Iverson vs Nash

[durantbird]

Higher on your all time list - Allen Iverson or Steve Nash?

[70sFan]

Nash without thinking twice.

[Amares]

Nash and this is not even close, he was much better player.

[Threezus]

Nash should win this in a land slide and i like AI quite a bit.

[frica]

Nash by like 20-30 places.

[No-more-rings]

What's Ai's case aside from the fact he can shoot 30 times a game? I don't mean to sound disrespectful to him, but Nash blows him away as an offensive player, plain and simple.

I'm sure we'll have a few people show up and make the case for Ai based on his scoring volume, the fact that he took a team to the finals or some other narrative based thing.

[bondom34]

This is a bit insulting to Nash. I'd have him closer to 50 spots ahead all time.

[Ryoga Hibiki]

the funny thing is that if you ask outside here almost everybody would take Iverson, including former and current players.
even Dallas Nash was a much better player

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[Alfred]

the funny thing is that if you ask outside here almost everybody would take Iverson, including former and current players.
even Dallas Nash was a much better player

In the public's perception, Iverson was a Kobe-like superstar. Even a cursory glance at the statistics show that his play did not line up with his reputation. I also think that players put a much higher value on 1-on-1 skills than what the other things that help win games, and Iverson had exceptional 1-on-1 skills, and was a lot flashier, although Nash was a very exciting player as well.

[Doctor MJ]

the funny thing is that if you ask outside here almost everybody would take Iverson, including former and current players.
even Dallas Nash was a much better player

In the public's perception, Iverson was a Kobe-like superstar. Even a cursory glance at the statistics show that his play did not line up with his reputation. I also think that players put a much higher value on 1-on-1 skills than what the other things that help win games, and Iverson had exceptional 1-on-1 skills, and was a lot flashier, although Nash was a very exciting player as well.

This is true but of course the public overrates Kobe much like they AI, and for the exact same reasons. Meanwhile they drastically underrate Nash.

The public has fallen in love with basketball from an individualistic perspective, which is another way of saying that they fundamentally miss much of team basketball's actual skillset. It's honestly funny to me that there's never been a serious TV spectacle based around one-on-one tournaments. If the NBA at some point ends up dying, I could see a one-on-one or two-on-two social media-based league really taking over.

[Wallace_Wallace]

If Nash could shoot 30 times a game, he'd be like Steph Curry. BUT Nash could also make a team gel together offensively.

Defensively, they both are pretty bad.

[s0ciety]

It's Nash, this really isn't a discussion worth having, AI was a fun player but you take Nash every day

[Strepbacter]

Nash is the guy who won two MVP awards that he clearly didn't deserve. He's the most overrated player in league history. Dude was nothing more than a borderline all-star before the rule changes and now you've got these kids acting like he was the GOAT. It's ridiculous.

[GeorgeMarcus]

AI gets really underrated by a lot of people (even if he's overrated by casuals). This is Nash though.

I will say however, I'd rather have AI on the 01 Sixers. He was better suited to carry a scoring load the way he did.

[Ryoga Hibiki]

the funny thing is that if you ask outside here almost everybody would take Iverson, including former and current players.
even Dallas Nash was a much better player

In the public's perception, Iverson was a Kobe-like superstar. Even a cursory glance at the statistics show that his play did not line up with his reputation. I also think that players put a much higher value on 1-on-1 skills than what the other things that help win games, and Iverson had exceptional 1-on-1 skills, and was a lot flashier, although Nash was a very exciting player as well.

This is true but of course the public overrates Kobe much like they AI, and for the exact same reasons. Meanwhile they drastically underrate Nash.

The public has fallen in love with basketball from an individualistic perspective, which is another way of saying that they fundamentally miss much of team basketball's actual skillset. It's honestly funny to me that there's never been a serious TV spectacle based around one-on-one tournaments. If the NBA at some point ends up dying, I could see a one-on-one or two-on-two social media-based league really taking over.

I don't think we can so easily dismiss that former/active players are on the other side, to be honest.

Read on Twitter

[limbo]

Iverson represents a lot of things people (especially in American 'urban' culture) find appealing. High volume scoring, flashy game, style/swag, 1v5 mentality on court, underdog putting a team on his back, misunderstood person etc. It's not hard to see why most people identify with him more than with Nash, especially in regards to their basketball peers.

I will say,though, i really like how much Iverson has matured as a person after retiring. He's not out there crying about how his career went, proclaiming he'd be 'this and that' if only circumstances were different. Despite former players constantly blowing smoke up his behind and putting him among the best players ever, AI always seem to respond with a fair share of humility, and is quick to throw praise back at players, regardless of era. None of that "if i played in this era, i would've averaged 42 ppg" saltiness... It's like, "i had my time, we can talk ifs and buts, but now, just let me enjoy the game as a fan".

