Free Ballin’

For a while I couldn’t quite figure out why Dumars made the AI/Billups trade. It isn’t exactly that I didn’t like the trade for Detroit; I wasn’t sure, because I just couldn’t quite figure it out. It’s just…weird, it’s a weird deal. If I were Detroit, Billups and Prince are the two players who I wouldn’t consider trading. It’s not that they’re Untradeable, it’s just that this seemed like a Change of Direction trade, and it would never occur to me to change direction by trading a player who can play in any system, any scheme. Billups is a big two-way PG who does everything. There’s no direction a team can take where he isn’t a huge asset.

Iverson, on the other hand, is a direction unto himself. I’m not talking about his attitude or whatever else people like to criticize, I’m talking about AI’s unique profile, his talents and liabilities. It’s weird to trade a player who fits into anything for a player around whom whole rosters must be carefully shaped. That said, it occurs to me now that Detroit’s personnel is by far the best match for AI’s of any team he’s been on, including his contending 76ers teams. AI’s a unique player, so it sort of makes sense that a team on which he can thrive would have very unusual characteristics, like Detroit.

Detroit’s ’03-’04 championship team was the first team to win without a superstar since the ’78-’79 Supersonics–check it out. It’s nothing against Billups, superstardom just seems almost as much a question of playing style as it is playing quality, and Billups doesn’t fit the criteria. NBA champions tend to build around a dominating superstar who reigns in his aggression enough for his teammates to develop their talents and confidence, enough for the team to congeal. That superstar plays within the team’s system and just accesses that super-alpha-aggression when the team needs it. Dwayne Wade’s Heat team is coming along, but the last two games they were shaky against crappy teams, so Wade took 46 shots and 34 free-throws, leading them to close wins. Wade is a prototypical superstar in mentality as much as ability. I’m not prepared to say that’s how a contender must be built; I’m just saying it’s how it has been done the whole history of the NBA, with a tiny handful of exceptions, like Detroit’s recent championship team. Just look through the records and count the teams that have won championships without a first-ballot-level Hall of Famer. You can count them on one hand.

AI clearly has that superstar mentality and playing style, but, curiously, despite this, he might not be any better than Billups. Trading Billups for Iverson, more than anything else, wasn’t really a change of direction as it was a change of team-construction philosophy, exchanging the unique blend of working parts without a clear head, that won Detroit a championship and has fallen short in the years since, for a more traditional follow-the-leader mix. It will be very interesting to whether it works, but the personnel around AI gives him the best possible chance of success.

The Stuckey/Iverson backcourt concept is clear enough, but the rest of the team around AI are a bunch of guys who are quite capable of hitting the shot when it’s there, but won’t complain or cease to function optimally when they aren’t getting lots of shots. Prince and Wallace and the rest of the team are essentially a more offensively talented version of the roster he took to the Finals a decade ago: tough, extremely versatile, hustling, defending players. It includes a rare compensation for having a backcourt that can’t shoot, a front court filled with capable long-distance shooters. I’d love to see it work. The only real unknown is Curry, their coach. Larry Brown was the masterful coach who turned the 76ers’ curious roster into such a good compliment for AI. Larry Brown isn’t in Detroit any longer, but Wallace, Prince, and Hamilton are Brown-trained and are honed to be a perfect compliments to AI. How important is it that Brown is actually no longer there? How good is Curry? I have no idea, but I guess we’ll find out.