Maybe if you have been following the events surrounding Allen Iverson for the past few years then his impending retirement would not leave you stunned, just the same, it does. And why should the retirement of Allen Iverson leave you stunned? Because Allen will be back. Mark my words, Allen Iverson will play in the NBA again this year.

Iverson was in his 11th season with the Sixers when they traded him to the Denver Nuggets in December 2006. Denver dealt him to the Detroit Pistons last November.

He averaged 27.0 points per game in his career.
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Stephen A. Smith broke the story Wednesday on his web site. You can watch the interview of Smith on the following YouTube.

As for my thoughts about Allen Iverson being back, turns out in the video, that Stephen A. Smith came to the same conclusion.

Can you imagine the Cleveland Cavaliers dialing up Allen in time for the playoffs? You are talking Shaq, LeBron, and AI. That would be one of the top 3 little guys to play the game, one of the top 5 big guys to play the game, and a player that may end up being one of the top 3 players of all time! You can debate those levels, but cannot debate the fact that it would be a very interesting team.

What if Orlando signed him? Could you have both Vince Carter and Allen Iverson on the same floor on the same team at the same time? Would Dwight Howard ever see the ball?

Allen Iverson has a fan

Maybe the biggest supporter of Allen Iverson is his old coach George Karl.

“I think he still has something left to give some team out there. If that’s his decision, he’ll go down in history, I think, as the greatest little guard ever to play the game of basketball,” Karl said.

“I was happy to have him for a couple years and hopefully our paths will cross. But I have a sneaky feeling that somewhere along the way an injury or a circumstance with a team will open that window back up.”

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So will Allen be back or are teams afraid of the baggage he brings with him? You think about it and let me know!

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Now it is time to play who makes more in the NBA as provided by Hoopsworld. The answers will be at the bottom of the blog.

Are you ready?

A) Who makes more Boston Celtics… Ray Allen, Paul Pierce, or Kevin Garnett?

B) Who makes more Cleveland Cavaliers… LeBron James, Shaquille O’Neil, or Mo Williams?

C) Who makes more Denver Nuggets… Carmelo Anthony, Chauncey Billups, or Kenyon Martin?

D) Who makes more Los Angeles Lakers… Kobe Bryant, Pau Gasol, or Ron Artest?

E) Who makes more New Orleans Hornets… Chris Paul, Emeka Okafor, or Peja Stojakovic?

F) Who makes more San Antonio Spurs… Tim Duncan, Tony Parker, or Richard Jefferson?

G) Who makes more Dallas Mavericks… Jason Kidd, Josh Howard, or Dirk Nowitzki?

H) Who makes more Orlando Magic… Dwight Howard, Rashard Lewis, or Vince Carter?

I) Who makes more Miami Heat… Dwyane Wade, Michael Beasley, or Jermaine O’Neal?

J) Who makes more Detroit Pistons… Ben Gordon, Charlie Villenueva, or Rip Hamilton?

Tim Duncan makes a lot of cash!

Answers from Hoopsworld:
A) Paul Pierce $19,795,712.
B) Shaquille O’Neal $21,000,000.
C) Kenyon Martin $15,613,636.
D) Kobe Bryant $23,034,375.
E) Peja Stojakovic $13,392,000.
F) Tim Duncan $22,183,220.
G) Dirk Nowitzki $19,795,714.
H) Rashard Lewis $18,010,791.
I) Jermaine O’Neal $23,016,000.
J) Rip Hamilton $11,625,000.

Photo source Newscom

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Just looking up at the title of this post cracks me up, because my life is immersed in acronyms and that title is nothing by acronyms. How did we survive without acronyms?

Would you like the title to say Most Valuable Player for the National Basketball Association picked by the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network? No, you like acronyms, just like NBAObsessed. By the way, while looking up what the P stood for, did you realize that ESPN is owned by ABC, which in turn is owned by Walt Disney and partially by the Hearst Corporation? Oh, and ESPN stands for ESPN now, it was officially changed.

We are getting way off the track, not that NBAObsessed has any difficulty getting back on track. Where were we…?
Oh, yeah, ESPN put together their top 20 analysts and picked their favorite for the MVP award for the coming season. The winner of that poll is not a big surprise. It is, of course, LeBron James, although NBAObsessed is worried about the Shaq clogging up the middle for James preventing him an easy lane to the hoop.

