Iverson Wants to Play Again, With Knicks as Possibility

Yahoo!'s Marc Spears caught up with the personal manager of one Allen Iverson, the surefire Hall-of-Fame guard who earlier Monday agreed to part ways with the Grizzlies after three dramatic regular season appearances. The implication of Monday's event implies that Iverson is done in the NBA -- he didn't exactly have many suitors in the offseason, after all, which required a bit role on the bad Grizzlies in the first place.

You should be unsurprised to learn, however, that Iverson doesn't see it that way. A.I.'s manager told Spears that the guard intends to play again in the NBA ... hopefully this season. How's that gonna happen? Take it away, New York Knicks president Donnie Walsh!

Walsh told Frank Isola of the New York Daily News his struggling club would consider adding Iverson.

"We'll look into it," Walsh told the Daily News. "Right now, I'd say probably not but we'll see."

The Knicks could hardly lose anything by adding Iverson. The team has only three or four youngsters who legitimately need playing time. Danilo Gallinari can play small forward in Mike D'Antoni's system, and while you'd like to see guard Toney Douglas get as many minutes as possible, the Knicks are truly dreadful, and minutes on a 15-win team is more scarring damage than learning experience. If Iverson can help (and he played well enough in his three appearances to make that an honest assessment rather than pie-in-the-sky nostalgia), the Knicks would do well to fit him in.

But of course, Iverson must be willing to compromise, too. And that doesn't sound entirely likely, with Iverson's manager telling Spears that The Answer would come off the bench ... for a championship-contending team. If A.I. really wants to latch on with a team this season, he needs to drop the conditions and be just a touch humbled by his fall from grace. I mean, if Stephon Marbury can get a late-season call (as he did with the Celtics last season), Iverson can. It's just a matter of posturing for public relations' sake.