Fast Break: Why Detroit is Right to Designate Iverson Point Guard

Iverson has been playing both guard positions at the same time most of the time his whole career. It's usually a good thing to be a combo guard, but Iverson is such a great player that his teams would have been better off had they channeled his huge efforts into where they could do the most good for the team, without marginalizing the other guard who is out there with him. The only way to channel Iverson is to make him the 1-guard, responsible for more than jacking up shots and cutting to the basket. If and only if you do this, you can maximize what you are getting offensively from Iverson and the other guard out there at the same time. You can not completely stop Iverson from playing both guard positions at once, but by making him responsible for the most important of the guard positions in general, and for passing and assisting specifically, you reduce the extent to which he eclipses the other guard by a big amount.

If Iverson after being designated point guard knows his passing and assisting are at least as important to his team as is his scoring, then he won't be able to make the 2-guard almost meaningless. Whereas if he is 2-guard (shooting guard) he does often make the designated point guard relatively meaningless, if only because he ends up with the ball so damn much that, like it or not, he is to one extent or another (his choice of extent) the real point guard.

Or to put it yet another way, how often in basketball history has there been a 2-guard who possesses the ball for as long as, or for as many times as, Iverson? What in the name of holy hell is a 2-guard doing with the ball for all that time, and on the great majority of possessions? How can that way of running the offense possibly work out for your team as compared to making that player responsible for passing and assisting?

Anthony Carter, the actual designated point guard, had a very high assist percentage, but did not score much, on account of, um, Iverson taking almost all of the shots, as he was instructed to do by George Karl. As a result, opposing teams did not have to worry about guarding Carter very much, although ignoring Carter did occasionally cost another team.

Iverson was pigeonholed by Larry Brown into the 2-guard position because Brown was not comfortable with Iverson being his PG. It had little if anything to do with Iverson's abilities to play the 1-guard, or even his style for that matter. It was all about Brown wanting to be comfortable in his own skin. Brown could not stand the idea of having a player who he openly fought with in the media being his point guard.

Look for much more on how Larry Brown created the Iverson mess and on the resulting emergence of the complicated "Iverson Game," which is the puzzle and contest that franchises must win to avoid being harmed by having Iverson on their team, in future special reports.
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Editorial Notes: A "Fast Break" is a short and quick preview of some of the topics that will be explored and proved in more detail in upcoming regular reports. Fast Breaks will often reappear in full reports with only minor reediting, but there will be more important details, more evidence, and more implications and explanations in the full reports. Moreover, there will be topics that never appear in any Fast Break in a full Report.

Fast Breaks are especially useful for the first few days after major news breaks. They are also very useful for people who will seldom or never have enough time to read a full Game/Team/League Report. Fast Breaks are the type of article that more typical web logs feature almost all or all of the time.