Since the start of the 2000’s century, it has become a normalcy for teams in the NBA to have one or more high scoring player on their rosters in order to make the NBA Finals or to win the title. With duos like Shaq and Kobe, and trios like Duncan, Parker and Ginobili running the show, the NBA rarely has had many teams find success using only one main player as their offensive production. But two teams come to mind that used this type of system, the 2001 Philadelphia 76ers and the 2007 Cleveland Cavaliers, both of which lost in the NBA Finals but represented their conference that year in the championship series. Like many people, I sometimes wonder what it would be like to pit two teams from different times against one another. So I am going to match-up the 2001 76ers against the 2007 Cavaliers. Let’s see who comes out on-top.

2001 Philadelphia 76ers:

Record: 56-26

Coach: Larry Brown

Leading Scorer: Allen Iverson, 31.1 PPG

Next Leading Scorer: Theo Ratliff, 12.4 PPG

Playoff Results: In the First Round, beat the Indiana Pacers (reigning Eastern Conference champions) in four games

In the Semi-Finals, beat the Toronto Raptors in seven games

In the Conference Finals, beat the Milwaukee Bucks in seven games

In the NBA Finals, lost to the Los Angeles Lakers in five games

2007 Cleveland Cavaliers:

Record: 50-32

Coach: Mike Brown

Leading Scorer: LeBron James, 27.3 PPG

Next Leading Scorer: Larry Hughes, 14.9 PPG

Playoff Results: In the First Round, swept the Washington Wizards

In the Semi-Finals, beat the New Jersey Nets in six games

In the Conference Finals, beat the Detroit Pistons in six games

In the NBA Finals, were swept by the San Antonio Spurs

While LeBron’s 2007 performance was amazing, Iverson’s complete domination on an NBA Finals team is something that won’t soon be repeated. By thanasim25 (Arthur Mouratidis), via Wikimedia Commons

Both of these teams made it to the NBA finals, yet the 76ers were actually able to win a game, even if it was only because of a huge 48-point game by Allen Iverson to halt the Lakers perfect postseason. But, as I said, in the recent NBA it takes at least two (if not three) “star” caliber players to make it to the Finals, let alone win it. In the 2001 season, the 76ers had a 18.7 point per game difference between their top two leading scorers while the 2007 Cavaliers only had a 12.4 PPG difference. Neither of the two teams has made it back to the Finals since these marvelous seasons and the stats are the reason why. My hat is off to what LeBron James and the entire 2007 Cavs team did by making it to the Finals but what Allen Iverson was able to accomplish in 2001 was simply amazing and can’t ever be repeated. He not only won the MVP award that season but led his team to a win in the Finals, which was the only loss the Lakers surrendered that entire postseason.

The 76ers’ second leading scorer was Theo Ratliff, and no disrespect to him, but his 12.4 PPG in the 2001 season was the highest of his entire career and because of that Iverson was forced to put the team on his shoulders and that is exactly what he did. Yes, they lost in the Finals but looking back, I respect everything Iverson was able to do that season. I am not an advocate of ridiculous individual statistical performances as I see basketball as the main “team” sport but both Iverson and LeBron had great seasons and I congratulate both of them for what they accomplished in their respected seasons.

Advantage: Iverson.

I grew up idolizing Michael Jordan, like one would a god. Collected his cards, modeled my jump shot, the tongue wag and the up and under layups after him. The man was divinity. He was other-worldly. Alien. Someone unparalleled throughout time.

But now that I have grown up I see reality for what it is. MJ, like any other human, was full of luck, flaws and failures. Thus this Fansmanship series was born, beginning with Mike’s imperfectly perfect legacy.

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1) Space Jam? Seriously? Who knew Mike in the peek of his career needed a face lift from bugs bunny? He was a three – time champion at the time and ruler of the league.

But ruler of space? It just can’t get more shame – worthy than that. The man was a brand in and of himself, and he sold out to become a lead of a cartoon and one of the most ridiculously cheesy songs in musical history.

