Allen Iverson on November 3, 2008 was traded from the Denver Nuggets to the Detroit Pistons in exchange for Chauncey Billups, Antonio McDyess, and Cheikh Samb. This seems to make both teams because of the teams needs. The Pistons I believe got the better player in Iverson, but Billups works much better in the Denver system. First lets examine why the Nuggets made the trade and how it will help them. The Nuggets made this trade for the simple fact that their current roster was not going to get them to win the NBA Finals because of the brutally hard Western Conference. The Allen Iverson and Carmelo Anthony “Dynamic Duo” ultimately failed. They were getting no where and with Iverson’s contract expiring the Nuggets wanted to have a deal with a good player for more than one year. They got this in guard Chauncey Billups. Billups has made the all star team the last three years and is one of the leagues top 5 point guards. This was a need for the Nuggets because their point guard was a weakness. They had a lot of depth at the shooting guard position, Iverson’ position, so they traded the answer. An upcoming star, JR Smith was his back up so this puts him in a starting roll. Another advantage for the Nuggets is that Billups is a tall guard at six foot three inches and plays good defense. Iverson was only at 6 foot and played awful Defense. This is a safe and beneficial trade for the Nuggets.




The Detroit Pistons got one of the most prolific scorers in NBA history. The future hall of famer can bring many things to the table. He can shoot the three mid range jumper and has a crossover that even Michael Jordon had trouble guarding. Unlike the Nuggets this is a high risk trade because Iverson can hurt a teams chemistry and has a hard time of distributing the ball amongst the team. Iverson not able to play a pure point guard presents a problem to Pistons. Playing the Iverson’s position is fellow all star Richard “Rip” Hamilton. Denver has had him playing point which ended up as a disaster. Allen just can’t distribute the ball. Financially this is an advantage for the Pistons because with the big free agent market at the end of this season the Pistons can get rid of AI’s 22 million dollar contract. This frees up cap space for them to be in the running of the likes of Lebron James, Wade, Carlos Boozer and many more stars that will be available. I think this is a safe trade for the Nuggets because they have a safe team leader man in Chauncey Billups that can only make the team better, whereas the Pistons may have found a cancer to the team that causes them to loose the team chemistry that got them to the Eastern Conference Finals for the last 6 years. All in all, the advantage goes to the Nuggets, but if Allen Iverson changes his game to make the system work in Detroit it can be a slam dunk resulting in Iverson’s first championship.