I Understand You AI

The people that are taking potshots at Allen Iverson’s downward career spiral are likely the same clique that criticized Michael Jordan for his outside the box Hall of Fame acceptance speech. They are the keepers of mainstream thoughts and beliefs even though they may try to portray themselves as independent free spirits.

When I was growing up my father told me to analyze what 95 percent of the people were thinking about a topic and then take a hard look at the point of view less traveled. He didn’t advise me to always take the road less traveled, but merely not discredit it in the mist of peer pressure.

Iverson was released by Memphis earlier this week ending a three-game marriage that seemed destined to fail when the veteran wasn’t inserted into the starting lineup. I do believe AI could’ve handled this better … but the point is …
The general consensus is that AI should’ve shut up, took his seat on the bench and never voiced any displeasure about his diminishing role.

I disagree totally.

You can’t expect the same ego and confidence that will ultimately get AI inducted into the Hall of Fame to suddenly take a backseat to Mike Conley Jr. – the same Mike Conley that is averaging 8.7 points on 38 percent shooting after ten games.

I’m not condoning the fact that AI went “Kanye West” on Memphis, but I haven’t found anyone that could logically explain why the consensus is so strong in the belief that Conley deserves the right to start with such urgency. What has Conley won? Is Conley’s production that strong (it isn’t) that he must be on the court? Can you say with a straight face that Conley is better than AI right now?

Iverson is coming off a “down” year in which he averaged 17.5 points for Detroit in 54 games. That is still better by a long stretch than anything Conley has done up until this point career-wise. I could see if Conley was Derrick Rose or Rajon Rondo – an up and coming young stud, but he’s still developing at the pro level.

You can’t realistically expect a guy with over 24,000 career points to just be humble for the sake of not rocking the boat especially when the young lion hasn’t taken him to the woodshed to make him a believer.

If you applied this same scenario to your very own professional life, you’d quickly understand AI’s confidence. Think about a company pushing a fresh college grad up the org chart by demoting you, even though you still have the better set of skills. How many of you would really sit idle and not voice any type of displeasure to management. Honestly.

Lang
Lang.Greene@gmail.com
http://twitter.com/hoopsvine



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