As one of the league’s all-time best bucket-getters, Allen Iverson knew how to score the basketball like no other player in history. But how much would the All-Star guard average in today’s NBA? According to Iverson himself, who sat down for a chat with Shaquille O’Neal, 43 points would be a very realistic number for him if he were active today.
“Ain’t that tootin my horn? I lost the scoring title to Kobe the year he averaged 35,” said Iverson. “I averaged 33. I’m just thinking man, if I was playing in this era where it’s wide open.. if I could average 33 in a season, i’mma take it up to 43. I know 10 points more.”
Shaquille O’Neal was in total agreement with Iverson here, who seemed certain that he could score at least 10 more points in today’s game. To Iverson’s credit, he was dropping 30+ on a regular basis during a time when it was much, much harder to score.
Drafted in 1996, Iverson’s best years spanned through the early to mid-2000s, when games were low-scoring and defense was all-around much more physical than we see today. At just six feet tall, Iverson had a height disadvantage against most defenders but he found a way to score anyway through unguardable isolation plays and a relentless scoring attack.
Although Iverson was never able to win a championship with the 76ers, his career is considered highly influential for its time given his unique skillset and unbridled competitive nature. Today, it’s almost hard to imagine how a guy like that would stack up against today’s much calmer NBA landscape. At the very least, he’d have no problem keeping up with all the game’s highest scorers and he may even get the edge over many in a potential playoff series.
Is The Modern NBA Broken Beyond Repair?
Since the implementation of the hand-check rules, which were slowly phased out of the league over the period of years, the NBA has seen a sharp decline in physicality, contact, and overall resistance from opposing defenses. Where teams like the “Bad Boy” Pistons used to borderline assault the competition, today’s players often barely try at all on that end of the floor.
Over the past few years alone, the NBA has experienced a record-setting explosion of points, and offenses across the league are seeing unprecedented levels of efficiency with their shooting. The 2024 All-Star game was perhaps the latest example of this trend, with a total of 397 points setting a new all-time high for the event.
In short, the league has favored heavily on the side of offenses, and scoring today has become easier than ever at this level of the game. For a guy like Allen Iverson, it might be hard for him to adjust to modern times at first but it wouldn’t take long before he finds easy ways to exploit the game.
Sadly, we’ll never get the chance to see Iverson in action on the court again but his career looks a lot more impressive now when you consider what he was doing in a defensive-oriented era. He was averaging 33 points before it was easy and there’s no reason to think he couldn’t sit at 40 points or more for a season if he only had modern players trying to slow him down.
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