Thursday, March 26th, 2009 at 10:00 am  |  97 responses

Reggie Miller Doesn’t Believe Allen Iverson

by Marcel Mutoni

Though A.I. maintains that he will be a good soldier, and faithfully come off the bench for the Pistons once his back feels better, a lot of people are skeptical. Among those is Reggie Miller, who shared his feelings with a national TV audience.

From the Detroit News:

What Reggie Miller said on the TNT broadcast Tuesday night was what a lot of people, myself included, have thought and hinted and even wrote about — that Allen Iverson’s injury was more about a bruised ego than a hurt back. Here’s what Reggie said:

“I’ve played a lot of games against Allen Iverson when he was with the Philadelphia 76ers, and he is one of the toughest guys I’ve ever gone against. But having said that and knowing the information we know, what [strength and conditioning coach] Arnie Kander is saying, it’s almost like (Iverson) is holding this team hostage because he cannot accept the responsibility of coming off the bench and that’s sad because he is one of the truly great little men we’ve ever had in the game.”

Kander told TNT pretty much what myself and others have repeatedly reported. Every test that’s been run on Iverson’s back has shown no structural damage. The original MRI that was done in Orlando at the end of February has never been disputed.

It’s funny and sad in a way, as Iverson’s legendary toughness seems to now be working against him.

Had he not gutted it out so many times in the past, fighting through injuries that would’ve sidelined most other players, would any of this even be up for debate? Unlikely.

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  • http://www.manutd.com Z

    Why are Sheed and AI not on the bench at home games? Rip is there, no? Does that bother teams when guys are not there? I would think that it shows support but maybe it’s really no biggie.

  • http://nba.com Eightd

    Tyshaun is a punk on the court beleive me I met him, Curry can’t play b-ball and can’t coach, AI is not the problem.

  • Jackie Moon

    Kwame Brown.

  • http://www.twitter.com/TheDiesel Anton

    He’s even hogging when he doesn’t have the ball

  • truthteller

    I’m not really surprised. Iverson is a great player but has never been much of a team player at ALL! Never been able to play with other stars! I laughed when he was asked his opinion on Rip coming off the bench and he said, “It’s all about sacrifice. We gotta do what’s good for the team to win.” That was easy for him to say ’cause he didn’t have to come off the bench! Then I wondered how he would react if he had been asked to come off the bench. I guess I know now.

  • Diogo

    “He is one of the best little men” WHAT THE F*CK? Best little man? AI is one of the best basketball players ever. WTF! He is even better than you Reggie!

  • truthteller

    And people saying that Detroit is garbage need to quit smoking whatever it is they are smoking! I know people love AI but let’s be real here! What was Detroit’s record before they traded for Billups for AI? 4-0! And they’ve been struggling ever since! Let’s not forget that the Pistons have been great for the last 6 seasons! AI on the other hand has always had trouble playing with other great players! His history has proved that! In philly, everyone says that he didn’t have any help but they all forgot that he had Jerry Stackhouse as a teammate and that they had to trade him ’cause him and AI couldn’t co-exist. Then look at him in Denver! I don’t think I need to start naming the talent that team has and he couldn’t do anything with it ’cause he had to be the man! Look at what Chauncy is doing with the exact same team! Then he comes to detroit and now they are struggling and you don’t think AI has anything to do with this? Comon people! If this were Kobe, we would all get in his ass about how selfish he is. Let’s do the same and keep it real with AI!

  • DALLAS STOKES

    Billups dont have to come off the bench. It was a bad trade get the man outta there this summer cause him pullin a “McGrady” is some sad shhhhhh

  • whooo!

    marcel, it wasn’t the fact that iverson’s past toughness is impacting people’s perceptions, rather, it’s the well known refusal of him to come off the bench that makes us not believe him. i forget which year, but he was coming off an injury, and so the coach wanted to ease him back in by coming off the bench, and iverson flat out refused, saying he’s a starter. about a week later, tim duncan came off the bench while recovering from an injury. iverson’s one of the greatest players we’ve ever watched, but easily one of the most selfish as well.

  • truthteller

    thank you whoo. Finally somebody being completly honest about Iverson!

  • http://hopspot2@verizon.net Pat Hopkins

    I am so sick of hearing what Chauncey has done with Denver. The reason Denver is better although with AI last year less Nene, Martin just coming back out 2 years, no Birdman they won 50 games so please lets not give Chauncey all the credit. He has a healthy Nene which is key Martin is back in shape this year, Birdman is a big suprise. Oh and by the way AI was in the top 5 in scoring last year. As for Reggie Miller I am dispapointed. Allen is ok to play now because he wanted to verify his back was ok and as long as he knows that he will play in pain. What none of the Reggie Millers of the world realize is that he not only had pain in his back, but also in his legs and for a player that relies on his speed like he does that is frightening. I have followed this guy since he played for the Sixers and he is truly amazing. Think Reggie or Chauncey will be a FIRST TIME HALL OF FAMER LIKE ALLEN WILL. Just stating facts people. Now have no time for Reggie Miller.