[Joao Saraiva]

Steve Nash. He makes offense work at elite levels. You give a good cast and he'll elevate them to maybe the best offesnive team in the league. He is efficient, has range and is easy to combine with almost any type of player. He's miles ahead of AI playmaking wise.

You give AI a good cast and he'll make other players pissed for not sharing the ball like in 04 with Duncan in the olympics. He'll overlap with a ton of players because his USG% is so high. He doesn't play a lot off ball. With the ball in his hands he has the foccus on getting his shots, not distributing 1st. He's also inefficient. His best skills are motor, ability to get his own shot even at not great efficiency. The only type of cast I can see working with AI is a super elite defensive team, with good shooters who don't require the ball to make points and are not great enough to demand the ball themselves a lot. It's a complicated feat.

[Doctor MJ]

In the public's perception, Iverson was a Kobe-like superstar. Even a cursory glance at the statistics show that his play did not line up with his reputation. I also think that players put a much higher value on 1-on-1 skills than what the other things that help win games, and Iverson had exceptional 1-on-1 skills, and was a lot flashier, although Nash was a very exciting player as well.

This is true but of course the public overrates Kobe much like they AI, and for the exact same reasons. Meanwhile they drastically underrate Nash.

The public has fallen in love with basketball from an individualistic perspective, which is another way of saying that they fundamentally miss much of team basketball's actual skillset. It's honestly funny to me that there's never been a serious TV spectacle based around one-on-one tournaments. If the NBA at some point ends up dying, I could see a one-on-one or two-on-two social media-based league really taking over.

I don't think we can so easily dismiss that former/active players are on the other side, to be honest.

Read on Twitter

Oh the fact that NBA players continue to overrate individualist skillsets and underrate team-oriented skilsets is not something to be ignored but dissected, and so me calling the group in general "the public" isn't an ideal phrasing because it doesn't encompass the extent of the tendrils of these ideas.

What's definitely the case though is that when players see the game this way, they are themselves quite different from earlier eras of NBA basketball players. This is the era that Jordan made, and these are the players who were children, and hence part of the public, who were made by it.

To be clear: I'm not looking to vilify "individualist" as an inherently horrible thing. I think what we've seen repeatedly in basketball history is that tidy notions of "There's no I in team" mentality get blown up by outlier individual talent, with Jordan being the most glorious modern example but Hank Luisetti and George Mikan are other examples.

The reality is that optimal team play is always about recognizing how to optimize use of your best competitive advantage, which means there should always be some sort of asymmetry in your approach that has aspects of individualism and collectivism, and that what we're talking about here is a tendency toward a more simplistic narrative necessarily biasing observers too far in one direction or another.

The Jordanite mindset thus is one example of this, and it can be exemplified not simply by Iverson vs Nash, but I'd argue far more dramatically in the fact that you can find NBA players who honestly think Kyrie Irving is better than Steph Curry...and Kevin Durant may well be one of them.

[Doctor MJ]

Iverson represents a lot of things people (especially in American 'urban' culture) find appealing. High volume scoring, flashy game, style/swag, 1v5 mentality on court, underdog putting a team on his back, misunderstood person etc. It's not hard to see why most people identify with him more than with Nash, especially in regards to their basketball peers.

I will say,though, i really like how much Iverson has matured as a person after retiring. He's not out there crying about how his career went, proclaiming he'd be 'this and that' if only circumstances were different. Despite former players constantly blowing smoke up his behind and putting him among the best players ever, AI always seem to respond with a fair share of humility, and is quick to throw praise back at players, regardless of era. None of that "if i played in this era, i would've averaged 42 ppg" saltiness... It's like, "i had my time, we can talk ifs and buts, but now, just let me enjoy the game as a fan".

Very true, and I'll say that circa 2001, AI was my favorite player. He was the icon of cool after Jordan and I felt that like many others.

Honestly, if you wanted to encapsulate my journey as a basketball fan from casual to whatever I am now, these two players would probably be the place to start.

I cheered hard for those 76ers ahead of my own Lakers - who I soured on as the Shaq-Kobe feud escalated - and honestly thought Iverson was as good as any player in the league not named Shaq, only to conclude that Iverson was really wrong about his approach and attitude based on more detail analysis years later.

Nash was an afterthought for me until he went back to Phoenix, and even then, part of what drew me in was an objection to the notion that he could possibly be an MVP candidate. I honestly thought it was absurd and a clear case of over-simplistic narrative. Data coming in in the other direction and all that followed not only made Nash the player I was most attached to, but pushed me to actually get serious about studying NBA basketball...which is what led to my later turn away from AI.

[shansolsde]

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