Wednesday, September 09, 2009

Why So Much Hate?

The response to the Grizzlies decision to add Allen Iverson has been negative. The most significant arguments are:

1. Iverson won't generate on-court success next season.
2. Acquiring Iverson comes at the expense of acquiring better players.
3. Iverson may impede the development of young Grizzlies.

While I think these arguments have merit, I don't think the conclusion that signing Iverson is a mistake is as clear as the media's reaction implies.

1. IVERSON WON'T GENERATE ON-COURT SUCCESS NEXT SEASON

For simplicity's sake, let's say there are three reasonable possibilities:
1. Win 20-30 games.
2. Win 30-40 games.
3. Win 40-50 games.

Using a John Hollinger algorithm, we could assign a probability for each outcome, and then assess how the addition of Iverson impacts that outcome.

The "pre-Iverson" consensus was that #1 is the most likely outcome. So how does Iverson impact that probability? Probably not by much. I'm guessing that #1 is still the most likely scenario.

Is #1 more likely with Iverson than without? Does adding Iverson make #2 or #3 more likely?

You can reasonably argue that #1 is slightly more likely now, but you can't argue that the Grizzlies will be significantly worse or that Iverson increases the likelihood of #1 by a large percentage. The Grizzlies are too bad already.

You could also argue that adding Iverson to the mix raises the ceiling if by some miracle this strange mix of talent clicks.

2. ACQUIRING IVERSON COMES AT THE EXPENSE OF HIRING BETTER PLAYERS.

There's no question that acquiring Iverson means the Grizzlies won't (or didn't) acquire other available players like Ramon Sessions or David Lee. However, there's no guarantee that the Grizzlies could acquire such players. Those players may have no interest in playing for Memphis.

Additionally, most players discussed wouldn't have a significantly greater impact than Iverson. Ramon Sessions' incremental value over Iverson doesn't justify the ridicule of the Grizzlies for pursuing Iverson over Sessions.

Sessions and other players of this year's free agent class aren't sure bets and have additional costs that Iverson doesn't have.

That said, I'm on-board with the argument that pursuing Iverson (and Randolph) in favor of pursuing a star like Amare Stoudemire is a mistake. The Grizzlies biggest failure has been the inability to acquire a first tier star during his prime.

3. IVERSON MAY IMPEDE THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE YOUNG GRIZZLIES.

If OJ Mayo and Rudy Gay are fragile enough that Iverson could derail their development or drive them away, then you have to wonder if Mayo or Gay would ever lead the Grizzlies to success.

On the other hand, if Mike Conley can't play with Kyle Lowry backing him up, is Iverson really the problem? If Conley can develop into an significant player, he can do so playing with Allen Iverson. If he's not an impact player, then what have we lost?

I think its fair to criticize the Grizzlies. They are a terrible team until they prove otherwise. But I don't think the acquisition of Iverson is as obviously bad as most people seem to think it is.

7 comments:

J-Bo said...

Simple, is AI.

100% agree.

Lurch said...

Not sure what J-Bo's first sentence means, but anyway I do agree that people (i.e. Geoff Calkins) make it sound way to simple. Just sign david Lee and Sessions and boom we are the team of the future! Even though neither is a proven winner or want to come to memphis (especially commit long term). They just happen to be the two youngest, most talented FAs in a pretty weak FA year. How is having O.J. Mayo, AI, Gay and randolph on the court at the same time a bad thing for the Grizz? And like you said David, we were going to be awful next year, people were predicting 18 wins bad, there is no way we are going to win less than 18 game swith iverson. One thing that Chris Vernon pointed out is how contradictory it is to have a wins incentive in Iverson's contract and then ask him to come off the bench. Iverson will start more than 60 games this year.

Bill said...

Yes John, it is not that simple. There may be an earthquake that hits the Fed X Forum or Al who is old like I am may not be able to get out of bed in the morning. Lets see if we can come up with some other scenarios? Lida-B

David Jones said...

I can't even respond to these comments. My only hope is that Sam the Man and / or Curt will chime in.

Sam said...

Lionel plans to start him, "We didn't bring Allen Iverson here to sit on the bench." That is great news for all of us who want nothing more than to not watch Conley.

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