Where is Kobe in the MVP voting?

The big surprise in the poll was that Kobe only had 2 votes. Two lousy stinking votes was only 1 more than ‘Never Play D’ Carmelo Anthony. You would think the vote would be a lot closer. LeBron had 12 votes and even Dwight Howard had 3 votes.

Look for Kobe Bryant to take this as a personal challenge!
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It often seems like a mistake to me that teams will go so far in the playoffs, lose and then use that loss as a map for how the team should be defined the following year. For example, if your team loses to a team with a big center that posts up, like a Shaq, then in the off season you trade a starter to get a defensive low post player. That rarely makes sense to me.

Orlando failed to consult with NBAObsessed and went ahead and retooled without me.

Gone is Hedo Turkoglu and missing for a while is Rashard Lewis (failed drug test). In their place is Vince Carter for points and Jameer Nelson for direction. Now eventually Rashard Lewis will return to the lineup and Jameer Nelson was with the team last year, just injured. It is Vince Carter that adds the new dimension to the team.

Dwight Howard will get help from Vince Carter

Orlando is thinking Vince Carter will give them more explosive scoring so that Dwight Howard does not have to always carry the team. It is different than having Rashard Lewis and Hedo Turkoglu bomb long range threes to open up Howard underneath. Carter has always been able to score.

“All those moves? Sure it’s risky,” ESPN analyst Jon Barry said. “I know they would’ve preferred to re-sign Turkoglu, but once they realized that wasn’t happening they felt they needed to add another piece.

“I just don’t see Carter over Turkoglu as an improvement. That’s not an indictment of Carter. I just thought Turkoglu was Orlando’s best playmaker in the postseason. I think it’s going to be a problem for them.”

But losing the Finals to the Los Angeles Lakers in five games set Smith off on a new course.

“Vince gives us somebody who can create his own shot or create a shot for somebody else,” Smith said of filling last season’s void.

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It remains to be seen if breaking the NBAObsessed rule for retooling will cost the Orlando Magic or benefit them. Even if Vince Carter only gives them scoring, the return of Jameer Nelson and the continued development of Dwight Howard point to a successful campaign for the Orlando Magic.

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Dwight Howard is Superman and if you have watched him play through the years then you know his super powers are improving. In other words, Dwight is getting more offensive moves and learning better how to get position on defense. He is becoming the best center in the game. We have to use the word becoming, because Tim Duncan is still playing.

The question being asked is why Dwight Howard needs Vince Carter.

This is tough because your intrepid author is not a big Carter fan and never has been. Oh, sure, he is talented off the scale, but what does he bring you over the long haul? He has the ability to take over games with his penetration skills and scoring ability. He has All Star capabilities, but does it transfer over to winning?

There can be no discussion of Vince Carter without a discussion yielding comparisons to Hedo Turkoglu the glue from last year’s team. Vince is essentially replacing Hedo.

Carter, 32, has career averages of 23.5 points, 5.5 rebounds and 4.3 assists, although his statistics have dropped in each of the past two seasons. Turkoglu, 30, has averaged 12.3 points, 4.2 rebounds and 2.7 assists.

“We want (Carter) to be aggressive on both ends,” All-Star center Dwight Howard said, “especially … on the offensive end, trying to finish at the rack.”
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Coach Stan Van Gundy is saying all the right things, but you wonder if the intangibles that Hedo brought to the floor will be missing. Can Vince subjugate his game to the greater talents of Dwight Howard? Lacking Hedo’s height will he be able to defend his position. Can he play winning ball?

Dwight Howard needs more of these!

Therein lays the answer. If Vince cannot establish a solid role on the Magic then Dwight Howard will not be able to take them to the NBA Finals. This is why Dwight needs Vince. There will be a crucial role to play on the team often calling on Vince to carry the team offensively and just as often asking him to reduce his own ego and penetrate with the sole idea of feeding Superman the ball.

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Post from: NBA Obsessed

The center position in basketball just ain’t what it used to be. It used to be you started with a center and then you found a point guard to lead the way. You had to have that big guy in the middle or you were toast. That was then and this is now. Now a day, there are some up tempo teams that would rather not play a true center. They would rather have a fast mobile power forward. Phoenix with Amare Stoudemire comes to mind.