Then again, he was playing baseball, and dropping routine fly balls.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLeD-2Ebdaw

2) A true passing of the torch? Okay, I won’t go that far. But the young Iverson sure made the 34- year old Mike look geriatric in 1997. It was one of the only times in memory, I can recall an opposing player out dueling the great like that.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CZbrVrX1tM

3) If it wasn’t weird enough seeing MJ play baseball and star in Space Jam, it got even weirder when he returned in 1995 to the game of basketball, wearing a number 45 jersey!  Jordan was clearly only a shell of his former self shooting,  7 for 28 from the floor with a mediocre 19 points.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1LeVCwyHas

4) Forgive the long recording. In fact, skip ahead to around 6 minutes and watch from that point forward. What you will see will amaze you. A return to his infamous 23 (after wearing 45 for most the season) meant Mike was officially back, but not so fast. In the final two – minutes in a decisive game 6 with his team’s back against the wall, Mike shoots 0-3 from the floor, air balls a jump shot and turns the ball over twice.  There goes my fantasy of him winning every series en route to a title.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntwR8ZGmLJg

5) Motivational, bla bla bla. Nothing was motivational about Mike in a baseball uniform. He looked awkward. I really couldn’t find anything better than this to describe his pathetic stint at baseball, where from 1994 to 1995, he hit .227 in the minors. Mike was the Luc Longley of his second sport. How awe-inspiring is that?

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0_KWGGvtWg

6) Let’s not deny the truth: MJ was a jerk. This is the guy who fought his own teammate, Steve Kerr, in practice because Kerr hit a three point shot over him. But one thing Mike wasn’t, was unprofessional. He was the consummate pro able to keep his cool in big game moments. Well…not so much this night against the Jazz, when he bumped the referee (yes bumped) en route to getting tossed.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNt5jCwA9bs

7) I hope a bolt of lightning doesn’t strike me dead for this, but the infamous “shrug” in game one of the 1992 NBA Finals against the Portland Trailblazers was incredibly unlike Mike. At this point in his career, he was a 28 percent three point shooter. But on this night, the best defense was Mike’s lucky offense. He hit 6 threes in the first half, scoring an NBA Finals record 39 first half points.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLDNxhFCXPs

8) I hated MJ in a Wizards uniform. It got awfully annoying watching him retire, return, retire. And this time I was, like a teeny bop Fresnoid, “over it.” He was fat and slow and looked more like post – 1999 lockout Shawn Kemp, than his usual slender athletic self. This missed dunk says it all. What is that vert? 14 inches?

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGbe_ewotVg

9) Again, please no lightning bolts. But wasn’t Mike so good he could get open, fair and square, against anyone? Not.So.Fast. While I agree there is no better way than this for Mike to cap his famed Bull career, this was a serious push off on a superior defender Bryon Russell and an offensive foul. Mike needed a little shove off, to get open at the ripe age of 36.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdPQ3QxDZ1s

10) So, I’m super bummed because my favorite all – time favorite player, came back one to many times and sounded like an arrogant buffoon in his hall of fame speech, forever tainting his legacy. I’m sorry Mike, but you just sound stupid. Real talk here. You sound comprehensively self obsessed. What happened to the man who made others around him better?

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLzBMGXfK4c

I am a realist with specks of surrealism poking through my veins.  When I see mountains, I see mountains, though I admit, beneath their weighty crouch of pine trees, one can see shadows that resemble crow-dark figures. But the difference between a person like myself and those who dream of trolls and witches, is I prefer reality, whatever the hell that is*.  What-ifs are a futile form of phantasmal thinking. They are as pointless as is asking for charity from the big wig munchers sitting in Armani suits atop the towering buildings of American money trade.  But I must confess, as I grow older, more restless with the direction of Father time, and mount toward a gush of a pre-midlife crisis, the what-ifs linger like tinkling pennies in the piggy bank of the soul. Why, what, when, and how become a blabbing second personality–they control you from the inside-out with illusions of a glittering fantasy world.

Okay, not really. But the build up was quite nice. Writing Fan-Fiction ranks 209th on my list of literary successes, behind a research paper on the mating practices of cockroaches*.  I guess I’m learning to become more intrigued with the futurist perspective, the cruel reality of what the intellectuals call historical luck. So I’ll give this elementary form of literature a shot.

When M.J prematurely bolted from the NBA in 1993, after being crowned with vice-God status, oh, and three consecutive titles, David Stern and co. found themselves swallowed in the belly of “who next.”  David Robinson? Hakeem Olajuwan? Patrick Ewing? Reggie Miller? Shaq? Penny Hardaway? Chris Webber? and the list of plausible courtship’s continued. But none of them fit. For one, Robinson, Olajuwan, and Ewing all split time as the best centers in the NBA. They tore each other apart, night in and night out, passing title hopes to one another like a plate of chicken wings. Miller was just too funny looking to take serious. Shaq was dominant, but didn’t have the “that’s it” factor like his airness. C-Webb was a poor man’s Charles Barkley, and Penny Hardaway, a second fiddle to the big fella.

