The Denver Nuggets want to compete with the best in the West – San Antonio, Utah, Dallas, etc. They knew they didn’t have the team that could beat these teams in a playoff series so they went out and traded for Allen Iverson. The Denver Nuggets want to compete with the best in the West – San Antonio, Utah, Dallas, etc. They knew they didn’t have the team that could beat these teams in a playoff series so they went out and traded for Allen Iverson. Accuscore noticed a few things about Iverson that could be troubling for Denver Nuggets fans. It examined Iverson’s performance over the past 2 seasons vs Eastern Conference and Western Conference Teams. It also categorized Iverson’s opponents as Good, Average and Weak. These designations are based on a combination of the opponents’ average margin of victory and defensive field goal percentage allowed.
The Western Conference has been better than the East for a while now. Not surprisingly, Iverson’s shooting percentage, points per game, and assists per game are considerably lower vs. Western Conference Opponents. It’s also clear that Iverson feasts on the Weakest teams. There is a strong correlation between quality of opponent and Iverson’s quality of play.
Can Iverson help Denver beat the best in the West?
We let our computers take a few hours off from running NFL, NCAA Football, NBA, and NCAA Basketball games and instead focused on how the Nuggets do against 4 of the top teams in the West – the Spurs, Dallas, Utah, and Houston. These teams are all known for playing excellent defense in addition to having a good record. While the Lakers and Suns also have great records, they haven’t traditionally been Top Tier in both margin of victory and defensive FG% so they weren’t included in this analysis. We ran 3 different sets of simulations:
- Baseline: How the Nuggets do if they never traded for Iverson
- Scenario 1: How the Nuggets do after the trade
- Scenario 3: How the Nuggets do after the trade AND if Allen Iverson takes fewer shots and shoots 5% better from the field.
- There is reason to believe that playing with Carmelo Anthony, Iverson will shoot less. He should also shoot a better percentage now that his supporting cast is better.
Troubling Results for Denver
Simulating games at home and on the road the baseline forecast has Denver winning 36.8% of all simulations (average of 8 games). The results of Scenario 1 (after the trade) shows a major decline to 31.8% winning percentage. It seems the trend above (highlighted box) showing Iverson’s shooting problems against top notch, Western Conference, defensive-minded teams takes its toll on Denver’s winning percentage.
Not surprisingly, the numbers get better in Scenario 2 (Iverson shoots better), but the average winning percentage is still considerably lower than the Baseline (no trade at all). Andre Miller may not play with passion and he is certainly not the caliber of player that AI is, but he does shoot better and he distributes the ball well. His 3:1 assist to turnover ratio is much better than Iverson’s 2:1 ratio. The situation could change next year, after the Nuggets have an off-season to revamp their offense to maximize the talents of Iverson playing alongside Anthony, but given this trade is a mid-season one, it could end up having a negative impact just like Philly’s acquisition of Chris Webber (another player who doesn’t shoot a high % and dominates the ball).
Look, we love AI. In fact, Accuscore thinks that AI will help Denver win more games this year. This will help Denver get into the playoffs and help its playoff seeding. However, if Denver thinks that AI will help them truly compete for a NBA Championship, then they are not only wrong, the numbers indicate he actually hurts their chances.