Fast Break: Part 3 of Iverson Out of Shooting Guard Prison

Here's a statistic made just for Iverson and any other PG/SGs: Points per assists.

If you have a combo guide where you have no choice but to designate him point guard, you need to monitor and manage the PPA or Points per assist. Because you don't want him to cheat the point guard position just to be able to score more. Consider the Iverson points per assists over the years:

ALLEN IVERSON
POINTS PER ASSIST
96-97 3.13
97-98 3.55
98-99 5.83
99-00 6.04
00-01 6.76
01-02 5.71
02-03 5.02
03-04 3.88
04-05 3.89
05-06 4.46
06-07 4.27 Sixers
06-07 3.44 Nuggets
07-08 3.72

One of many important things you can conclude from this is that a natural combo guard (like Dwyane Wade) or a point guard who became a combo guard because of some bonehead coach, who is returned to the point guard position (that would be Allen Iverson, Holmes) should be asked to get enough assists so that his points per assists ratio is 3.00. or less. The speed limit for Allen Iverson on the Pistons should be 3 points per assist.

The real dream among the small but totally on point supporters of Iverson at point guard group is to get it down to 2.00, such as 20 points per game and 10 assists per game. All I am saying right at this moment is that whether you can or want to get it down to 2.00, you definitely need to get it down to 3.00 or less. Just getting it to 3.00 is something that the anti-Iverson crowd thinks can not be achieved.

Notice that after Larry Brown moved him away from point guard, his points per assist went sky high. After Brown left, his points per assist went down sharply, but it never went down to what it was in his rookie of the year at point guard season, which was 3.13, just about at the 3.00 I am talking about.

Notice that Iverson's points per assist went down more after he moved from the Sixers to the Nuggets. But most and maybe all of that is due to Carmelo Anthony being such a volume scorer for the Nuggets. Iverson passing a lot more and shooting a lot less was not a big reason that that happened. Iverson did modify in that direction, but he was pulled in the other, wrong direction by George Karl. Karl ordered him to continue to try to score as much as he did in Philadelphia.

Now in the case of the Pistons, you have a team that has several great scorers, but no super high volume scorers. So since the three high scoring Pistons roughly equal Carmelo Anthony in "scoring tendency," if Iverson were told to not change anything, you could expect his points per assists to remain in the 3.50 to 3.75 range, as it was at Denver.

Now we know from Denver that 3.50 to 3.75, although much lower than the far out Brown years, is still not low enough as long as you are not a 20-62 team which needs Iverson to get the bulk of your points. You want a reduction in that. A reduction to 3.00 (and preferably even a little lower) is what everyone involved (except for the "Iverson can't..." crowd, and the Nuggets) should be looking for in the weeks ahead here.

I will of course keep you posted. I'll be posting Iverson's points per assist as his most important statistic.