  • truthteller

    TADone read the comment whooo posted. Then the comment I posted before that. That’s your answer to the question you asked about giving Iverson the benefit of doubt.

  • http://www.blogs.myspace.com/originadro Witness

    Im sure AI will get starter minutes? ARe the player introductions that cool?

  • truthteller

    Pat Hopkins,
    We have to give Chauncy the credit for Denver’s success ’cause we saw what he did in Detroit! And don’t forget that! I’m a Pistons fan so I can’t forget it! And Iverson being one of the top 5 scorers last season means nothing. As a matter of fact, it just proves my point exactly! So, do you think the Nuggets would have been this good with Ai and everybody back this year? Or better yet, do you think the Pistons would be this bad if Chauncy were still in Detroit? Be very honest with yourself when answering those questions!

  • Stilesy

    This is typical, people talking ish an forgettin all AI has accomplished, Hasnt anyone ever had a job they worked really hard at then things stopped going their way and felt underappreciated? You take time off sick cos you get pissed off and need time to think about what you need to do next.
    Now I know that I am talking about a multi millionaire sports superstar but damn, hes a human being just like the rest of us, you would be pissed if the only thing you know how to do started to slip away from you.
    The trouble with this league is that it is and will always be about money, if you cannot generate the typoe of mass appeal anymore you are out, regardless of your past greatness. Give AI a break, Iversons got a bad back bevause he has been carrying every team hes been on…..

  • http://PROTEGECOLLECTIONYAHOO.COM DALLAS STOKES

    I UNDERSTAND YOUR POINT PAT BUT LETS BE HONEST HERE. THE NUGGETS HAVE A BETTER POINT GAURD AT THIS POINT PERIOD. THE TEAM IS PLAYING TO WIN PERIOD. EVERYONE WANTS TO RAVE ABOUT A.I. AND HIS WONDERFUL PAST BUT THE PAST DONT WIN CHIPS.CHAUNCEY WILL BE A FIRST TIME HALL OF FAMER BEFORE ALLEN THE MAN HAS RINGS AND THERE NOT FROM JACOB THE JEWELER!!!

  • nate james

    i miss vintige A.I. and old school tmac. basketball isnt what it use to be. its all lame @ss calls, or lebron this lebron that. fuKKK lebron.
    ugh. idk anymore.

  • dave

    iverson should get his f***ing ass outa motown

  • truthteller

    Stilesy,
    AI showed how selfish he was back then too! Com’on bruh! AI refused to come off the bench one year in phily cause he was coming off an injury and the coach felt he should ease him in and AI refused. Didn’t Duncan come off the bench the same year after also coming off an injury? Oh and before I forget, doesn’t Tim Duncan have 4 rings? How many does AI have again? Nobody is hating on AI, we’re just stating fact! AI HAS ALWAYS BEEN ABOUT HIMSELF. Yes, he wants to ring a chip but isn’t willing to sacrifice to do it. And ’cause of it he will NEVER win a ring in the NBA! NEVER!!!!!!!!!!!!
    And this is really sad ’cause if he wasn’t selfsih he would have at least 3 by now!

  • ThedefinitonOf

    AI isnt faking this, the man lives to play, but he definately isnt worried about making it make soon. Motown shackeled him up, and without a freelance type of flow AI is about as good as von wafer. AI has slowed and it is showing. AI is a one man show that cant shoot and turns the ball over way too much. He was brought to detorit to break down defenses(besides finanical motivation), but everytime he gets inside he leaves his feet and turns the ball over. Refs dont respect him anymore, which is apparent by the lack of superstar calls he was accustomed to. He is a viable 6 man at this point in his career but without a doubt their will be some finanically stressed team out their that will bring him in to sell tickets…..Im thinking Charlote

  • Teddy-the-Bear

    @ Pat Hopkins: What the hell, Reggie Miller is obviously going to be a Hall of Famer too, just like Al. And I agree, AI AND Miller are both better than Chauncey.

