Sixers

It Took Less Than a Season for Andre Iguodala to Irk Denver

By Kyle Scott

Published: Feb 20th, 2013 · 9:29 AM EST

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Fool me once…

This article, sent to me by reader Chris this morning, is more than a week old, but I’m guessing most of you don’t read the Denver Post on a daily basis. So we’ll call it new. 

It has taken exactly four months for Iggy to get under the skin of folks in Denver.

Mark Kiszla of the Denver Post:

To score 13.5 points per game, Nuggets forward Andre Iguodala is being paid $15 million per year, give or take a Porsche.

Even by the wacky standards of the NBA, that does not compute.

No way, no how, is Iguodala worth the money.

…

Iguodala is a clamp-down defender, a true professional and a compelling interview.

But the NBA is not a spelling bee. You don't get paid $15 million for giving intelligent sound bites or getting eliminated in the first round of the playoffs.

For $15 million, was it too much to expect for the 29-year-old Iguodala to lead the Nuggets in scoring, be an all-league defender and stamp his personality on the locker room?

His defense has met expectations. The rest of the shiny package? Empty.

After 50 games with the Nuggets since arriving in trade, Iguodala is in danger of finishing with career lows for field-goal percentage, free-throw percentage and rebounds per game. But the real head-scratcher is why an Olympic gold medal winner from the Dream Team hasn't been more forceful in establishing high standards for these young, often- inconsistent Nuggets. 

 

In two games since that article was written, Iguodala has scored one and five point(s), respectively.

Kiszla seems to be blaming Iguodala for his (remaining) $15 million contract, which isn’t entirely fair, especially since Iggy signed it with another team. But, those are the same sorts complaints we heard in Philly– good defender, liked by most scriptuals, but ultimately disappointing and frustrating. 

Iggy is Denver’s problem now, and, even with all the Bynum nonsense, I’m glad he’s gone. But one of the sentiments that still seems to exist is the general applauding of the Sixers for pulling off some great trade last summer.

They did no such thing.

I wrote at the time that the Sixers were patsies, a means to an end. The deal was about Dwight Howard going to the Lakers. Everything and everybody else was just filler. The Sixers (it seemed…) made out, but no more than the local diaper store makes out when Walmart moves to a bigger, newer location a town away. The Sixers won(?) by osmosis, nothing more. So, Bynum’s looniness aside, why do we still talk like the Sixers orchestrated some breathtaking trade? They didn’t. They lucked into being able to move Iguodala, and in the process, they landed what they thought would be a star someone who would play basketball.

On that note, here are some Bynum hair memes from Twitter:

via (@YourMasterTyler)

via (@PhillyUnionKevinK)

via (@cjzero)