Four-time NBA champion and the 2015 NBA Finals Most Valuable Player (MVP) Andre Iguodala of the Golden State Warriors announced his retirement on Friday after 19 seasons in the league.

"It's just the right time," Iguodala said in an interview with Andscape, a sports and pop culture website owned and operated by ESPN. "Time started to get limited for me, and I didn't want to put anything in the back seat. I didn't want to have to try to delegate time anymore. Especially with on the court, off the court with family. A lot."

Having been drafted by the Philadelphia 76ers with the ninth pick in 2004, Iguodala played for the 76ers, the Denver Nuggets, the Warriors and the Miami Heat during his career, averaging 11.3 points, 4.3 assists and 1.3 steals per game in the regular seasons. Individually, he reached the summit in Philadelphia between 2006 and 2012. He made his only All-Star appearance in 2012 and was selected into the All-Defensive Second Team in 2011.

However, the most successful part of Iguodala's career happened with the Warriors. Having started in every of the first 758 games he played, he accepted coach Steve Kerr's instruction of playing off the bench from the 2014-15 campaign. Since then, he only started in 26 of the 473 games he was in, but won four titles.

As a 1.98-meter-tall, 97-kilogram-heavy wingman, Iguodala has top-class athleticism, but lacks enough effective scoring methods. Most of his points were scored via off-ball plays including dunks after cutting in as well as catch-and-shoot 3-pointers. On one hand, Iguodala completed 1,506 dunks in 1,231 regular season games, more than Vince Carter, Dwyane Wade, Russell Westbrook, Tim Duncan and Kevin Garnett. On the other hand, he only shot 8.8 field goals and made 4.1 of them per game.

Usually a player in Iguodala's type is made to play off the bench because he can do a bit of everything, but Iguodala's role in the Warriors' system is much more important than that because he was often a starter in key games in the playoffs. The most famous story of him on this front was in the NBA Finals in 2015. The Warriors trialed 2-1 against the Cleveland Cavaliers after three games. From Game 4, Kerr started Iguodala and they won the series with three consecutive victories.

Iguodala averaged 20.3 points per game in those three appearances. The Warriors grew smaller but faster with him in the starting lineup. He made nine triples in those three games, punishing the Cavaliers for making Timofey Mozgov mark him the paint. Moreover, Iguodala added a slasher who can also move the ball in the right way to his team. Another significant contribution he made was containing Lebron James and chaining up the Warriors' defense that forced 36 turnovers by the opponents in the final three games.

"Andre Iguodala was a huge part of four NBA championship teams with the Warriors and will forever be remembered for his many contributions to our franchise, both on and off the court," Joe Lacob, owner of the Warriors said in a statement. "His team-first approach, which we witnessed immediately upon his arrival in Golden State, helped set the tone for much of our success, as did the impact he had on the defensive end of the floor. We look forward to raising #9 to the rafters in Chase Center at some point in the future, and we wish him well in what will assuredly be a very successful post-playing career venture into the business world."