Still Life With Iverson

I went to LaConner for the weekend (daffodils have bloomed, tulips haven't), and managed to grab a drink with Tom Robbins during Florida's rout of UCLA. Robbins is a longtime Sonic season ticket holder who takes the monorail to every game he makes after driving downtown for supper. He attended last Sunday's blowout loss to the Spurs, which somehow didn't deter him from making the drive to last night's 114-103 loss to the Nuggets. Why? Allen Iverson. He's Robbins' favorite player. The author considers him to be, pound for pound, the most amazing, fearless player in the NBA -- a tough point to argue. So why do the Nuggets, who've surrounded Iverson with as much talent as can be found in the league, allow teams like the Supes to hang around despite outrebounding them 24-8 in the first half (leading rebounder Nick Collison finished with 2 boards)? Crappy on-ball D? Maybe. Injury-addled chemistry? Perhaps. Point guard deficiencies? Potentially.

But Robbins provides a very simple answer to why the Nuggets continue to be so perplexingly mediocre: George Karl. He doesn't coach so much as he rolls the ball out, says Robbins. When you've got coaches on the floor like Andre Miller or Gary Payton, this strategy -- or lack thereof -- is easily masked. But when you've got anything less than an elite floor general running the show, it can lead to some horrible-looking choreography in the halfcourt (Iverson, who puts up some gaudy assist numbers, isn't a pure point guard; hence, Steve Blake's inclusion in Karl's starting five). Last night, the Nuggets got away with it -- barely. In their three losses prior, one at the hands of the Sonics in Denver, they didn't. That's why they're a .500 team with .650 talent.

A quick aside: So I'm eating a half-pound burger at the sublime Conway Tavern on my way home during halftime of the Detroit-Miami game. The featured game of the day is Phoenix-Dallas, so the announcers are talking about the Nash-Nowitzki MVP race, a conversation they inevitably close by saying that both players would gladly trade that penultimate personal accolade for a league title. So here's one for you: Has any player in the history of competitive team sports ever said he'd rather win the MVP than lead his team to a title? Can we just shoot this cliche' dead in the head, like, now?