In Iverson’s contract year he was traded to the Detroit Pistons for Chauncey Billups, the media immediately wrote Iverson off and said he needed to sacrifice more then ever.
The Pistons had a new coach and failed to mesh as a unit, Iverson was a free lance player being forced to play half court basketball for the first time in his career and he struggled. The Pistons had one of their worst seasons of the decade and were swept by the Cleveland Cavaliers in the first round of the playoffs. All of a sudden the media in the NBA just started destroying Iverson, they unfairly blamed him. The Nuggets did better with Billups, they won 54 games which were four more then they did with Iverson. In the playoffs they lost to the Los Angeles Lakers 4-2 in the Western Conference Finals, with Iverson they also lost to the Lakers in the playoffs except that was a sweep. So really with Billups the Nuggets improved just a little bit, had that Nuggets team with Iverson won 2 more games in 07-08 they wouldn’t have had to face the Los Angeles Lakers and were capable of beating any other team in the conference. Now that the Nuggets had a better season without Iverson the media continued to destroy him.
This bashing may have been called for by David Stern, for so many years he wanted to destroy Iverson but couldn’t because Iverson was the most popular player in the league and was if not the best player in the league then usually in the top 5. In his contract year Iverson was being killed by the media weather it was on NBA.com or ESPN and one thing everybody knows is that David Stern controls the basketball media. If Stern had an agenda to destroy Allen Iverson then it had to take full effect in his contract year because that is the year that would determine how the rest of his career will turn out. Iverson’s reputation had been tarnished, the leagues owners and coaches were brainwashed into thinking Iverson is a washed up distraction who has no value. Due to this bashing from the media Iverson had lost a lot of respect throughout the league, after a season of averaging 26.4 ppg and 7.2 apg he was all of a sudden a bench player in people’s eyes. No longer could he demand shots, touches and minutes and if he did he would be cut form the team. Many people say that Stern was privately telling teams to keep Iverson on a leash and not let him take the team over.