Was It Worth It?: The Allen Iverson Trade Revisited

It was the game-changing move that many had expected the Detroit Pistons President and General Manager Joe Dumars to make during the summer following another dissappointing loss in the Eastern Conference Finals. 

Dumars had said that there were "no sacred cows" in Detroit.  He essentially put his entire team on notice; lackadaisacal and unworkmanlike basketball would not be tolerated anymore on his watch.  Coach Flip Saunders was fired due in large part to a perceived rift between the veteran core and the coach.  Many believed that Saunders lacked the strength of character to lead a group that had accomplished more than he had. 

To combat this lack of strength, Dumars hired former small forward and then-assistant coach Michael Curry as Saunders' successor.  The move seemed to be aimed at lighting a fire under the veteran starting lineup, and to implement Dumars-mandated decisions like giving additional playing time to young combo guard Rodney Stuckey and power forward Amir Johnson. 

But the Pistons failed to make a bold move to the roster during the off-season.  There were rumors of a Carmelo Anthony deal (although nearly all Pistons fans that I spoke with were very much down on Anthony due to a perceived lack of defense), and fans were calling for anyone from Tracy McGrady to the ghost of "Pistol" Pete Maravich.  By the end of the summer, the only move that Detroit had made was the acquisition of Kwame Brown as a backup big man. 

Through the first three games of the season, the lack of a big move seemed to pay off.  The Pistons won their first three games by a combined margin of 32 points.  The bench looked deeper than at any point since the championship season of 2003-2004 and the starters were playing with a sense of urgency. 

But a funny thing happened on the way to another 50 plus win season and annual trip to the Eastern Conference Finals—the Pistons traded Chauncey Billups, Antonio McDyess and Cheikh Samb to the Denver Nuggets for Allen Iverson.

To say that this trade came out of left field is to confuse left field with Somalia.  NOBODY saw this coming. 

Many Detroit fans had a knee-jerk reaction that bordered on panic attacks.  Fans wondered aloud what would become of their teams creedo of working hard and getting no respect. 

The Pistons had defied the conventional wisdom of NBA during the past 30 years that said that you had to have at least one superstar to win it all.  Nobody had won it all without a superstar since the Seattle Supersonics of the late 1970's.  Detroit fans took pride in that.  Now they were being told that they were going to be getting a player that is famously credited with questioning the merits of practice. 

After a few days, the panic gave way to some pragmatism.  Trading Billups, paired with the end of Rasheed Wallace's sizeable contract, would free up close to $25 million for the 2009-2010 season (Iverson is a free agent at the end of this season and not likely to be resigned).  While there are only a few players of note that will become free agents at that time, the 2010-2011 class of available players reads like an all-star game: Chris Bosh, Dwayne Wade and the biggest prize, Lebron James. 

While the Pistons would likely face stiff competition for any of these players, they could offer something that many teams couldn't...a winning core of veterans and a deep bench of young players.  Additionally, maybe Iverson would allow the Pistons to avoid the usual bouts of offensive ineptness that has been known to plague Detroit during the playoffs, and allow them to win in different ways.

So here we are, a full month since the trade and what do we know?  The Pistons, at least initially, are action-packed with questions.  Iverson's teammates have had mixed results in the 13 games since the trade offensively. 

Small forward Tayshaun Prince has been allowed to play more of a "point" forward position, using his 6'9" height to see over defenders and find teammates and freeing up the offense.  However, Prince has begun to again defer to his teammates on offense, a marked departure from his early season aggresiveness that had the fans excited. 

Power forward Rasheed Wallace has benefited from Iverson's ability to get to the paint by getting open looks from three-point range on kick out passes. However, he has begun to again stray from the paint...something that coach Curry had said would be a major priority this season.  The center by committee approach of Brown and Johnson has been largely unaffected by the move, as both are limited offensively. 

The real story of how Iverson has changed this team comes down to three issues; defensive personality and attitude, three point shooting and Rip Hamilton. 