  • http://www.benfolds.com/acappella Dacre

    the thing is…. AI has fought through injury and pain to play beause he has always been about THE TEAM…thats how he always has been…THE TEAM had his back and so he fought for theirs…. wind the clock forward to this year and he is on a team of successful vets that have ran a set system, he comes in…and if you asked the pistons players they probably wuld have held onto CB…so here he is a guy that plays for THE TEAM and they dont really gel…and the losses start up…and all of a sudden your role needs to be ‘support cast’ not ‘lead us’… I would start feeling all my injuries for once too… AI needs guys in his corner, THE TEAM thats what makes him ‘untouchable’…

  • truthteller

    Dacre,
    You are nuts!!! AI wants to win but he’s never been willing to sacrifice for the better of the team! If he was about the team then why couldn’t he play with Stackhouse in Philly when he first got there? Why couldn’t he do much in Denver? And let’s not forget that he never liked practice (practice? and he refused to come off the bench in Phily when he was coming off an injury (Tim Duncan came off the bench the same year ’cause he was coming off an injury) AI is a great player no doubt but he’s always been about getting his stats and his shine on and not the team and that’s real talk homie!

  • http://joeloholic.wordpress.com Joel O’s

    AI has always been a team-first player. And he does what is best for his team… *on his terms*, and in his way. There’s a subtle difference between that and being selfish. Denver didn’t work out, but is AI to blame as much as Denver’s unbalanced starting 5? All he did in Denver was score at a much higher FG% than his career average, take 5 less shots per game than the years before, and average 7+ APG.

  • http://joeloholic.wordpress.com Joel O’s

    More causation-correlation mistakes here. AI’s presence didn’t CAUSE the Detroit implosion. There’s a whole bunch of other factors involved. Losing Chauncey? New coach? New system? How about a 4-0 record not being a very big sample size to begin with?

  • http://www.benfolds.com/acappella Dacre

    Truthteller – Guys that are out there just to ‘get stats’ don’t play through nagging injuries…let alone DOMINATE whilst injured…they look to rest up and be healthy, because they often only play real well when they feel real well….MJ, BlackMamba, AI, Isaiah Thomas and many others that could be named along side them have built up historical accounts of rising not just over a wall of injury to succeed but to smash through it. Allen Iverson is easily part of that group….he opts out of practice for the simple reason that you KNOW he is going to play hard out there and gut it out for team mates and himself… SURE IT’S NOT A GREAT REASON to opt out of practice, because otherwise your still playing with ‘strangers’ in a team concept – that doesn’t work… as JOEL O’S stated…he does it on his terms…thats where the error perhaps lies….

  • AI

    Hi this is Allen Iverson. I want to clear something up right here right now. I ain’t no punk bit*h coming off the bench. You got that? I don’t care what the snitches be sayin’ but I ain’t never coming off nobody’s benches!

  • Blinguo

    For the sake of this bruised ego, but not on some Kanye egomaniac level, we just need AI on PHX or the GSW next year, to solve plenty of problems. Including the will AI get a ring question. Which has probably been answered already. And that was a bad set of puns on his signature shoe names/handles. Here’s hoping he doesn’t have to go the SAS route and then still not get a ring, like Nick Van Exel tried. Finley is still on his 10-15 min game Pop needs in the exact number of role-players to run that team and thus got his by being able to stick around longer. Don’t need AI crashing and burning new bridges in the twilight of his career where he’s at a crossroads of still being able to make a transition on his own terms due to what he’s capable of night to night, or choosing “maturity” and taking backseats even if he’s never done it or its so against his very nature its like he can’t. That free agency/contract not re-upped by DETROIT Basketball cannot come soon enough and his agent needs to be working much harder than TNT Overtime, and a billion calls more than T.O.’s agent, exaggeration but not much.

  • Jeter

    If the reports are true that isaiah will be heading to the Clippers, look for him to get Iverson. Imagine the backcourt of Baron Davis and Allen Iverson. Their coach should be Phil. Not Jackson, Dr. Phil!

  • Jeter

    AI should go to Golden State. He NEEDS to play for Nellie and show Monta Ellis and Jamal Crawford how it is to be really selfish.

  • Liam Wyatt

    AI is the man, everyone has jumped on this bandwagon dissin him. He is one of THE toughest, hard-nosed players to ever step on an NBA court. He single handidly lead the 6ers to the finals. Give the guy a break, hes getting older and can’t play through injuries like he used to. He joined Detroit half way through the season- Yes things haven’t gelled so far, but give them a chance

  • http://www2.gsb.columbia.edu/faculty/jstiglitz/ SOFOKLIS SCHORTSIANITIS

    @Jukai…..: take the cartoon’s MVP back…??we finally agree on something !!!!!
    @TADONE….:brilliant!!! (as always….)
    IVERSON!!!IVERSON!!!IVERSON!!!IVERSON!!!IVERSON!!!IVERSON!!!IVERSON!!!IVERSON!!!
    IVERSON!!!IVERSON!!!IVERSON!!!IVERSON!!!IVERSON!!!IVERSON!!!IVERSON!!!IVERSON!!!