Still for your intrepid author it is great to see the big guys play whether it is the Shaq, Ewing, Wilt, Russell, Kareem, or even big bad Dwight Superman Howard. They just bring a different element to the game.

The Ball Don’t Lie has his version of the top 10 centers of the last decade, so let us take a look.

10. Alonzo Mourning – Alonzo once beat my Pistons all by himself. He was just so much bigger and stronger than anyone on the court or in the stands that he could not be stopped and prevented anybody from entering the lane.

9. David Robinson – The Admiral came to Michigan State University when he played for Navy in college. You could see then that he was just too tall and too smooth to be stopped.

8. Yao Ming – the man that reminds us there are tall Chinese people in the world may soon exit from the basketball stage if his ankles and feet don’t hold up. When he is healthy there are few better than him in today’s game.

7. Amare Stoudemire – there is that power forward again. Amare just oozes with talent and you wonder what would happen if he played next to a dominant center.

6. Zydrunas Ilgauskas – Not really an Ilgauskas fan myself, but when he is in the game it is always a tough matchup.

5. Jermaine O’Neal – Another one of those power forward types playing center. My lasting memory of Jermaine is the fact that Rasheed Wallace played with him in Portland before he went to Indiana. Jermaine was just a kid back then. When Indiana played against the Pistons in the playoffs, Rasheed was able to shut Jermaine down game after game. For that matter why isn’t Rasheed Wallace on this list? Geez, “The ball don’t lie” was one of his favorite sayings. You can argue he was a power forward, but he played center after Ben left all the time.

LeBron wonders why Rasheed Wallace is not on the list?

4. Ben Wallace – The other Wallace combined with Rasheed to shut down every player on the planet and get a NBA title for the Pistons. How did Ben do it? He was only 6′ 8″ tall, but when he went up for a board with all those muscles and the wild Fro, it just looked like he was 7 foot tall. Fear the Fro!

3. Dwight Howard – Truly Superman, Dwight Howard just grows better as a player each year. He was scoring in his first two season without really even having any moves!

2. Shaquille O’Neal – Shaq is truly bigger than life whether he is rapping, acting, or playing center. Shazam! Shaq has won titles in L.A. with Kobe and in Miami with Wade. He is often doing more talking than playing, but for years the NBA rules allowed Shaq to use his rather large rear end to back into the paint and jam the ball down. Unstoppable!

1. Tim Duncan – Mr. Fundamental.

Duncan won’t blow you away. Shaq seems scarier, and the “power forward” designation might throw you, but don’t get shook.

Tim guards the low post (guards everything, really), and works from the low post while his “center” teammate (David Robinson, Nazr Mohammad, Fabricio Oberto(notes), Matt Bonner(notes)) works anywhere from the high post (D-Rob, Nazr), the baseline (Fab), or the 3-point line (Red Rocket).

In the meantime, Duncan has destroyed teams defensively, drawn trillions of double teams, scored efficiently and generally acted as what we’d hoped Bill Walton would have turned into.

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That is why San Antonio is in the thick of things every year.

Now here is my question. Where is Kevin Garnett?
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Ok, we need to set the stage for my surprise. No, it is not a surprise from me to you; it is where your intrepid author gets surprised by who is picked to be the top rebounder of the last 10 years.

The list is based on rebounding rate, which takes into account the number of available rebounds while the player is on the court. Dennis Rodman would be the all time leader at .23 rebounds. In other words he pulled down 23 out of every 100 rebounds available while he was on the court.

It kind of went like this:
Uhh, number 10 is Zach Randolph. Huh? Well, yeah, guess that does make sense. Zach was a bench player at Michigan State University that was drafted after his freshman year. Pretty incredible.

Number 9 Eric Dampier, Number 8 Shaq, well of course, the big fella would make the list, Number 7 Kevin Garnett, Number 6 … Wait a minute Kevin Garnett? Don’t really think of him that way. He is such a big time scorer.

Number 6 Marcus Camby always an underrated player.
Number 5 Tim Duncan, hard to be that tall and not get a lot of boards and Mr. Fundamental would always get good position.

Hmm, Number 4 Jeff Foster. What? Is this because his man always left him to help out on someone else? Jeff Foster?

Number 3 Reggie Evans a pure rebounding machine. Can’t do much else, but man can he board.

Number 2 Superman Dwight Howard. This guy is for real and is simply stronger than you. A definite glass cleaner.

