Andre Iguodala was never meant to be a star – he was meant to make the stars next to him shine brighter.
From the day he was taken ninth in the 2004 draft by Philadelphia, Iguodala was miscast as an offensive fulcrum. He came into a league still high off the fumes of Michael Jordan, obsessed with anointing every athletic guard that could shoot and handle a little as the next chosen one.
Iguodala’s contemporaries were LeBron James, Tracy McGrady and Dwyane Wade, players who had at least a little Jordan in them. Iguodala did not, and in reality, his point of comparison should always have been Scottie Pippen.
The problem was that Iguodala never had a Jordan to play alongside him. For his first two seasons he had Allen Iverson, but their careers were at different stages, on different trajectories. And then, remarkably, for six straight years Iguodala was forced into the role of the best player on a playoff contender.
Sixers fans probably yearn for the days of Iguodala, Thaddeus Young and Evan Turner leading them to 41-41 records and competitive but inevitable first round exits.
Iguodala had moments where it was possible to confuse him with a superstar – two clutch free throws to sink the number one-seeded Bulls in 2012, and a mid-range fade-away that paid homage to Kobe Bryant in 2009 to best Orlando in the playoffs, complete with the superstar faux-angry stare-down to follow.
But these moments were fleeting, and ultimately only served to clutter the narrative. It was like Colin Farrell putting on an American accent – well-intentioned, but largely futile.
Only after his trade to Denver, and then signing with Golden State, has Iguodala realised his destiny. He is not an offensive weapon – he is a complementary piece.
On defence, though, he is a superstar. He ambles around the court with purpose, all limbs and fluid movement, physically connected to his direct opponent and mentally connected to the geometry of the floor.
His timing is immaculate, and his hands – which lead to all those swipes – are becoming legendary. His lateral quickness is as impressively subtle as his recovery speed getting out to shooters is self-evidently remarkable.
He’s strong enough not to be over-powered by LeBron James, lengthy enough to disrupt Kevin Durant, quick enough to stay in front of Kyrie Irving, and savvy enough to anticipate all their movements and leverage their tendencies against them. If not for a softly spoken octopus in San Antonio, Iguodala would be basketball’s perfection of a perimeter defender.
While a genius on defence, Iguodala has always topped out as an avid student on offence. When he has a man in front of him dribbling the ball, he is always in control – the opposition is at his mercy. With the ball in his hands, though, uncertainty often reigns.
His handle has never been good enough for a primary ball-handler. He dribbles the ball as high as his limbs are long, and at times it has a habit of slipping away from him. His jump shot, particularly in comparison to the two famous guards he plays with, takes an eternity to release.
While Stephen Curry seems to shoot with his wrists, Iguodala shoots with his entire body. You can see the effort in every shot, beginning his feet, pushing into the court and then exploding up into the air before his hand a little awkwardly thrusts the ball towards the hoop.
In Philadelphia, these weaknesses were definitive, and illustrative of his shortcomings as a leading man. In Golden State, though, his supporting role means that his ball-handling and his shooting are actually strengths.
As an occasional ball-handler, and usually fourth in the pecking order behind Curry, Draymond Green and Shaun Livingston, Iguodala’s handle is dynamic instead of flawed. While the focus was on his defence on James, an underrated benefit of inserting Iguodala into the starting line-up during last year’s Finals was that he pushed the pace on offence with his dribbling off of misses, helping to drive Golden State’s speed to Cleveland’s eventual breaking point.
His shooting, much maligned in the City of Brotherly Love, has also become decisive. Against the vaunted Death line-up, teams have to choose ways to die, and often their choice was to allow Iguodala to shoot open threes from the corner. This choice eventually became untenable – as Cleveland found out last year – with Iguodala regularly ending teams by nailing open shots.
The ethereal soul of these historic Warriors comes from the majesty of Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson. The heart of the team, though, comes from Green and Iguodala. This is a defensive team first, and Green and Iguodala inform that identity more than anyone else.
Barring a collapse of unforeseen proportions in these Finals, the definitive game in the history of these Golden State Warriors has already been played. ‘Game Six’ means something especially painful to San Antonio and Boston Red Sox fans, and after what the Warriors did to them, Oklahoma City can share in those debilitating connotations. Most will remember what Curry and especially Thompson did that night in the Sooner State, but I’ll mostly remember Andre Iguodala as the architect of the Thunder’s demise.
His defence on Kevin Durant in the fourth quarter of Game Six was as close to perfect as perimeter defence can be. Iguodala’s awareness of the shot clock and his balance between defensive reaction and anticipation aren’t as sexy as Klay Thompson draining threes from half-court, but they were every bit as significant that night.
The quiet tragedy of the defender in basketball is that great offence will always beat great defence. You can do your job as well as humanly possible and still lose regularly. It’s this reality that gives the great defenders an integrity that sometimes eludes the great scorers. Iguodala knew that his best wasn’t as good as Durant’s best, but he never wilted, making Durant’s life as difficult as it could be, and eventually reaped the rewards.
He also made the biggest shot of Golden State’s season. It won’t be remembered, because it was totally absent the aesthetic appeal that typically flows through this team like liquid, but Iguodala’s driving layup to tie the score at 101 with two minutes left was the most important moment of a historic season.
Down two, and on a broken play, Iguodala drove from the top of the arc on Andre Roberson and tossed up an awkward lefty layup that had no hope of falling in, but somehow did. It was as if the basketball gods were rewarding Iguodala for his admirable effort on the other end by gifting him a soft roll around the hoop. The ball dropped and the Thunder never scored again. History was saved.
It was the perfect Iguodala quarter – destructive and purposeful on defence, awkward but ultimately effective on offence.
When he came into the league, Iguodala was meant to be a superstar – a follower of the Jordan archetype who took over games on offence and won Finals MVPs. He never really did the former, but he achieved the latter, and might be about to achieve it again, by realising that the former isn’t everything, and by finally finding a team that shared that realisation.
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