I wasn’t tall – but in my mind, I was going to be a giant out there every single night.
Allen Iverson, Dear Kobe (2020)
You have to be brave to show up to a court without a group to play with. To join people, most of whom are already formed into a unit, either with or against each other, but a unit nonetheless. You have to be even braver, then, to battle it out, to take flight between you and whoever is in the way of the basket. To cradle the rock with ill intention is enough, even if the goal of flight is unsuccessful. Bravery is every part of basketball, just as much as skill and technique, and every physical attribute that the earth and your parents blessed you with. Friends, I am very tall, but I can’t say I was ever that good at basketball. I have enough hand/eye coordination to keep the ball in my possession, sure, but it feels unnatural when someone is trying everything they can to take it from me. I don’t know if this means I’m not brave, maybe it means I was never allowed to be brave once I considered the skills I had within the game, though I suppose consideration isn’t meant for a game that goes against laws of physics, a game that constantly leaves commentators with questions of “How?!”.
How Allen Iverson, a point guard at six feet tall with shoes on, jumps to a point where he reaches the ball careening off the rim before Marcus Camby, a power forward, the second tallest position on the court. Camby stood at six-foot-eleven. And not only did Iverson reach the ball first, he manoeuvred himself to catch it, and then put it back to the rim and into the net with ill intention. Allen Iverson hung on the rim, his legs draping over Camby’s shoulders, just to accent the point of the sky he was never meant to reach. No, friends, this is not a game to be reasoned with.