Hamilton, acquired in a trade that sent Jerry Stackhouse to Washington, has been miserable since the deal.  First off, he lost his best friend on the team.  Make no mistake about it, Billups and Hamilton shared a special relationship.  They could find each other on the court in their sleep.  Their games complemented one another.  Billups knew right where Rip wanted the ball, and fed him well.  Rip helped out Chauncey by guarding quick point guards that gave Billups trouble.  They worked well together. 

Since the trade, Hamilton looks lost.  His usual curls on offense are being split between him and Iverson.  Defensively, he is no longer asked to cover the speedy point guards since Iverson is too small to cover shooting guards.  His scoring average of 16.1 points per game is the lowest since his rookie year, and his shooting percentage of 41.7 is a career low and his three-point shooting is a full 16 points lower than it was a year ago (28.6 percent).

This brings up a second point of concern since the trade; three-point shooting.  Detroit has always been a jump-shooting team.  Even in 2004 when they won it all, their success was always tied to their ability to shoot the ball.  They are one of the few teams in basketball history to win a championship without a dominant post presence (joining Michael Jordan's Chicago Bulls of the 90's and Isiah Thomas' Pistons of '89 and '90), so therefore they are dependent on being able to make perimeter jumpers. 

Combined with a stingy defense, it allows them to come back from any defecit.  But since the trade, late-game deficits are difficult to overcome because there are only one or two dependable three-point shooters on this team...Rasheed Wallace and maybe Tayshaun Prince. 

In no game was this more evident than in the recent game against the Portland Trailblazers when a game that Detroit regularly would pull out in the past with the strong late-game play of Billups and his deadly three-point marksmanship.  Instead, the Pistons were recquired to lean way too heavily on the acrobatic penetration ability of Rodney Stuckey and they were never able to overcome an early deficit caused by offensive ineptitude and lazy defensive play.

This brings up another glaring difference in this Pistons team post-trade: the defense has suffered.  Iverson has never been known as a defensive stopper.  Neither, its fair to say, has Billups.  But Billups had developed into a very strong defensive player, albeit slightly slow-a-foot. 

What Iverson brings to the table that Billups did not was a gambling mentality.  Iverson from time-to-time will come up with a big steal because he is quick and he plays the passing lanes exceptionally well.  But the flip side to his penchant for gambling is that sometimes he guesses wrong and his team is left to defend another team short-handed. 

Iverson also is not strong enough to withstand bigger point guards that can post him up.  This is something that we will see when Detroit plays guards like Deron Williams, Jason Kidd and yes, Chauncey Billups. 

This also changes the mentality of personal accountability on the defensive end.  That has always been this team's defensive attitude.  In the trenches, the game is determined by one-on-one battles in which you cannot let your fellow teammates down by forcing them to play short-handed. 

This change in attitude has lead to a lot of easy layups and very soft defensive play.  Above all else, this is the most troubling for Piston fans. 

So has this trade been worth it?  Is Detroit a better team?  The answer to the former is of course incomplete because the season is not yet over and at least part of the deal was because of financial reasons, so it is hard to say.  The answer to the latter question is a little bit easier to gauge.  At this time, no, Detroit is not a better team.  They are too inconsistent on both ends of the floor to be considered as good as they were before the deal. 

The real question, though, is can they be a better team.  Look, we will never know if this team, the way it was constructed before the deal, would have won a title.  In all honesty, I thought it was the best looking Pistons team since the title year of '04.  The infusion of excellent young bench players to a great, albeit aging veteran core looked great.  I was looking forward to more of a trapping defense and a nine to 12 deep bench. 

However, it is a strong likelihood that this team, as previously constructed, had gone as far as it would go.  Dumars had to make a choice, and very few people in professional sports have the resumes to question what Joe does.  He is a brilliant basketball executive.  He had to decide if it was time to make a change, and he made that change.  It was difficult for him to do, but he is a shrewd businessman and he made the call.  That is his job. 

Personally, I think that Detroit might have to take a small step backward in order to compete for the long haul.  The goal is not to get to the Eastern Conference Finals...the goal is to win championships.  Therefore I choose to believe that Joe, who has won titles as a player and as an executive, knows what he is doing. 

Will the Pistons get to the Eastern Conference Finals for an unheard of 7th straight year?  Maybe not.  But will they be in a position to start a new 6 year streak next year?  Thats the real answer.