So as it was, after nearly two years in limbo, MJ stopped the pathetic whiff of the bat,  saving the NBA from the folly of ESPN2 status. But he was 35, and though God can’t be held by the shackles of age, clearly he had only three years left. So for three years the NBA garnered another glory run. We watched MJ’s greatest moments. 72 wins in ’96 and title 4; 69 wins in ’97, a heroic 38 in-game 5 with the flu, and title 5, and then his best, at 38, without a healthy Pippen, he won title 6 in ’98 with a game winner. The replay of the legends final moment paused in our minds forever. We fixated on what he’d given us for fifteen years, yet he wasn’t coming back, so we began to croon over the “what now?”

And this is where the world got murky. What-ifs clouded the senses. We glorified the likes of Jerry “score twenty on twenty-five shots” Stackhouse, and Grant “got hurt tying my shoe” Hill, as the ones who’d ascend this trialsome period. Because the compass of greatness passed over us with a gray fog of finality, we wandered lost, like the Israelites begging for redemption. Yet along it was not us, or his airness, that would lead us out of this dark place. It was the powers that be: historical luck, a.k.a., the Sam Bowie syndrome.

Draft day, 1996. Pick 1: Allen Iverson. Pick 5: Ray Allen. Pick 13: Kobe Bryant.  The boyish eighteen-year-old face, with pleasurable dimples, and a rail thin body, shyly bumbled to the stage, beneath a veil of lights, and a flutter of pictures. He wears the Charlotte Hornets’ shades of blue on his ball cap, perfectly slack at the side, further admitting to his school boy demeanor.  Charlotte is ecstatic. The cities deflated NBA economy inflates a bit with a keen interest in the High School boy who’s been compared to his airness. Pedestrians walk about the city whispering the what-ifs, the could it be’s, for a team coming off an average 41-41 season, with a superstar wing in Glen Rice.  Still lamenting over the tragedy of losing Alonzo Mourning and Larry Johnson to trades, the city hopes for a revival of the 1994-1995 season which saw the Hornets boast 50 wins. Surely the young kid could evolve into a dynamic threat, creating the most explosive duo in hoops–Bryant the athletic poster child, and Rice, the cool, collect, three-point aficinado,  segwaying the Hornets into a true playoff contendor.

Yet like me, the Charlotte Hornets are realist.  They wagered on Bryant to be a bust like  Harold Minor or Isaiah Rider.  And in so doing, they traded the thirteenth pick of the 1996 draft, Kobe Bryant, to the Los Angeles Lakers for veteran center, Vlade Divac, altering the league forever, and Hall of Fame faces such as Shaquille O’neal, Phil Jackson, Kevin Garnett, Tim Duncan, and Pau Gasol.

But what if the Hornets froze with a premonition of the boys greatness, further tossing historical luck down the philosophical drain? And Sam Bowie acted as the sports George Santyana, reminding Charlotte not to repeat history, but to transcend it with wit and insight? Assuredly the man known as the Black Mamba would be the face of Charlotte, a team with successes and failures, and his legacy slung in blue, not purple and gold.

1996-1997 would be a season of building blocks. Rice would continue as the teams breakout superstar, while Mugsy Bogues runs the show, and Anthony Mason controls the middle.  Bryant would come off the bench for hard-working Dell Curry, at nearly twenty-five minutes a night, and show enough flashes of greatness to replace the veteran Curry the following season.

1997-1998 would be a season in which Bryant starts at the guard position. Rice now thirty, begins to be haunted by the lack of a championship, and chooses to demote some of his shot totals to the nineteen-year-old.  Anthony Mason plays third fiddle, and continues to play as one of the leagues premier do- it- all big men.  David Wesley, Bobby Phills, and Del Curry battle for back-up minutes, and Wesley wins. Phills fades into obscurity and Curry becomes a veteran, on a guard heavy team with little to any usage and retires. Bryant averages in the mid-teens, struggling down the stretch, and the Hornets lose in the 1st round.

