http://www.freep.com/article/20091028/S ... ot-PistonsIverson blames Curry, not Pistons
Grizzlies guard Allen Iverson was sitting down at the FedEx Forum today, talking to reporters, when he stopped for a moment to wave down at the other end of the court. He greeted members of the Pistons’ traveling party, and it was apparent the player who many fans blame for torpedoing the Pistons' era of dominance last season has no ill will toward anyone currently associated with the team. He saves his bitterness for former Pistons coach Michael Curry. “I was put in a bad situation that I, obviously, wasn’t mentally ready for because I was promised it would be another way, and it was totally different,” said Iverson, who will sit out tonight’s season opener with a left hamstring injury. “Obviously, it didn’t work out. The head coach isn’t even there any more after one season. “It didn’t turn out the way Michael Curry said it was gonna be.”
He added that if current Pistons coach John Kuester were around last season, things would have turned out differently than a losing record and first-round playoff exit. “It would have been a 100% different or 100% better, a thousand percent better, because I would have known what I was getting myself in,” Iverson said with a laugh. “I’m pretty sure Q would have been straightforward with me about how things would have been, and things would have ended up that way.” Iverson said Curry lied to him by saying Iverson would never have to come off the bench. Curry hasn’t commented since being fired by Pistons president of basketball operations Joe Dumars in late June. When Iverson briefly returned to the lineup after a back injury last winter, Curry had Iverson come off the bench. Iverson played a few games, openly complaining about the role, before he and the Pistons agreed to shut him down for the season.
Pistons guard Rip Hamilton, who was at the center of the controversy by starting ahead of Iverson, backs Iverson’s account and thinks the pairing could have worked if a better coach were around. “I just thought that the coach we had at the time (didn’t allow us to be) at our best, and when you don’t have that, it makes it difficult because all guys are just trying to figure each other out on the floor on the fly other than putting us in situations where we can make each other better,” Hamilton said today. As far as any rift between the two, Iverson and Hamilton, who share agent Leon Rose, scoffed. “I think the media tried to make it something that it really wasn’t, that we weren’t friends,” Hamilton said. “We talk off the court all the time, to this day. “It was just something that was magnified to a spot where it was me versus him, and it never was. We were always very supportive of each other. We just didn’t win.”
