With Allen Iverson going to Denver and Andre Miller going to Philly, what players stats stand to change?

Philadelphia Perspective

Iverson was scoring 30 points a game. That has to be redistributed in some way. We have actually had a couple of games with Iverson out of the lineup to already get a little peek at who would be playing what.

Chris Webber, in his game against Orlando, got 19 points and only 2 assists away from a triple double. Fantasy owners are loving it if they have C-Webb on their team. We may find out that he isn’t quite washed up yet.

Andre Iguodala and Kyle Korver should also benefit some in the scoring department.

Sam Dalembert might as well, but Iverson wasn’t normally taking away Sam’s shots anyway. It’s more likely that since Iverson isn’t lofting up shots that miss nearly twice as much as they hit that Sam’s put-backs won’t be there quite as much.

Andre Miller will probably pick up the rest of the scoring, but I don’t imagine that will amount to too much more than it did at Denver. Miller is better in the pass department than Kevin Ollie, so his presence will more likely just mean more easy points for the big men, and maybe sweeter setups for Kyle Korver.

Denver Perspective

Of course, it’s going to be a little hard to tell what is going to happen because of the suspensions, but if Allen Iverson continues to play shooting guard in the unsuspended lineup, then here is how I see the stats shaking down.

The lineup will probably be Earl Boykins PG, Allen Iverson SG, Carmelo Anthony SF, Eduardo Najera PF, Marcus Camby C.

If that’s the case, Boykins numbers, you’d think would improve, moving from the a backup role with good minutes to a starting role with better minutes. I’m not so sure they will improve at all, but, contrary to other perspectives, I actually don’t think they will go down either. He was only averaging about 12 points a game anyway, and even if Melo and AI continue at 30+ per game (which seems a stretch), there is still easily 12 points left for him. Denver is more than capable of putting up Phoenix-type scores, so there should still be a lot of points to go around.

AI’s numbers are likely to drop, but that might be a good thing for his FG%. The other benefit he has is that people can only double team him so much since Boykins, Anthony, and Camby are all good to great shooters.

It’ll be interesting seeing how teams match up against a terribly small but terribly quick back-court with Boykins and AI. Defense for other teams might be tough, but offense might be a bunch of big guards backing the little guys down into the basket and forcing double teams. (The top team in their division, the Utah Jazz, might have a field day with that, if I know Jerry Sloan.)

I don’t see Najera’s or Camby’s numbers dropping. I don’t think they’re average points are likely to drop much since they weren’t too high to begin with. If anything, they’re rebounds might increase, especially if Iverson continues to shoot the ball like a mad-man. And I can’t see why he won’t.

The big hit is going to be JR Smith. Unless Iverson ends up with an injury, Smith won’t see the light of day unless Iverson slides over and plays some point guard as well backing up Boykins. Even so I think Smith’s Fantasy value has all but vanished, which is a sad day for me!

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