Kotaeru

We'll never see this again :-/

Daily Japanese lesson: Kotaeru = to answer

I was born in Washington, D.C. and spent most of the early part of my life in nearby Capitol Heights, MD.  Before I moved to Greenbelt and started watching the University of Maryland, I was a big Georgetown fan...Allen Iverson and Victor Page were household names.  Needless to say, I was a HUGE Allen Iverson fan throughout his Georgetown years, and well into his years as a Philadelphia 76er.  If you rooted for the underdog or the street guy or the little guy, you rooted for Allen Iverson.  Generously listed at 6'0" tall, he played with a fire and heart that was close to unmatched.  I will forever remember this graphic being displayed in the 2001 NBA Finals

You could say whatever you wanted about him not being a team player or being a heistbox or whatever, but dude was committed to playing and sacrificing his body for his team.

No matter what you think of Allen Iverson as a person or a player, there is no denying his influence on the game.  From the beginning of his career he was an impact player, winning Rookie of the Year honors while averaging 23.5/7.5/2.1 and playing 40(!)min a night.  We all remember the infamous crossover on Michael Jordan...

In the 4 years after Jordan's 2nd retirement, Allen Iverson led the league in scoring average 3 times.  In the 2000-2001 season he led the 76ers to the NBA Finals, earning MVP honors and leaving us with another classic

For all of the on-court heroics and spectacular moments that AI gave us though, what he's perhaps best remembered for is...

Not simply the CLASSIC "practice" rant, but everything that went along with it (I'm curious if he realized that the laughter during the interview was more at him than at what he was saying)...some fans are too young to remember the time in which Iverson played, but if you wanted to point at anything that you felt was "wrong" with the league, Iverson was the poster child.  Tattoos?  Check.  Durag?  Check.  Cornrows?  Check.  The cocked fitted hat?  Check.  White tees and baggy jeans?  Check.  A rap album littered with "nigga" and "faggot"?  Check. Iverson was everything that Michael Jordan's clean-shaven image wasn't.  You could see his influence on other players in the NBA as well, and his "jack it up" mentality definitely contributed to a number of children growing up playing basketball "the wrong way."  As David Stern cracked down on the league (dress codes, etc.) you could see that the NBA was no longer a place that welcomed the likes of Allen Iverson.  Indeed, as he said in the below interview, he effectively ended up leaving (or being kicked out) of the NBA rather than change who he was as a person

Today I heard a story about the Dallas Mavericks making AI an offer to join their D-League team...AI predictably refused, basically saying it wasn't for him.  This is right in line with his refusal to be a bench guy, commenting that an MVP doesn't come off the bench.  For the most part, this is true.  Since I really started watching the NBA, the MVPs were...

Michael Jordan (a starter for the vast majority of his career)
Charles Barkley (a starter even in his twilight)
Hakeem Olajuwon (a starter for most of his career)
David Robinson (a starter for all but 2 games of his career)
Karl Malone (a starter for every post-rookie season game)
Shaquille O'Neal (a starter for the vast majority of his career)

And the current guys like Nash, Dirk, LeBron, Rose, Kobe, etc. are all still starting whenever they aren't injured.  When you add the fact that AI won 4 scoring titles, it's pretty understandable that 1. He wouldn't want to come off the bench, and 2. He wouldn't want to play in the D-League at all.  This is the #1 overall pick of the same 1996 NBA Draft that spawned Ray Allen, Kobe Bryant, and Steve Nash.  His career averages are 26.7/6.2/2.2.  He's got the 2nd-highest career playoff ppg at 29.7ppg.  He's won 4 scoring titles.  Led the league in steals 3 times.  Led the league in minutes per game 7 times, and averaged 41mpg.  Ray is coming off the bench, but we saw the uproar that it caused when he was asked to come off the bench during his 16th season for Avery Bradley, and I'm sure that even now he struggles with coming off the bench, even if it's for Dwyane Wade.  As long as Kobe is getting 38min a night and starting in the NBA, there's no way you can really expect AI to think he should be in the D-League.

That being said, there's a reason why Kobe has scored over 30,000 points and AI capped out at a little over 24,000, despite having a higher per game average.  Ironically, a major part of that is practice.  Kobe practices...a lot.  He spends enormous amounts of time improving and perfecting his game, as well as making sacrifices to stay in top shape.  This is why he's still leading the Lakers, despite being 17 seasons in (plus 7 Finals trips).  Allen Iverson, for all of his heart and determination, never developed a reliable jumpshot, couldn't stay healthy most seasons, and is undersized while being slower than he was in his prime.  Without any video of Allen Iverson going up against NBA competition in 2013, it's unlikely that a team would spring even for a 10-day contract.  Most of the older players in the league, whether it's Rasheed or Kurt Thomas or Jerry Stackhouse have an advantage over AI: size.  Size will always be wanted, as seen by the Heat signing Juwan Howard last year and Birdman this season.  If AI had a serviceable 3 ball like Stackhouse or even just had an abundance of energy and maybe 85% of his old speed, like a Nate Robinson, he might be able to convince a team to take a chance on him.  As it stands now, though, he's an old, undersized, temperamental player with 3 years of NBA rust on him.  The odds just aren't that high for him to be allowed to jump back in the NBA.

Which brings me to this...as an Allen Iverson fan, I think that he's got to do whatever it takes to get back in the league and have a proper send-off.  When he showed up in Philly during last year's playoffs, amid speculation about his finances, that crowd showed him a TON of love...Philly is the type of city that respects someone like Allen Iverson.  I think most fans of that era would love to see AI in a 76ers uniform (even though they've got plenty of guards in Holiday, Turner, Young, Wright, Richardson, etc.), but what about Allen Iverson joining the Atlanta Hawks?  They just lost Lou Williams and I'm pretty sure Lou and AI are cool with each other, maybe Atlanta takes a chance on AI as a backup guard.  At the end of the day though, unless AI can prove that he's not merely a shadow of himself (which for all we know, maybe he's having a Tim Duncan/Kobe Bryant revitalization) he won't be getting any starting nods in a league with an abundance of talented guards.