One Month Later: A Look Back on the Iverson Trade (Part I)

Joe Dumars must have a plan. Dumars always has a plan. This time, I’m just struggling to see it.

One month ago, Dumars traded the face of the franchise – Chauncey Billups – to the Denver Nuggets for Allen Iverson. Antonio McDyess and Cheikh Samb were also sent to Denver in the deal, but McDyess is set to return to Detroit and Samb is, at best, a project capable of developing into a poor man’s Mikki Moore. As a result, the deal was essentially just a swap of Billups for Iverson.

When news of the deal first broke, I was shocked. One month later, I’m as confused as ever. There are three possible reasons Dumars could have made the deal.

One possibility is that Dumars was simply trying to ratchet up ticket sales by injecting excitement into a stale product being offered in a dreary economy. I think it is safe to quickly dispel that possibility. Dumars knows the only way to consistently sell tickets is to produce a winner. The trade did lead to a temporary spike in ticket sales, but if the team is made worse either in the short or long run, those gains will quickly be negated.

Another possibility is that Dumars was hoping to improve the team’s future outlook by creating financial flexibility. This theory suggests that Dumars did not believe that the opening day roster could win a championship, thus he opted to re-build around his younger players. Suffice it to say that I’m not a huge fan of trading Chauncey in a salary dump. The Pistons were good enough to win 55-60 games this year and were among the top five teams in the league with Billups on the roster. Making a move simply to dump Billups’ reasonable contract does not make sense unless there is a player acquisition on the horizon.

If this were the case however, then the only way for the Pistons to improve would be to allow Iverson and Rasheed Wallace to walk. The Pistons would then have the cap space to add a player who helps the team more than Billups. While soon-to-be free agents LeBron, Amare, Wade, and Bosh are all fun names to toss around, is there really any chance that one of those four comes to Detroit? I don’t buy it. Not with the city’s lack of glamour and poor climate.

If the Pistons are looking toward the future, they need a big man to replace Rasheed – unless of course they can get their hands on LeBron, in which case they can worry about positions later. They could try to bring Mehmet Okur back, but I’m not sure how likely that is. He will be 30 when he signs his next contract and has a nice situation in Utah. Shawn Marion and Lamar Odom will both be free agents and either could join Prince as a forward in a small ball frontcourt, but that would still leave the Pistons with a hole in the middle. Other options include Boozer (don’t get your hopes up) and David Lee (is he really an improvement on Maxiell and/or Amir Johnson?). If the Pistons can get their hands on a superstar or a big man who they can pair with Amir, I take back everything in this column and concede that Dumars is a genius two steps ahead of the game. Otherwise, the “look toward the future” rationalization of the trade appears flawed.

The third, and most likely, reason that Dumars pulled the trigger is that he felt the Pistons are better positioned to contend for a championship with Iverson than with Billups. Check back for Part II, in which I will explore the logic behind such a suggestion.