short-lived marriage

What a way for Allen Iverson to end this season. He was shut down by the management owing to his back injury which supposedly requires an additional time healing but somehow you couldn't dismiss the fact that this came just after a recent interview where he expressed his frustration over his new sixth man role.

In just two games coming off the bench, AI made a 180degree turn by saying he would do what was required of him the first game and then hitting management's decision for rushing him into playing despite a back injury the next game.

Things are not looking good for AI come free agency this summer. Before these two games, AI sat for quite a while trying to recover from the injury. The Pistons made the most progress during this period which drove a lot of people to think that AI's prolonged recovery from the injury was really more for the bruised ego than it was anyway lumbar related.

If that is the last we'll see of AI before his contract expires we probably won't hear a lot of juicy offers for him this summer. While we know that he won't be duplicating this season's paycheck of 22MUSD when he negotiates for a new contract, the chances of AI getting a paycheck commensurate to his talent and box office draw have severely taken a huge blow with this recent tantrum. I don't even see how he could undo it even if he hypothetically does play the remaining games.

The tenure with the Pistons was bad for AIs contract year since his deficiencies that we knew all along had been revisited and verified. Analysts project AI to be getting the mid-level exception of 5-6M USD as max. This is truly a huge demotion for one of the league's premier players and it stemmed not from a severely diminished skillset, as we know he can still put up 20-25ppg, but it was more due to the realization that AI's mentality towards playing basketball is forever flawed and can't be rectified anymore, not at 33 and not in the next few years.