And Number 1 is … Ben Wallace! Ok, your author is a lifetime Piston fan living in Michigan and should have known this, but after having Dennis Rodman around it seemed normal to have Ben Wallace leading the league in rebounding.

Ben Wallace rules the boards

Ben was incredible and when he was on top of his game it was a treat to see him soar in the air and rip down a board.

Ben’s at 10.3 rebounds per game on his career, despite averaging just under 31 minutes per game, while looking to strike up some of the Piston-powered magic again in Detroit for 2009-10. It was the site of his finest turn, when he pulled in over 23 percent of available rebounds in 2003, while averaging 15.4 rebounds per game.
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Image: Zuma Press

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In our earlier post the discussion was about who would win the West and it was the obvious choice, the Lakers and Kobe Bryant. Now it is time to speak about the East.

So, who did ESPN vote to win the East?

In a surprise vote, but maybe not a huge surprise, the ESPN voters went with Cleveland. They felt the Shaqland LeBrons would win the East, because they looked so good last year and then they added Shaq. It will not be that easy. There are already a lot of ingredients to mix into this soup.

Looming over it all will be the question LeBron James won’t answer: What will he do when he can become a free agent in 2010? His freedom to walk next year has raised the stakes in Cleveland to a level seldom seen in the NBA, and could contribute to tensions along the way unless LeBron, Shaq and the Cavs can successfully merge their games and their goals: LeBron’s first title, Shaq’s fifth (putting him ahead of Kobe Bryant and Tim Duncan) and Cleveland’s hope of pleasing and keeping LeBron. And with the Cavs having added three rotation players to a 66-win team and probably demoting stalwart Zydrunas Ilgauskas in favor of The Big Disruption, it’s not clear how chemically balanced they will be.

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How they could pass on the Boston Celtics is a true mystery. The Celtics bring back a healthy Kevin Garnett and added Rasheed Wallace and Marquis Daniels to the fold. They are dripping with talent.

Will Rasheed Wallace help Boston overtake LeBron James and the Cav's?

Lagging in third place is the Conference Champion Orland Magic. Some think they overachieved last year and worry that the chemistry will be different without Hedo Turkoglu. Others think the offensive talents of Vince Carter will make Dwight Howard even more valuable.
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Now as performance enhancing drugs go, DHEA is not all that great and can commonly be bought at health stores everywhere. Rashard Lewis was mixing it in his smoothies and as every athlete that ever tested positive for drugs; he claims he did not know it was illegal.

Lewis, who will turn 30 on Saturday, said he took an over-the-counter supplement near the end of last season which he did not know contained the banned substance. He told the Sentinel the substance was in powder form and he mixed it into smoothies. He got it at a nutritional store, but did not specify the name of the store.

According to an NBA source, Lewis failed one drug test during the playoffs last season and was so surprised by the outcome he asked to be tested again during the Finals. Lewis also failed that test.

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So why is this story even important? Well, if you would put your beer down and stop condemning these drug using athletes it will be explained to you.

Orlando has just recently risen to the cream of the crop in NBA circles. Those are not crop circles, but winning circles and a very exclusive club. The members of this club include the Celtics, Lakers, Spurs, Cavaliers, and sometimes the Mavericks and Magic. This club is very exclusive and will judge you on how you act or handle success.

Can Dwight Howard keep the Magic in the club?

Take my Pistons, please. Ok, old joke, but the Pistons stopped playing defense and were kicked out of the club. It is that fickle.

Now back to the Magic. First they let Hedo Turkoglu walk away in free agency and then they bring in Vince Never Guarded Anybody Carter. Now they have Rashard Lewis testing positive. They may get kicked out of the club.
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The NBA Title series ain’t what it used to be, by 10% to be exact. Ratings were down 10 percent according to an AP article in ESPN.

At first blush that seems kind of bad for a series featuring Phil Jackson going for his 10th coaching title and Kobe Bryant trying to prove he can be a one man band, but it has to be kept in the context of being compared to last year’s dream matchup of the Celtics and Lakers.

Dwight Howard and Pau Gasol did not have people turning on their TV's

Boston brought in Kevin Garnett and had a title starved large market in Boston. The Boston area has won in all other sports and they were ready for an NBA title. The Orlando market is a smaller area and Dwight Howard is less of a draw than the 3 amigos. That may change as Dwight improves, but it is fact for now.
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