PHOENIX — After the Nuggets’ victory over the defending NBA champion Spurs on Thursday, in which Allen Iverson scored a game-high 29 points, who would have thought it would be Iverson’s worst outing of the week?
Statistically speaking, it was, and his prowess earned the Nuggets guard the Western Conference player of the week honors for the week of Dec. 31-Jan. 6.
Iverson scored 33 points Friday in the Nuggets’ victory at Minnesota and 38 on Sunday in a victory over Philadelphia. For the week, Iverson also averaged 5.0 assists and shot 53.1 percent from the field and 92.3 percent from the free-throw line.
“He deserves it,” Nuggets coach George Karl said. “He played an incredible three games for us, and he’s been the man in most of them for us. His leadership and composure, I think he’s taken a lot of the responsibility for a professional commitment to this year — and this month especially. So far, we’re off to a great start.”
Iverson also won the award for the week of Nov. 12-18, making him just the third player in Nuggets history to win the award more than once in a season, joining Carmelo Anthony and former star Alex English.
Iverson now has won the weekly honor 22 times. According to an unofficial all-time awards list from the NBA, only former Chicago star Michael Jordan (25) and former Utah star Karl Malone (23) won the award more.
Jones released.
The Nuggets waived seldom-used forward Bobby Jones, who averaged 3.3 points per game and played more than 10 minutes just twice since Nov. 24.
Jones’ $687,000 contract would have become guaranteed today if the Nuggets hadn’t waived him.
“Bobby Jones did everything we wanted him to do,” Karl said. “He got better. I think he’s an NBA player. But in the situation we’re in, flexibility makes a lot of sense and I can’t deny that having a window open for an opportunity to make our team better, somewhere along the way, is probably more valuable than having Bobby on our team.”
Jones came to Denver in a Sept. 10 trade with Philadelphia. The Nuggets received Jones and center Steven Hunter for forward Reggie Evans and the draft rights to forward Ricky Sanchez.
