Ira Winderman

Here's a shock: Allen Iverson isn't happy coming off the bench.

Well, that only took one game.

Shame, of course, on Iverson. He knew what he was getting into on a young team that has to see what it has in Mike Conley and O.J. Mayo.

But shame, as well, on the Grizzlies, for not thinking twice about selling extra jerseys, but also not thinking about a honeymoon that inevitably would prove fleeting.

It is difficult to think of a worse marriage in the league right now, at least one this side of Chris Paul and Rajon Rondo. Wrong player on the wrong team at the wrong time.

If Iverson wanted to start, there certainly could have been an opportunity with the Knicks.

If he wanted to play for a winner, the chance was there with the Heat, in the role that Carlos Arroyo currently occupies.

The caveat in each of those cases, and a few more around the league, such as with Larry Brown in Charlotte, was salary.

Arroyo is on a minimum-wage, one-year, non-guaranteed deal with the Heat. Yet considering he is backing up Mario Chalmers, and the third-string point guard in Miami is Chris Quinn, the odds of Arroyo making it to the Jan. 10 guarantee date are pretty good.

Iverson could have had that deal. Yes, it would have been for only $1.3 million. But that's what's so confounding about Iverson's thought process. Is the extra $1.8 million he is earning in Memphis so significant for a player who earned $21 million last season in Detroit and oodles more in the preceding years?

This isn't Antoine Walker we're talking about, when it comes to making every last dollar count, is it?

Iverson likely will yet have his moments this season. I-told-you-sos will follow from Grizzlies ownership, which orchestrated the whole deal. But when Day 1 is full of so much consternation, it can't be leading to a pretty picture in March and April, when Memphis is looking up in the standings at the Warriors and Clippers.

At least Iverson already appears to be in tune with what is going on.

At least he has Marc Cohn's lyrics down.

"Walking in Memphis, but do I really feel the way I feel?

"Touched down in the land of the Delta Blues. In the middle of the pouring rain."

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Ira Winderman writes regularly for NBCSports.com and covers the Heat and the NBA for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

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