It’s all a negotiation of what someone will open up their body to. A negotiation of disbelief, really: what can be sold and who is willing to buy it.
Hanif Abdurraqib, They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us (2017)
The ball is inbounded quicker depending what humiliation came before it. If someone has been dunked on, the ball is almost always immediately back in play, with the clock ticking and the ball moving faster than most eyes can keep up with. A three pointer, or maybe a long two, is digested with more time. But as soon as the ball is in play, we return to our assignments as soon as we can. Whatever the coach has drawn up, the smaller guys are defending the smaller guys and the same for the tall ones. You have your assignment, and the goal is to stop anyone from ever entering airspace, but if they do, you have to meet them there, to match wherever they reach so your hands can reject any ball that leaves theirs.
On the other end, the attacker’s goal is to make space. To cause such a distance, in the air or on the ground, that the ball is free to make its journey whenever it is wound up and released. To make that space is a dialogue of trickery – of whatever moves you pull and however your defender adjusts. It is a back and forth. A take on of trust. Once you make one move, I’ll make another.
And Allen Iverson was not one to take on. The ball has a way of attaching to those who guide it. If they have put enough into the game, and know how the ball will react to any spot they bounce it, it will stay with them as long as they want it. The ball was attached to Iverson. His handles were incomparable on most days, and if you dared try take the ball off Iverson, there was a likely chance you’d be humiliated, and perhaps on the ground by the end, leaving the ultimate space for him to make his move.
Tyronn Lue, two-time NBA champion guard, tried, and ended up in Iverson’s most iconic play, with Lue on the floor, the ball in the basket. Iverson towering above, like the chosen one, and stepping over Lue’s dejected body.
Michael Jordan tried, and ended up shuffling his feet back, just as someone who refuses to be humiliated would, so he didn’t fall. But I suppose that fate is reserved for someone considered the best of all time. Maybe Iverson had too much respect for MJ to ever let him fall, even if he knew he could make him. Perhaps it was enough for Iverson to know he could freeze the greatest player of all time, for just long enough, to make as much space as he needed to hit his shot.
The Evolution of Iverson
