuckey was still not starting and the team was winning with Iverson and Kwame Brown being the new starters after the trade. Eventually Kwame Brown would return to the bench and Stuckey would start in the back-court with Iverson and that is when the  Pistons' went on a losing skid.

The team was being handed over to Stuckey and it was causing chemistry problems and the losses started adding up. Curry then begin to shuffle the lineup with Richard Hamilton coming off the bench and sometimes Iverson would.

While the losses were piling up so did the blame and it unfairly was being put on Iverson for no apparent reason. Stuckey is an amazing young player and his time will come, but his insertion into the starting lineup and the benching off a future Hall-of-Fame member who still has plenty of gas in the tank turned out to be a bad idea.

Iverson's trade has clearly not worked out as planned, but you cannot blame the teams' struggle on a player who gives it his all every night. It's only so long a powerhouse can stand in the NBA with the game's parity.

Changes had to be made and they were. The team still has a bright future and next season. When Iverson and the Pistons' split, Dumars and staff can start bringing in the necessary pieces to build around Stuckey for the future of the team