OAKLAND, CA — Last night, the Detroit Pistons couldn’t keep up with the Golden State Warriors and, once again, Andre Iguodala proved to be the unselfish “Swiss Army Knife” type of player that he’s known to be, collecting 8 points, 2 three-pointers, 3 rebounds, 11 assists, and 2 steals in the Warriors’ 113-95 win over the visiting team from Detroit at Oracle Arena.
After the game Chauncey Billups, the seventeen-year NBA veteran and leader of the Pistons, reflected back on his Team USA teammate from the 2010 World Championships in Turkey, where the U.S. had won gold.
“I had always really admired his game from afar playing against him, competing against him,” Billups recalled about Iguodala, “I just always thought of him as a winner. He just did whatever it took to win and I knew I would always enjoy the opportunity of playing with him. That proved to be 100% true.”
Team USA went on to win gold that summer in Turkey.
“He was our defensive catalyst on that team,” Billups added, “He changed a lot of games for us, won a lot of games for us just defensively, the way that he just competed. He took away the other team’s best player.”
On the road to gold, Bill Simmons made this observation:
Iguodala has been a revelation as a fourth banana/swing defender/energy guy/uber-athlete, which really should have been his NBA destiny — mega-glue guy on a great team, like a much more devastating version of Trevor Ariza on the 2008-09 Los Angeles Lakers — only we don’t have nearly enough quality players to fill 30 NBA teams, so instead he’s forced to carry a lottery team (the Philadelphia 76ers), take terrible shots, play with inferior teammates and do everything that the basketball gods never meant for him to do. He’s like Roger Sterling in “Mad Men” — you don’t want him carrying the show, but in short doses, harnessed correctly, he can be a weapon.
Even Iguodala himself admitted at the time that his role with Team USA was different than with his NBA team at the time, the Sixers. In an entry of a diary that he kept with the Philadelphia Daily News that summer, Iguodala said:
I know people back in Philly are looking at my offensive numbers and don’t think that I’m playing that well, but that’s not my role on this team. I am here to play defense, score out on the break, get some putbacks. That’s how I’ll score on this team.
Last summer for the U.S. Olympic basketball team in London, which also won gold, Iguodala wasn’t tabbed to be on the team until the final cuts were made, but observers such as Ian Thomsen of Sports Illustrated suggested that his role with USA once again was a better fit than his role on the NBA Sixers:
“My job is kind of easy,” he said. “I try to make the game easy for those (Team USA) superstars.”
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Over the years he has been criticized in Philadelphia for not being a franchise star. That was not the role Iguodala was cut out to play…
Mike Prada correctly predicted that Iguodala would be vital to USA’s quest for the gold in last summer’s Olympics:
…Iguodala’s the perfect fill-in guy, really, capable of addressing so many needs beyond scoring. He’s an elite playmaker for his position, he moves without the ball and he defends multiple positions. He’s become a good enough spot-up shooter to mask that weakness.
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In international ball, he can play on the wing or he can do a little bit inside. He can be called upon to facilitate ball movement when Team USA starts to get stagnant. In short, he’s the kind of player the team never valued in 2002 and 2004, when Team USA hit its lowest point internationally.
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Iguodala’s talents call for this exact kind of role. And yet, due mostly to circumstance, he’s never been able to fill it in the NBA.
But now on the Warriors, Billups thinks Iguodala has finally found the right situation.
“It’s a similar role for him which I think is his best role. Everything he does is just a plus and it’s to help the team win,” Billups said, “He’s not the first or second option offensively. I don’t think he really wants to be that anyways. He just wants to be a basketball player. And he’s a very good one.”
From Chris Paul to Kobe Bryant, all of Team USA’s players have lauded what Iguodala brought to the table. John Smallwood of the Philadelphia Daily News interviewed nearly all of them, including USA Basketball Director Jerry Colangelo:
Iguodala is being touted as the ultimate role player. Versatility was the universal word used to compliment him.
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“He’s so flexible. He’s such a defender at all positions,” Colangelo said. “He’s such a blender. When he’s on the court he causes havoc for us on the defensive end.
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“Every team needs an Andre Iguodala — every team.”
Billups said that before last night’s game, he asked if Iguodala was happy with the Warriors, and that Iguodala told Billups he was.
“He couldn’t be in a better situation. I’m happy for Dre.”
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