Yes, I know he's exciting.  Yes, I know he puts up points like no one's business.  No I do not think acquiring Iverson would be a good idea for one simple reason (paired with a verbose explaination of why this seems to be): he doesn't seem to make his team better.

There's a truth about Iverson.  He scores points.  There's another truth.  He takes a zillion shots in the process.  He's a career 42% shooter, 31% from 3 pt. range and down quite a bit this season.  He is not an efficient scorer and as a consequence he helps his team far less than it seems he should. To score 25-30 points, he's taking close to 25 shots.

In 2001 he led the Sixers to the finals.  They were a rather good team, winning 56 during the regular season. In subsequent years they've won 43, 48, 33, 43, and 38 games.  The trend has them downward and they play in the eastern conference.  That's not a ringing endorsement that Iverson = wins. Obviously Iverson isn't entirely responsible for his team's fortunes.  There's 4 other guys out there.  However, in his case, there's 4 other guys fighting for a limited number of touches meaning that you've got to get guys who produce in other departments.  They don't have these guys (and neither do we).

Sixer management hasn't been terribly smart in building their team around him.  Some of this is handicapped by his huge salary.  Some of it is their own faulty analysis. (This analysis is strikingly similar to most of the "let's get Iverson--he's 'The Answer'" hype that sees him as a savior and sees him as such despite the annoying fact that for the most part, he's played on teams performing at a rather mediocre level in the Eastern Conference.)  Get him another scorer to share the load and...and...and...well he doesn't really share and now you've got an underutilized secondary guy to share blame with while rebounds and defense goes the way of the dodo.  This equates to Warrior-level basketball for the last 4 seasons who have won a few fewer games, but have done so in a much more difficult and top-heavy conference.

The Sixers have thought that they need someone else to grab more of the scoring load.  Perhaps true, it hasn't worked, in part I suspect because Iverson just needs to take tons of shots, even if he's inclined to miss them far more often than make them.  Adding another scorer, someone like Iguodala who converts at a reasonably high rate, but his actual impact is going to be heavily

No, what a team featuring Iverson needs is rebounders and defenders.  It needs many of them to consistently grab those Iverson misses and allow themselves multiple opportunities for him to score and needs defensive rebounds to ensure that their opposition isn't going to score on each and every possession.   And in their most successful season, this is exactly what they had.  They were the second best offensive rebounding team in the league, necessary when Iverson misses 15 (yes, 15--this is not hyperbolic exaggeration of his actual shooting woes) shots a game.  You want to track winning percentage by Iverson-led teams?  Track their rebounding stats.  It's pretty striking and rather undeniable.  As his team's rebounding goes, so go their chances of winning.

It wasn't even so much that when they were successful that they had an amazing rebounder (save Mutumbo--who came in late), but they got above average defensive contributions at 3 or 4 positions and above average rebounding at 3 or 4 positions all the time.   They always had 3 guys on the floor who were capable or 9-11 boards a game and they had guys on the bench who rebounded at this same rate, so while no one averaged that individually, they had fresh hard workers rotating in all the time. And if you're playing with Iverson, you cannot win any other way.  

In subsequent years, Sixers management has allowed these guys to fall away, replacing them with secondary scorers who don't get the ball because Iverson dominates it.  

Hmm.  Lots of secondary scorers, not much defense or rebounding. Where else have I seen this combination?

The Warriors have several inefficient scorers, some of whom under Nelson have for the most part been better than that.  What they do not have is an abundance of rebounders or above average defenders.  Biedrins might fit that bill (certainly as a rebounder) but after that they've got few guys who have short-comings in one or more of those departments.  Murphy can rebound but not defend.  Consequently, Iverson here would very likely be exactly like Iverson in Philly which produces results more or less like the Warriors do now.

The argument for Iverson is 30ppg but that comes in a pure vacuum that ignores that his 30ppg hasn't produced a consistent winner in a rather long time and that he's only produced winners when teamed with a multitude of above average rebounders and defenders.  So if it's likely to be the same sort of composition here as it is in Philly--and it is--what's to argue getting Iverson?  What makes trading young for old, tall for short (the two things that conventional wisdom make for bad trades) in this case better?  What makes him worth $20million a year, almost certainly pushing us into lux tax territory in upcoming seasons, when he isn't getting it done in Philly?  Who, after trading for Iverson, is going to do the dirty work of defending and rebounding that is absolutely necessary to make Iverson's often exciting brand of basketball successful in the W-column?

Long winded summary:  we trade for Iverson and the team will be exactly the same save a larger chunk of the salary will go to one guy who will also score a larger chunk of the points in losing efforts more often than not.