1998-1999 was the season of the lockout and first post-Jordan experiment, acting as a minimal launching pad for Bryant. The Rice and Mason injuries allow for Bryant to assert himself offensively as the teams go to guy. Though there are flashes of stardom in the wake of the teams injuries, the youngster still lacks a consistent jump shot, and the assertiveness to tell off veterans like Derick Coleman, and J.R. Reid, who both shoot far too much for players with their lack of offensive abilities. The team misses the playoffs.

1999-2000 was a season of fine tuning the teams direction. Now season four of the Bryant/Rice experiment, the Hornets feel the pressure to make this thing work. Bryant now expects to be the man on a team stacked with paling reflections of one time all-stars. Coleman comes to camp overweight and is nothing more than a seventh or eighth man off the bench. Rice still has the ability to score, but at 33, with brittle knees, and a bad shooting elbow, his percentages drop, as does his demeanor. Mason’s ruptured leg causes the greatest decline, and though he averages a double-double through determination, he is unable to be counted on as anything more than a role guy. Rookie Baron Davis comes excited and both he, and Bryant, give life to a team in steep decline. Bryant averages 20-25 a night, Rice at 17, and Davis around 12, but the team misses the playoffs for a second straight season.

2000-2001 was a new beginning. The Rice/Bryant experiment did not work. Rice is dealt to a playoff team in need of a shooter, as is Mason, gone to free agency.  The pick up of Jamal Mashburn gives the team a much-needed offensive punch at the swing position. Bryant continues to shine, and records his second straight all-star appearance. He averages 25-28 points a night, while Davis continues to grow into a good point guard, though his shoot first attitude perturbs the star Bryant.  Both have a slightly poor relationship, and the friction causes the quiet tempered Mashburn to fade far into the background. The team makes the playoffs but fails to get anywhere but the second round.

2001-2002 was the final recordable season. Season six for Bryant, and the cities lack of drawing power for big name free agents, causes him to seek a new home. They still have the trio of Bryant, Davis, and Mashburn, but they are unable to upend the Eastern Conference elite: Pacers, Sixers, and Nets. Davis is nothing more than a poor shooting eighteen point, six assist point guard, and Mashburn is on the steady decline. Bryant averages 30+, but has become the same type of player as a Vince Carter or Tracy McGrady, a shoot first player with few playoff credentials.

2002-present has been a vague unreadable sign. Bryant, McGrady, VC, Iverson, Duncan, Garnett, Shaq, Wade, Bosh, Nowitski, and Durant all battle for superstar supremacy. It is fair to say, at this point, there would be no comparison between Bryant and Lebron. Lebron would clearly be the best of the best, lacking playoff successes. Duncan would probably have six titles to his name, and Garnett two. Bryant gets caught in the free agency fray much like a McGrady  or a VC, and continues to experience nothing more but all-star appearances and playoff losses.  Though a phenomenal athlete and tremendous scorer, Bryant is a poor man’s Dominique, nothing more than a top thirty to fifty player of all time.

The problem with WOW & Fan Fictionites, is they live in a world with little to any REAL credential*. It is creative in that it feeds the never-ending need to enslave oneself to something born far from reality. But what greatness is there in a world nobody cares about*? As I sit back, sipping on a beer, shooting the shit with friends, I am amazed at the tremendous ability life has to shape things with the hard and near impossible decisions. We all have made piss-poor choices, shoot, choices meant to be regretted over. But in the regret, we become better people, and learn how to fruitfully shape the real world. We will no longer (hopefully not) concern ourselves with our Bryant for Divac swaps, because whether we are the recipient of greatness or not, we’ve given ourselves over to the great collective–a fabric of souls interconnected by the dominoes of our lives.

I’d trade Bryant for Divac full well-knowing the kind of player he’d become.

For every Bryant there’s a Divac, both serving their place in the ying-yang world of sports.

Divac: hard-working, playoff contender, smart, and the greatest flopper of all time.

Bryant: five time champion, Olympic champion, top ten great of all time, top five scorer of all time, thirteen time all-star, one time MVP, and the list continues to mount.

The greatest flopper of all time lends itself to a round of merry humor– which we all need.

But if the Kobe accolades say enough for the name of reality, then, who the hell wouldn’t make that trade, and who would possibly have the guts to re-arrange the beauty of such greatness?

–Luke Johnson