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Lincicome: Iverson not answer for Nuggets

Published December 15, 2006 at midnight

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If Allen Iverson is The Answer, someone is asking the wrong question.

The Nuggets would not win the NBA title with Allen Iverson. No team will win the NBA title with Iverson. The 76ers could not win with Iverson. The U.S. Olympic team could not win with Iverson. Georgetown could not win with Iverson.

Iverson went from co-captain of America's Team to being unwelcomed on his own team, the same team he carried on his slight shoulders to the NBA Finals a few years ago, paid not to play, expunged from Philadelphia and denied international participation even after he had to ask.

Anyone who looks at Iverson and sees a savior ought to turn the binoculars around.

Sooner or later, everyone rejects Iverson, his coaches - five in the past five years - his teammates, his employers, his nation, or at least Team USA mentor Jerry Colangelo.

Iverson will eventually be just too much trouble, and eventually could mean somewhere in the second quarter.

There is no denying he is a nice little player, Iverson. Nice selfish little player. Plays hard. Can score. Causes trouble. Is defensive, not on the court, just in the world. Couldn't cover a sneeze with a tablecloth.

Bad idea Iverson.

An eye magnet, sure, that's Iverson. He is worth watching if you like loose threads on a dinner jacket. He is the olive in the salad - can't miss him, can't digest him.

He would not be a bargain for the Nuggets, except that maybe Iverson and Carmelo Anthony would need only the single hairdresser.

Iverson is almost everything the NBA has denied that it is, that it is not a league of punks and posers, that you love this game and not this guy or that guy and most certainly, please, not that Iverson.

The NBA has passed rules to curb the bling that Iverson not only embodies but spreads, an infection of casual insolence, poor fashion and enough loud jewelry to anchor a cruise ship. And an attitude. Me first, you never.

Iverson is just too seriously peculiar for comfort, like the nutty uncle at the picnic. You try to keep him away from the folks you have to do business with during the week.

Iverson is the most distinctive creature to inhabit the NBA since Dennis Rodman, except with Iverson, tackiness is not an act. He seems, in fact, a rather decent sort, burdened by an obligation to be liked, if always on his terms.

Iverson insists people have not tried to understand him, as if it is their duty to do so.

Certainly basketball at the Pepsi Center would be more interesting and life around the Nuggets would be louder, a clash of posses maybe more a problem than any clash between Anthony and Iverson.

Anthony apparently wants Iverson, this coming from a summer vacation in Athens during the Olympics, when Iverson played harder than anyone on the U.S. team and Anthony played almost not at all.

Maybe there was a bonding of outcasts there, Iverson understanding how a young player could not get along with Larry Brown, since Iverson was one himself.

But Iverson really does not get along with anybody; that is, anybody with whom he must share the basketball. Things are done on his schedule, from his vision, at his speed.

If Iverson had clashes with Brown, his dealing with George Karl will make anything that Kenyon Martin did look like passing out hymnals.

Following the truism that one great player is not enough, other good and some great players were added to Iverson in Philadelphia. He managed not to make anyone of them - the most recent example being Chris Webber - better. In fact, he made them worse.

There is no reason to believe Iverson would not do the same to Anthony. He is not likely to accommodate his instincts in service of Anthony, to shoot only when Anthony has no shot, to dish when Anthony is open, to not dominate the ball but give it up.

As remarkable as Iverson is as an individual attraction, too small to do what he does, too frail to do it as long as he has, all of that, he fits in about as well as a marble in the meat loaf.

How desperate the Nuggets must be to consider taking this distraction into their parlor.

This is not to say that it wouldn't work out. Not every garden slug ruins the tomatoes. Not every odor soils the carpet.

Not every tattooed, head-banded, self-absorbed, me-first brat refuses to work well with others.

Although none comes to mind.

Quest for The Answer

The latest in the 76ers' bid to trade guard Allen Iverson:

• The Nuggets, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer, are exploring a three-way deal that would send Nene to Portland, Joe Smith and the Trail Blazers' Jamaal Magloire to Philadelphia and Iverson to the Nuggets. Mark Warkentien, Nuggets vice president of basketball operations, did not return calls from the News seeking comment.

• The Boston Globe reports Minnesota, Golden State and Denver are the front-runners, with Dallas, Indiana, Chicago and the Clippers other possibilities.

• Rod Smith is not an NBA general manager, but the Broncos receiver would like to see Iverson in a Nuggets uniform. "If he's there, trust me, I'm going," he said.