Allen Iverson vs Isiah Thomas

[Joao Saraiva]

I am asking who is the better player. Isiah already got voted in the all time list, while some people here say Iverson is out of the top 50. What's the excuse? Iverson isn't efficient? Guess what, Thomas isn't too. Are some guys here getting biased because of the two rings Isiah won? I think it's general consensuus Isiah's team was way better than any Iverson team.

Anyway:
SCORING
Allen Iverson he's the better volume scorer, that is not even questionable. Averaged 26.7 PPG in his career, 4 seasons above 30 PPG and was a multiple time NBA scoring champ.

Isiah averaged 19.2 PPG in his career, and peaked at 22.9 PPG (lower than Iverson's average).

In terms of volume scoring it's Iverson, and it's not even close.

But we expected that. After all people usually say Allen Iverson is nothing but a volume scorer with no efficiency. So let's look at their efficiency:
Iverson - 51.8ts%
Isiah - 51.6 ts%.

On the time Iverson was in Denver (on a good team) he averaged 25.6 PPG on 55.9ts%. Those are actually good numbers.

Iverson is a more efficient scorer than Isiah, and considering he puts a lot more volume and usually played with worse teams, I say Iverson has a solid advantage here.

PLAYMAKING/TAKING CARE OF THE BALL
Career APG:
Isiah 9.3 (peaked at 13.9)
Iverson 6.2 (peaked at 7.9)

So Isiah has more APG. He also has 4 seasons above 10 APG. Iverson never got close to those numbers, but it could be expected. Iverson's numbers are also good.

Let's see what turn overs and assist ratios tell us here.
TOV% (career)
Iverson - 12.2
Isiah - 16.8

So Iverson is assisting less, but he's turning the ball a lot less than Isiah. And considering Iverson's big gap in terms of volume production in scoring, I say he's better at taking care of the ball than Isiah.

Giving a look at APG, AST% and TOV% I think it's safe to conclude:
Isiah assisted his teammates a lot more and he's a better playmaker than Iverson. Still Iverson is good at it.
Iverson takes care of the ball a lot better than Isah.

REBOUNDING
Their TRB% are really close (5.3 for Isiah 5.1 for Iverson).

Iverson has 4 seasons above 4 RPG while Isiah has only one.

I don't think there is a big gap here, but I still like Iverson a bit more.

DEFENSE
Isiah was a great defender. I'm glad that is general consensus, because it's true. Iverson wasn't as good, but I can't stand people saying he was a bad defender. He wasn't. If you can't fault Iverson for one thing is heart. He gave a lot of effort with his D, and sometimes he had liminations because he was very small to play SG.

Isiah played along with Dumars, so that helped him a lot on D too. Iverson had Mckie, Eric Snow...

It's still Isiah here by a solid margin.

So putting it into perspective: (based on stats)
Volume scoring: Iverson
Efficiency: Iverson
Playmaking: Isiah
Taking care of the ball: Iverson
Rebounding: they're about the same (I'd still go with Iverson)
Defense - Isiah.
Stealer - Iverson

There is a reason why Allen Iverson was MVP once. It wasn't a fluke. He really played at MVP level (you can argue he didn't deserve it, but he was certainly up there with the best players in the NBA). Does Isiah even have a case for MVP in any year of his career?

Aren't people overrating Isiah due to team success and underrating Iverson because he played a lot of years with very bad offensive casts?

[RebelWithACause]

Isiah is already in because the people who voted him in believe that his playmaking was great and impacting the offense greatly and he raised his game in the playoffs.
Those are the main differences between Thomas and Iverson.
Oh and defense as well.