You are going to have to climb, and I know you want no parts of the world from this high up. Find the point you are unkillable and jump toward it if you can.
– Hanif Abdurraqib, There’s Always This Year
It’s interesting to note that Allen Iverson was never meant to be here. No, I don’t just mean beating the low odds of making the NBA, odds somewhere in around 0.03%, and odds even lower when you measure up at 5’11”. I mean that Allen Iverson was arrested in high school for a scuffle that started after a group of guys confronted Iverson & his friends at a bowling alley, telling them they were being too loud. Iverson and his friends were the only ones taken into custody.
For me to be in a bowling alley where everybody in the whole place knows who I am and be crackin’ people upside the head with chairs and think nothin’ gonna happen? That’s crazy! And what kind of a man would I be to hit a girl in the head with a damn chair?”
He was convicted of maiming-by-mob and sentenced to fifteen years in Newport News City Farm.
It took four months for the sentence to be overturned due to new evidence, video footage that showed Iverson leaving the situation before it even began. Even then, Iverson’s mother had to spend those four months, with her child locked up, convincing Georgetown head coach John Thompson to give Iverson a chance after every college had rescinded their scholarship offer. John did give Iverson a spot, and he went onto become one of Georgetown’s best, then one of the NBA’s best – an MVP in his playing days, a hall of famer once retired, and a top 75 player of all time in an unranked list released in 2021.
But Iverson’s trials and tribulations didn’t end once he got the nod from Thompson, once he had reached the heights of college ball, nor MVP of the NBA.
No, friends, I’m sad to say this was a signifier of things to come. Allen Iverson knew he had beat more odds than anyone to ever play the game, and as such he knew that people could never reach the air he was part of. I suppose this came off as braggadocious, or arrogant, and as such any person with power, regardless if they’d ever stepped onto a court or not, jumped as high as they could, to try to reach him where he was at, even if they were clambering for his legs. They grappled and clung to him in any way they could, in any way to stop his ascent through the miraculous air that he had taken into.
Which brings us here, with Allen Iverson sat in a press room, filled with reporters ready to bite his head off. A passionate Iverson, someone who would do anything to win, had spent the season at odds with 76ers coach, Larry Brown. The 76ers had a disappointing year, barely making the playoffs before being eliminated in the first round. It all came to a head just after their elimination, when Iverson didn’t show up to practice, and then showed up late to a meeting. Brown and him went at it, culminating in Brown telling Iverson he was going to be traded. This wasn’t true.
Reporters had heard all of this, especially his missing practice, and it seemed to be all they cared about. So once the press conference began, every question was about practice. Allen Iverson was, finally, too tired to deal with it anymore. This led to thirty minutes of Allen battling every interviewer that dared to speak, begging to hear something that isn’t about him being a problem, that isn’t him missing practice, any single question about the future, not the past.
We’re talking about practice? Practice?! Not a game!
Up to this point, Allen Iverson had been branded as “difficult”, that’s the thing. Rules were changed because of how he expressed himself, how he dressed, on the court and off of it, he’d been slated as toxic, and then he lands in a press conference where all they want to talk about is practice. All he wants is to show he loves the city, he loves his team. He was fresh off a scoring title and had dragged his team to the playoffs, even in a season where he had an extensive list of injuries. I can tell you myself, he played every game like it was his last. He’d thrown himself over every part of the court, jumped in the way of people fourteen inches taller, two-hundred pounds heavier, so much so that he cannot fathom how practice is ever an issue… but they will not listen. And that’s how we wind up here, near the end, when he finally breaks down… “I’m upset because I’m here. I lost my best friend. I lost him, and I lost this year… I don’t want to be dealing with this shit, man.”
Iverson’s best friend, Rashaan Langford, had been killed in a shooting earlier that year, and the trial was a few days from starting. The journalists continued to ask about practice.