  • http://mindyourbusiness@getalife.com Allenp

    The truth will come out soon enough.
    What I find interesting is that Chris McCoskey is using Reggie Miller to validate a story he already floated using unnamed sources.
    I mean, he keeps citing “others” but hasn’t said who those “others” are yet.
    So, he’s using somebody who knows next to nothing about Iverson’s medical condition to back up scurrilous remarks he made based on unnamed sources.
    That’s just great journalism right there.

  • rikson

    AI is basically a better JR Smith. He is a pure scorer – period! Not one of the best players… This has never been journalism its a fu(king Inet Forum – cheeez….

  • http://mindyourbusiness@getalife.com Allenp

    Rikson
    Sigh, Chris McCoskey works for the Detroit News or the Free Press. He’s a journalist. He was the first mainstream media person to advance the AI is faking story.
    You think Reggie Miller came up with that himself? When was the last time you heard Reggie espouse an intelligent, original opinion? I’m going to guess never.
    Now, McCoskey, a journalist, used unnamed sources to advance a meme that Iverson was faking. He then justified his meme using Reggie’s comments.
    He has no proof. Miles pointed out that Iverson had a family doctor look at him, and that’s suspicious.
    Guess what? Grant Hill got examined by the Orlando doctors countless times and they could never determine why his ankle wouldn’t heal and why he was having complications. He finally got fed up, went to his own doctor, they discovered teh problem, and found out a staff infection that the Orlando doctors had missed.
    As somebody else said, team doctors work for the team. They do not work for you.
    I do not know if Iverson is faking, but I do know that the folks so ready to believe he is have the mindset because of their own personal feeling about his character and mentality, not because there is overwhelming proof that he is faking.
    That’s fine, everybody is entitled to an opinion. But, let’s not pretend that this is anything but a case of people pushing opinions.

  • http://mindyourbusiness@getalife.com Allenp

    And Rikson
    If you think AI is just JR Smith, then there really is no reason to ever debate you about anything basketball related.

  • http://www2.gsb.columbia.edu/faculty/jstiglitz/ SOFOKLIS SCHORTSIANITIS

    @rikson…:JR Smith > A.I. (better shooter)

  • jc816

    u don’t take away his mvp. If that’s the case u do that for every other mvp too. Should we take nash’s away because he’s getting older in age and his production is down too? It happens to everybody.

  • http://basketball-reference.com nbk

    No not everyone fakes an injury JC. Actually nobody does unless your 11 and don’t want to get benched in your YMCA league.

  • truthteller

    I like how everybody comes to the defense of AI even though they know that he’s all about AI! Now if only they could do that for a guy named Kobe…

  • illydiva

    Ask Andrew Toney about team doctors.

  • giogolo

    HAHAHAHAHA…y’all and your effin comments

  • grindhouseUK

    As a huge fan of AI since his G-Town days, I’ve got nothing but total respect for the guy, I damaged my back over ten years ago, two years of tests found nothing wrong, it was eventually discovered I had 11 miss-alligned joints in an area of my back no bigger than a baseball, it was agony and doctors kept telling me I was making it up, finally got the correct treatment and I’ve been three years without any problems, so just bcause it doesn’t show up on a test doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt like hell. I would love to see AI in a Heat jersey one day, who knows?

  • http://www2.gsb.columbia.edu/faculty/jstiglitz/ SOFOKLIS SCHORTSIANITIS

    @giogolo….:”just a gigolo,every where i go ,people know the game a play….” i prefer the Marlene Dietrich version…

  • http://thegayestwebsiteever.com Ben

    I don’t know about the injury, but how come he isn’t even at the games? I mean, that’s effed up. Dude can’t even show up in street clothes? But I’m sure one of the usual AI apologists can come up with a good excuse for that…

  • Candice

    @ ben ai has never sat on the bench while hurt. He doesn’t travel with them, but he does be at home games. He was there on sunday and was dressed.

  • Tyquan

    What up, Tad? Hampton Roads is in the building but anyway like I said in my sorta long run on of a comment post or whatever didn’t wanna lose anybody I mean not one soul. Like I said before I don’t personally know AI but its like this ya’ll, I am biased because I’m the same way when it comes to my boy Michael Vick. Newport News ain’t but so big so I used to see Vick around this land we call a city from time to time and I must admit like being around him from a distance he seems like a cool dude. I graduated in 1999 and was in the same school district as Vick and Ronald Curry not 2 lose ya’ll again but when I was in school Curry was that deal. I mean the damn High School All American game was in the Hampton Coliseum back in ’98 when I was a low level juvenile delinquent, I do believe. All in all I saw the success and downfall of Mike Vick and for what its worth I hope Roger Goddell reinstates Vick for the upcoming season because the man paid his dues. To say that guys like Vick, AI, and Ronald Curry “came a long way” would be an understatement!

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